Thank you, Mr. Allison.
If there is some leftover time, I'll be sharing mine with Ms. Yelich. I realize that we have to be quick and concise today with the two rounds.
I have two questions. The first one is for Mr. Kozij.
You mentioned the $105 million recently referenced in the budget. Certainly that's good news for skills training amongst aboriginals. Could you expand upon that, how that's going to be funded given the immediate need? Is a larger percentage going to be released at the beginning of the five-year period?
The second question is for Mr. Brown, from the Association of Canadian Community Colleges. I have a community college in Barrie, a very good one, Georgian College. I've done the tour and seen the infrastructure needs they have. I can certainly appreciate what you speak of, and that's one of the reasons I was so happy to see the $800 million allocated in this year's budget for post-secondary education.
In your summary and recommendations you made reference to the fact that if we're going to solve this problem we really need to look at getting funding back to 1992 and 1993 levels, adjusting for inflation and demographic growth. I think that's an important thing to look at, because obviously there was a real pillaging in the mid-1990s of social transfers by the government of the day, in terms of education.
What were the effects of those cutbacks in the mid-1990s on the college system? Maybe you could let us know why there's such a need to invest today. Where did we fall behind in the mid-1990s, when the knife was taken to education on a community level?