Thank you, Chair.
First of all, I'll say how I pleased I am that the finance committee and my colleagues have had a chance to come to Nova Scotia. I tried to show you a little taste of Halifax last night. Unfortunately, we didn't get to the wonderful community of Dartmouth—Cole Harbour. Next time we'll try to have the meetings over there, but it's very nice to have you guys here, and I thank the witnesses for taking the time to appear.
Since we have a number of folks--students and university--I'd like to talk about the dedicated transfer, because we have heard about that as we've gone across the country. It's certainly my view that the number one issue, not only for social justice reasons but for economic reasons, is that we have to maximize the human capital of Canadians.
We know that although enrolments have not been going down overall across Canada, low-income Canadians, aboriginal Canadians, and persons with disabilities have dropped off and are not taking advantage of getting into university, because they can't afford to go, in large part. We have to do something about that. So the dedicated transfer comes up quite often. We often hear that the federal government has abdicated its role in post-secondary. It's not exactly the case. In fact, the government's own document that came out with the budget says:
While the total share of federal support has remained relatively constant over time (at about 25% of overall expenditures...), the mix of federal instruments has changed. Today, a larger proportion of support is provided through direct measures than through transfers to provinces and territories.
So the federal contribution to post-secondary is what it was back before the cuts, but the transfers to the universities are down. So the issue is, if we're going to have a dedicated transfer, does that mean we're going to ask the government...? Spencer, I think you indicated $4 billion in the current spending is put into your estimate and the direct transfer is $1.8 billion a year. Without arguing over the numbers, it's a significant amount of money. How do we ensure, if we go to a dedicated transfer, that support to the universities, both in terms of research, which has reversed the brain drain, and some of the stuff Ms. Schultz talked about--but whether it's the millennium scholarship, Chris or Ian, or whether it's some other mechanism, does the federal government still have a role to play in directly assisting students?
I'd like to start with you two and perhaps anybody else who wants to get in on it. How do we do a dedicated transfer but ensure that we don't let down both the universities and students directly?