Thank you, Mr. Chair. I may split some time with Ms. Dhalla.
Thank you all for your presentations. They were very good.
I'd like to talk with Paul Cappon about the CCL report, which is very impressive. It's a very strong piece of work in a lot of different areas. I'd like to discuss one area with you in particular, and that is participation at the post-secondary education level of under-represented groups, which you have identified here.
You also indicate correctly that a number of different surveys come to somewhat differing conclusions about whether we have done anything to close the gap between lowest-income Canadians and highest-income Canadians in terms of post-secondary participation. I don't think we've done nearly as well as we should have, but some people take it as a success that the gap hasn't in fact widened over the past 10 to 15 years. We know the top income groups particularly go to university at a higher rate than the lowest-income Canadians, while the difference is less marked at the college level.
If we're going to maximize the potential of Canadians, we're a pretty small nation in the overall scheme of things, and many of the larger nations are spending lots and lots of money to get people to post-secondary levels. I wonder what recommendations you would make. You identify aboriginal peoples here very strongly, and the fact that we need to do more. Getting a post-secondary education is not just at the post-secondary level, but providing the social constructs so they can get to university.
Another group that I believe is under-represented at the post-secondary level is persons with disabilities. It seems to me that we don't have—We've had some successes in the past few years with the Canada access grants, the Millenium Scholarship Foundation, and some new initiatives, but we don't have a robust national series of needs-based grants. I wonder if you could give me your thoughts on that.