Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak in the debate on the Speech from the Throne. I am very proud to have the opportunity to speak on behalf of the people of the Peterborough riding and the city as well as our country. It is a great honour. Each time this occurs it makes me proud. I work hard so that my constituents will be equally proud of me.
The Speech from the Throne is being described as one which sets out the government's children's agenda. We assume that we are now moving toward a budget based on the Speech from the Throne which is going to be focused on children.
I would like to take a different approach from that of my colleague from Don Valley West who just spoke.
It is true that there was a huge emphasis on children in the Speech from the Throne. It is also true that this was not sudden. It was not something that was pulled out of a hat. It is something that has been developing. We heard one aspect on the work of the subcommittee of human resources development. It is something that has been going on since the Liberal government was elected in 1993.
I was particularly impressed by something when we began those three years of cuts, those horrific years when all Canadians paid the price of the staggering $42 billion deficit that we inherited from previous governments. One of the things I remember in that first year of the cuts was that in my riding, when money was being taken out of the system in great quantities, new money appeared for prenatal and postnatal care. There was new money to support centres in which parents could learn to nurture their children in the best possible way. Even in those dark years the foundations for this Speech from the Throne and for what I hope will appear in the budget were already being laid.
I have a document which summarizes the Speech from the Throne. I will try to give some of the context for the so-called children's agenda. The context includes the fact that we have to consider parents and families before children are conceived and born. I have mentioned prenatal care and some of those aspects which we have been doing. It is mentioned again in the Speech from the Throne.
Then we have to think of the children themselves, which my colleague was just talking about. My colleague said in great detail that we have to work with the provinces and there are signs that the provinces are going to work with us.
We are going to make a third investment in the national child benefit. There are now billions of dollars in the national child benefit. These funds go directly to children and their families.
My only regret is that in Ontario the provincial government chose to take an equivalent amount away from those families on social assistance. For whatever reason, I do not know. It appears to think there is some stigma for families on social assistance. I do not know how children carry stigma so I regret that.
The national child benefit is helping children and families directly. The government says that there will be further tax relief for children and families.
On the matter of parental leave, there is a great increase in leave for parents, a doubling of it, which I strongly support. This will help parents, and by that I mean quite literally mothers and fathers, to nurture their children. Parental leave is not for the parents, it is for the children.
It is my hope that as that provision is brought in there will be very real help, support and advice for smaller businesses that have to adjust to this new regime. I support it strongly but I recognize that tiny businesses have difficulty adjusting to changes of this type. I hope when the time comes to deal with that, there will be help for those small businesses. There are other things as well, such as making the federal government a workplace that is more family friendly.
Those are all for children. We have to think of children before they are born, after they are born and in their very early years as we were discussing. However, we cannot leave it at that. The Speech from the Throne also considers children as they become young adults, youth, teenagers and so on.
In this agenda there is a program to hire youth to staff the community Internet access sites across the country. There is the launch of exchanges Canada. Every year over 100,000 young Canadians will have a chance to move around the country. Many of us remember Katimavik with great fondness. It is great to think of the children mentioned in this agenda growing up and having this opportunity.
A very interesting program gives younger Canadians from the age of 13 an opportunity to produce their first works using traditional and new technologies in the arts, cultural, digital and similar industries. What a wonderful thing. Then there is a plan to give tens of thousands of young Canadian volunteers the opportunity to work in literacy programs.
There are prenatal children, infants and then youth. Now we go to when children are a little older. The government has already committed to the Canadian education savings grants. They are like RRSPs. Families can buy RESPs. This puts tax-free money aside to support the education of their young people. When they put that money aside, in addition they get a 20% grant up to a value of $2,000. That is already there for children as they are growing up. Families that are looking after their infants can be preparing for their children to go to college or university later on.
There are a number of other programs of that type, particularly the Canadian millennium scholarship fund. This is a scholarship fund for well qualified but needy students, if that is the right expression, students who need the support. They will be academically good students who need financial support.
We usually say 100,000 students a year but we tend to forget that the foundation is set up in such a way that it will be 100,000 students a year for 10 years. One million Canadian students. These students are infants now and they will be cared for even better through the children's agenda. One million students will have an opportunity to receive those scholarships to help them get an education so they can lead creative and productive lives.
We want to go even further than students in college and university. We started with children at the prenatal stage.
The government in the Speech from the Throne has committed to increasing the funding for the granting councils. Those are the councils which fund social science research, natural science research, medical research. They are the councils which support the arts and so on. Those are the ones which allow our most creative people to fulfil themselves so they can make Canada a much better place. When today's infants grow up, they will be in a much richer society.
I mentioned the Medical Research Council. In the same vein, the Speech from the Throne said that we will table legislation to fund the Canadian institutes for health research. This is going to be an extraordinary development for the Medical Research Council which supports medical research now. It will link the Medical Research Council to research institutes and institutions, to practising hospitals all across the country, to local cancer societies like the one in Peterborough, to community colleges like Sir Sandford Fleming College in Peterborough which have programs to look after the elderly and conduct research. The new Canadian institutes for health research will help every Canadian in the whole country to become healthier.
It has been a great pleasure for me to speak in this throne speech debate. I look forward to the budget which as we all know is necessary to put these wonderful policies into effect.