Madam Speaker, I do not know if I will be able to bring my colleague opposite to understand why in Quebec we demand a different solution to a problem which is different. When the federal government is offering millennium scholarships across Canada it is showing us it knows nothing about the needs of the provinces.
It is as if the federal government had decided to make access to school easier by providing bus transportation for every child in Canada, including those living in the North Pole. It might have been a better idea to provide snowmobiles to students in the North Pole so that they could go to school. It might have been a better idea to provide bicycles for those living downtown and school buses for those living in the suburbs a bit further from the school.
But the federal government, which claims to be quite familiar with the needs of each of the provinces, says: “This year, we will give snowmobiles to everyone so that children can have access to schools, even in summer. There will be no school buses. The federal government is generous, it realized there is a problem with access to the schools and it is offering snowmobiles, whether you like it or not”.
What we criticize the federal government for is not that it makes money available for education. We criticize it for wanting to do so by meddling in areas it knows nothing about. If it wants to help Quebec students have better access to education, it should give that money to Quebec, which is more familiar with its own needs and knows how best to ensure that more students have access to education.
Perhaps the member does not know that there are hundreds of thousands of children who go to school in the morning without a piece of toast or a single glass of milk in their stomach. Perhaps the member does not know that, in Quebec, the suicide rate among high school students is one of the highest. Will millennium scholarships reduce the suicide rate in our secondary schools? Will it increase the number of teachers, who, in some regions, must teach three different classes at the primary level? Will it provide more psychologists and guidance counsellors at the secondary level to help students who are desperate, who cannot find their way or who need assistance and supervision?
Through its transfer cuts, the federal government has taken away from us the means to pay for these student services. We cannot provide them now, because it has taken away the money that it used to give in transfer payments. It has taken it away in the areas where we needed it and it now wants to give it back in areas where the need is less urgent. This is what we are trying to tell the federal government when we say: “Do not intrude in provincial jurisdictions. Give us the money that comes from the same taxpayers and we will take care of these needs, because we know them better than you do”. This is all we want.