Madam Speaker, I do have a comment and a question for the member. I would like to state on the record that I was delighted that the secretary of state who spoke previously raised in the House again the issue of fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effects. It is a very important issue to Canadians. It costs us $2.1 billion a year to deal with this problem. I appreciate her raising this in the House.
The member who just spoke has raised a number of issues. I would like to focus on the thing that he raised with regard to the federal government, as he put it, grasping power for itself. The member will know that Canadians look to leadership from the federal government on a broad range of issues. In partnership with the provinces on a wide range of areas such as health care, post-secondary education and social security, the provinces are the front line and administrators and deliverers of those services. That partnership is extremely important.
The member also referred to what he called downloading and offloading and that the transfers under the Canada health and social transfer have been reduced. There is no question that that is true. He also should acknowledge that with the federal funding of the health care system, post-secondary education and the social security system, the provinces were granted taxing authority called tax points.
Under the tax points, although the cash transfers may have gone down by some $7 billion, the value of the tax revenue to the provinces has gone up about $3.5 billion. The net effect is that the burden that the provinces were asked to share in dealing with the $42 billion deficit was much, much smaller than the federal government in its programs absorbed.
The provinces were asked to do a very small share of it. Indeed we have many provinces now which have balanced budgets and which have granted tax breaks to their constituents and not correspondingly shown that health care and post-secondary is a priority for their government. The member should well know that there are two partners in this.
My question has to do with the direct issue of the millennium scholarship fund.
There is no question that education is important and one of the most significant elements with regard to the success of people having a job. The member will know that university graduates have an unemployment rate of only about 6.5%. He will also know that high school drop-outs in Quebec approach almost 40%. It is the highest number in all of the provinces.
I would ask the member simply to answer the direct question whether or not he feels that students in Quebec should say no to the millennium scholarship fund in their best interest?