Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you to all of the presenters for your interesting views.
I'd like to single out Mr. Brown for his feisty presentation on behalf of community colleges.
As one who was in the world of universities for 18 years before politics, I'm certainly not anti-university at all. I would just like to reinforce a point about competitiveness made by my colleague. A year ago in China I was told there were no less than 30 million engineers in China, about the same as the number of Canadians, and the great bulk of them were well trained. So that does say something about our competitive challenges.
I would acknowledge that as much as our aid to universities was a good idea and warranted, we perhaps have been guilty over the years in neglecting community colleges to a degree. The current government, I would argue, in the last budget neglected not only community colleges but also universities. So we're not that bad. But I, to a degree, would plead guilty, especially when you consider issues of equality of opportunity and the changing needs of our economy in terms of the things that community colleges teach.
So my question is this. Apart from giving special attention to jurisdictional issues, that colleges, in particular, are largely under provincial jurisdiction, and apart from your proposal to have a separate transfer for post-secondary education, what would be your primary priorities for direct federal spending that would assist the colleges?