Thank you, Chair.
And thank you, Minister. It's always nice to see you at committee.
I would like to talk a bit about education. We talked about that when you were here before. I think improving Canadian productivity is a big issue for everybody. It has certainly been the focus of our pre-budget consultations. We've been going around the country and chatting with people, and everybody agrees we need to do that.
One of the ways, of course, to do that is to invest in post-secondary education. You've indicated in this book you gave us today that there are a number of mechanisms by which students are assisted through the federal and provincial governments. What we hear and what we've seen in the last number of years is that there are groups of students who are not accessing post-secondary education because of financial means. Obviously these are low-income families, persons with disabilities, aboriginal Canadians.
Last year the economic update spoke to that, to the tune of some $4 billion, including $2 billion to improve student financial assistance, $550 million to expand the Canada access grants, as well as a $1 billion post-secondary innovation fund, which you turned into the infrastructure fund. Infrastructure is important, but the issue I want to ask you about is access. Does the federal government have a responsibility to help students who are unable to afford post-secondary education, be it university or community college, to get there?