Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond.
Under the present system Canada spends a lot, about $16 billion, on post-secondary education. The federal government alone spends $8 billion annually. The cash portion of the EPF transfers to the provinces is slowly ratcheting down. As the cash portion decreases the invisible portion which is given to the provinces through tax points is increasing. This is an invisible endowment to the provinces which will grow from about $4 billion in 1996-97 to $6 billion within 10 years.
The provinces will make the decision whether or not to pass on some or all of this cash reduction to students. Nobody yet knows how much will actually be passed on. That remains to be seen. Many factors will influence their decisions.
At the same time we face different pressing realities. Government resources are shrinking but more people need more education to get and to keep a job. Full time college and university enrolments are up 36 per cent since 1981 and 3 million workers, 25 per cent of the workforce, want to upgrade their skills and cannot afford it.
The discussion paper asks whether the federal government's role should remain as is or whether we should develop a more strategic approach. One option proposed in the green paper is to use the cash to invest in a new permanent program to provide more loans and grants to individual students.
Each $1 we spend could mean $4 in loans, $500 million could mean $2 billion in loans. Instead of declining cash loans would remain constant. Along with tax transfers this would mean the total resources available to the post-secondary education system would continue to grow in order to meet increasing demands for more learning opportunities for more Canadians.