Madam Speaker, first I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for London West.
It is a pleasure to speak to this motion by the member for Lac-Saint-Jean. The pleasure does not stem from my agreement with the motion, but rather from the opportunity it gives me to underline some of the contradictions expressed up to now by members opposite. They contend that the federal government has no business in education, that it should simply hand the money over to the province and forget about it.
Our government thinks otherwise. We strongly believe that we have a role to play, as we have been doing for many decades, in educating and helping young Canadians.
As the year 2000 draws near, various countries are looking at different ways to celebrate and mark the beginning of the new millennium. To give one example, the city of London, England, is looking at ways to celebrate their event and is considering building a dome at the cost of several hundred thousand dollars.
Our government, on the other hand, has taken a different approach. We have decided to invest in the future of our country by giving young Canadians the opportunity to achieve their full potential through access to training to meet the ever more challenging demands of the next millennium. This is something that the Bloc Quebecois have a hard time understanding.
Nowadays, we are facing a most formidable challenge which we cannot avoid: competitiveness. Given the global economy, all workers must be highly skilled, because only those who can produce faster, better and cheaper have access to the markets.
The opening of borders, or even their gradual elimination, created a whole new attitude toward trade that industrialized countries must deal with. We believe that we must rely on the creativity, the imagination and the innovation of young Canadians to continue to carve out an enviable position in the knowledge-based economy.
Traditionally based on the development of natural resources, Canada's economy now depends increasingly on knowledge rather than resources. That is how we will be able to help create stimulating and well paid jobs for young Canadians.
The Government of Canada has a responsibility to support and encourage those who want to participate fully in the new economic, cultural and social environment in which we will be living from now on. That is what we undertook to do, and the Canada millennium scholarship foundation is one of the ways Canada can face up to this great challenge.
Bloc members, especially the member who moved the motion, are again making a mistake they made repeatedly in the past. They confuse access to education and education itself.
The role of the Canada millennium scholarship foundation will be to eliminate the obstacles limiting access to post-secondary education or to training in advanced technology, which are essential to get a good job in the new economy.
Nowhere is it mentioned that the foundation will interfere in education programs. As the Bloc members say, we know that education is a provincial responsibility, and the foundation's vocation fully respects this fact.
However, for decades, the Canadian government has been playing a role in the area of financial assistance for students, because it strongly believes that access to education must be enhanced through a concerted effort.
Preparing young Canadians to enter the new economy is a collective responsibility. This is not the prerogative of any level of government and should not be the subject of the narrow dogmatism which too often characterizes the Bloc's actions, as is obvious in the motion before us.
Of course education is a provincial jurisdiction. Programs as well as institutions and the quality of the teaching fall within the domain of the provinces. However, federal and provincial governments alike have long been working to promote equal opportunity by supporting the people who cannot afford to pursue their academic training.
Has that system served us badly so far? I do not think so. Canada has already undertaken to address the challenge of globalization and its efforts have been quite successful. Last year, Canada ranked fourth out of 35 countries for its competitiveness, according to the World Economic Forum.
Obviously, several factors contribute to such a performance, but the quality of our manpower training plays a very major role. The establishment of the millennium scholarship fund does not change anything in the workings of the present system and, contrary to what the Bloc Quebecois always claims, it does not encroach in any way on provincial jurisdictions.
The role of the federal government in this dates back to the post-war years, not February 24, 1998, the date of the last budget.
As the Minister of Finance has clearly explained, the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation will be an entity at arms-length from the federal government. It will be administered by a board made up of members from the private sector and including one student. The Council of Ministers of Education, representing the provincial governments, will also be involved in the selection of directors.
It goes without saying that the foundation will consult closely with the provincial governments. What is more, the post-secondary sector will also be involved in designing and awarding the Canadian Millennium Scholarships.
Members will recall the Minister of Finance placed particular emphasis on the federal government's desire to avoid duplication in this area. We have done this continually for more than four years in other areas, and will continue to do so.
We will also remember the reaction of the Quebec minister of finance to the tabling of the last budget. As he did last year, Mr. Landry accused us of practising predatory federalism. Always given to verbal exaggeration, he added another adjective, abusive. His words predator and abusive may have rhymed in French but they are really a joke. The words he uses to describe the budget and the millennium fund are frankly laughable.
According to that same minister of finance, this was a budget of a unitary state which completely discards federal structures. I wonder if we can consider him to be serious.
There is no federation in the world where the central government does not play a role in financial assistance for students. For example, in the United States of America 75% of public scholarships and bursaries for students come from federal government assistance. In Germany 65% of publicly funded bursaries and scholarships are federal. What is more, in both of these countries the central government plays an even more direct role in education. That would never be the case in Canada, since we understand that this is a field of exclusive provincial jurisdiction.
All governments are called on to play a role in this field. It is crucial to the future of our children and our country.
It does not really surprise me that Bloc Quebecois members cannot understand that. That they have presented this motion today surprises me even less. If it suits them, the Bloc and their PQ head office do not hesitate to denounce supposed predatory federalism. However, when the PQ government accepts hundreds of millions of dollars from our government to pay for damage caused by the ice storm, the adjectives are different.
Alain Dubuc put the real question as follows in La Presse , and I would like to quote him because it is an excellent summary of our position. He writes: “Can Quebec, which has no economic strategy, logically, just for the sake of being different, refuse a project expressing in a dynamic way the importance of university education and knowledge? One suspects that the main fault in the federal project lies in it being just that: federal”.
I believe that Quebec's young people share the same aspirations as young people anywhere else in Canada. They want to achieve their full potential in order to take an active part in improving society. Let us not saddle them with our own limitations, our old quarrels; let us instead encourage them to equip themselves to build a better future.