Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. friend from the Reform Party. I commend him for his dedication to education and recognize his long career as an educator. Certainly he has some very positive things to say to government about education.
I was so encouraged by much of the hon. member's speech that I expect he will be supporting this bill when it goes through. I certainly hope he will do that.
I would make a suggestion to the hon.member, and I speak from experience also, being someone who worked his way through college without student loans and so on. I recall those days in our situation just breaking even with what one could earn the summer and what it would cost in the winter. In thinking back on that education system we had in the late 1950s, our course was very heavily subsidized by government. Therefore our tuition was relatively low by today's standard. We lived in residence and our board was relatively low by today's standards. I suggest that all the costs cannot be laid on the shoulders of the national debt. It seems to me there was a different approach toward education at that time. In my case, which was agricultural college, agriculture was considered enough of a priority so most of the costs of those courses were paid for by government.
I would like to respectfully ask the hon. member if he will support this bill and in so doing be able to contribute to the education of our young people across Canada. Perhaps he could bring these new ideas and suggestions to our government.