Mr. Speaker, I was rather taken by the hon. minister's comments about the revenue departments of the provinces and the federal government working together. That sounds like a partnership between John Dillinger and Lucky Luciano.
He was talking about how literate Canadian youth are. This is a bit of a contradiction because he also remarked about the programs to increase literacy in the population. If he thinks Canadian youth now are more literate than they were in the past, I would say he is betraying his academic origins. He is not aware of what is out there. He has not tried to hire anybody lately, to try to find somebody who can write a coherent paragraph, who can spell and who knows a thing about grammar. That is not his department, that is for the provincial departments of education. However, I wish he would not make statements about the high degree of literacy of our population.
With respect to the Canada millennium endowment fund, I understand that access to these funds is not going to be based on merit but on something called need which will be defined by the bureaucrats in whatever way they choose. Now if that is wrong I would like to be corrected. If it is not based on merit then this thing is going to be a very useful educational tool because it means the young people will be taught at a very early age how to work the system the Canadian way.