I certainly appreciate the concern of money essentially going missing once it gets to the provinces or somewhere into a government coffer. But I actually think that having a dedicated transfer payment is one of the ways of alleviating that, because what we have now is essentially a series of transfer payments that have been coupled together. It makes it far more difficult for students on our lobbying end—I can speak on behalf of the representatives for the provincial component—to actually go to the provincial government and say, “Well, this is how much money is being specifically allocated for post-secondary education”. We feel that with a dedicated transfer payment, it's a way of being able to touch base. If we see that $1.2 billion being allocated, well, we know that's exactly what we need to be going after.
But you're also attaching a requirement, when you have an act in place, to determine how that money should be allocated and what it should be used for, which is giving direction. And I think that in consultation with the provinces....
I've heard the comments before about the difficulty associated with negotiating with a variety of different provinces. But I do believe there is a will on behalf of the provinces to have investment in education, certainly in Ontario. I think it's important to recognize that when we're talking about students today, we're not talking about 18- and 19-year-olds who are graduating from high school. We're talking about the upwards of 200,000 people in this province who have lost their jobs, many of whom are in the manufacturing industry, who do not have the skills to be able to access the vast majority—more than two-thirds—of new listed jobs that require some form of post-secondary education.
So I think investing into education and increasing the amount of money is a political priority for provincial governments but also, quite frankly, for citizens in Canada, because they need that access.