Thank you very much.
I appreciate the presentations we've had today.
I'm going to centre most of my remarks around post-secondary education. I think it's a given. I think we pretty much all agree that getting that good start from young on up is the early building block there. But I think we're also aware that the distinctions and the gaps, if you will, in terms of wage-earning capacity comes as there's the additional post-secondary education. I'm told that it's no different in many other countries in the world than in Canada. Actually, there's always room for improvement, but with respect to participation, we're one of the highest in terms of participation for post-secondary education among all of the OECD countries. So this is an encouraging thing. But as we say, we can always work on that and we can always bump the percentages up from there.
Our government has increased post-secondary education funding, as you know, by about 40%. If we don't know, it's good to be reminded of that. That's fairly huge. We're investing about $2.4 billion in post-secondary education through the Canada social transfer, rising to $3.2 billion in the 2008-09 year.
I also want to ask about the new budget infrastructure, the $2 billion. I want to ask Terry in respect to her further reflection or comments on that. I'm reading from a press release from the Association of Canadian Community Colleges from January 26, right after that $2 billion fund for infrastructure was announced. The president, James Knight, said, “The announcement today by Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Minister John Baird of a $2 billion fund for construction, repair and upgrade of colleges and universities is good news for students, for colleges and for Canada.”
He cites some thousand rural and urban communities where there are campuses, and also this very positive...I didn't realize it was that high, but he said that more than 90% of college graduates obtain employment in their field within six months of graduating, even in today's slowing economy. So that's very commendable in terms of our Canadian community colleges.
He goes on to say that his college badly needed an infusion of new capital to help them expand and upgrade their infrastructure and acquire leading-edge technology. The announcement did that.
I guess in terms of that announcement being made in January, I know that in my neck of the woods, in western Canada, some of that is beginning to get under way. What's your sense, Terry, as you connect across the country, of what the dollars are getting at? There are some renovations, maintenance; there's some of that stuff beginning to occur already. It takes a while for dollars to get out sometimes, but is this beginning to happen now? Have you talked with people across the country?