Mr. Speaker, slashing $1.5 billion from transfers to higher education hardly seems like an indication of high priority.
In developing our approach on this issue, Reformers have said that the federal government ought to maintain as its highest spending priorities transfers in support of health care and education. We have advocated cutting virtually everything else in order to sustain those spending priorities.
I ask the minister, why does the government not preserve federal funding for post-secondary education at current levels and get more bang for the buck by transferring that funding directly to students through educational vouchers rather than to the provinces and the institutions?