Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.
For my colleague who brought up the issues around disabilities and training, the budget that has just been tabled has $30 million in there for what we call the opportunities fund for disabled people. You should be voting for the budget to support that, because it's a good initiative.
I'd like to direct my first question to Mr. Knight. The knowledge infrastructure program that we did in the stimulus...that was an effort to stimulate the economy but also to help with capacity issues around universities and colleges. I know that the colleges in the Okanagan Valley took advantage of it.
The local campus in the community where I live expanded their capacity for their skills training. One of the other things the Okanagan College has is mobile units for welding or carpentry. It's working really well. They're helping to take a bigger variety of opportunities to the various areas in the Okanagan Valley. That is one thing. Could you talk about other initiatives that can be taken to move from the college out into the communities, and to the more remote communities, especially first nations communities?
The other initiative they took in B.C. was to move part of the University of British Columbia campus to the Okanagan and take some of the disciplines out of that and move them into an area that is maybe more focused on agriculture. Is that anything that the universities would be looking at to try to increase the capacity?
Also, in speaking with the medical association about some of the challenges for people who go to university to learn how to be a doctor.... They get in the city, get caught up in that lifestyle, and want to stay in the city, but we need doctors in rural Canada. I know there's a pilot project—I think it's out of the University of Toronto—in which they've set up a campus where they can do their training away from the university. I think that's a very positive thing. Are there any other initiatives that have been undertaken to take that training and those opportunities out into the more rural areas?
Mr. Knight.