A little. It hurt but I got over it. I would not be here if I did not get over it.
This is what we have done, what is in the budget and what we are talking about today. We have said enough of the overspending. The $42 billion deficit is history but we are not going back to the days where we could spend on any kind of program, social or otherwise. We have to live within the means of this country. Canadians understand that. I would have liked it if we could have given more in the form of tax decreases but I believe that is coming.
Everyone seems to want to talk about the conference of this weekend which was a great success. Imagine saying that backbenchers should have the courage to get up and criticize the Prime Minister. He only got 90% voter approval from our party. I happen to be a proud member of the Liberal Party. I think I was listening to the grassroots when 90.19% of the people at that convention gave a ringing endorsement to the Prime Minister, the leadership and the plans put in place by this government.
Help me to understand what we in the backbench are supposed to criticize. Members can be assured that we fight within caucus, we fight within committees for things we believe in but why would we criticize our Prime Minister for bringing in the Canada millennium scholarship fund? I guess members opposite do not want to support students. We heard, we listened, we saw the demonstrations, we saw the students taking over the bank in downtown Toronto, we saw them marching on legislatures around the country saying give them an opportunity to survive while they learn. They cannot be expected to come out of post-secondary education with debts of $30,000 and $40,000 and not give them some opportunity for relief.
What did we do? We brought in some tax relief for students who graduate with debt. We brought in interest relief. We even went as far as to say that if the circumstances warrant, there is a process in place to forgive the debt.
The socialist answer to post-secondary education is that it should be free. There should be no obligation for any of the participants to pay for it at all. It should become part of the social safety net. Most Canadians, certainly those I represent, would totally reject that idea.
If one takes a look at the cost of education in Canada, there is no question that it is a burden on students. They do have to work hard to get through. The tuition fees for a world class university in Ontario such as the University of Toronto, York University, Guelph, McMaster and Western in London are about $3,800 a year. These are post-secondary education institutions which are second to none in the world.
However, if we were in a university in the beloved Reform Party's United States of America, we would be spending between $30,000 and $50,000 on tuition. We do not have that situation in this country. However, even though the students have to struggle and work at part time jobs, they wind up with a debt.
Most Canadians would hope that the debt would be manageable and the opportunity would be there for students to pay down their debt once they had jobs and became productive members of society by earning money and paying taxes. That is what this government believes.
This budget has clearly shown that we believe in a balance that creates incentives and jobs for young Canadians. We want to ensure that our young people have a chance to learn in order to earn money and pay back what they had to borrow while they learned. That is not radical, centre, left, right or anything. It just makes darn good sense. I know that Canadian youth will benefit from this millennium scholarship fund and from the financial leadership of the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister of this government for many years to come.