Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his question. Obviously, if we were not in a particularly tight financial situation, an experiment like Katimavik would be entirely praiseworthy, and I agree with what he just said.
However, when we compare the need for personal development and experience, travelling and all that with the other needs of youth-needs that I have described in the first part of my speech-young people who are living in extreme poverty, who are desperate to get some kind of occupational training after dropping out of school and then after a while want to get into the labour market and still do not have the proper training and experience they need, when we compare that with the experience of going to another province or another part of one's own province to do the kind of things described in the Youth Service Program such as cleaning up the banks of a river or doing various jobs to beautify the environment, we realize there is no future in cleaning up the environment with brooms and shovels. It does not provide a direct link with the labour market. This kind of work tends to be done by volunteers rather than employees. These jobs are typical volunteer work. In my riding, civic-minded residents do this kind of work for a couple weeks in the spring as volunteers. In fact, it is all part of environmental awareness.
It may have worked from 1980 to 1986. Perhaps the financial resources were there at the time, but we should remember that even in its heyday, the number of young people involved in Katimavik did not exceed 10,000, at a cost of $10,000 per person.
You may consider this is a stiff price to pay for the experience of living in another province for nine months, as described in the youth service program, Sir-oh, I am sorry-Mr. Speaker, since I am supposed to address the Chair while trying to get the hon. member's attention. Trips and room and board are expensive.
So if we consider other training needs, it seems to me that we must get our priorities straight. If it were up to me personally, obviously I would be more inclined to favour those who will have to enter the labour market. And I would do that because I have looked at various reports and heard the demands of youth organizations which are saying: jobs come first.
During the election campaign and in the throne speech, the Liberal Party told us that jobs came first. Occupational, recreational, leisure and cultural activities are all very interesting, but not in the financial situation we have today.