My colleague points out there is a drain of brains occurring now. I will try to speak more slowly and perhaps more will stay.
I stress that the Canada education savings grant is a grant. It is often thought that grants no longer exist in our system. For very low income students there are still grants. For certain specific identified groups of students there are still grants as well as the student loans they can obtain in various ways.
In addition, as a result of the budget we are discussing today families can better save for their children's education through the Canada education savings grant. That means people who invest in RRSPs obtain a grant of 20% on the first $2,000 of annual contributions to registered education savings plans in addition to the tax benefit from that investment. There is actually a grant up to a maximum amount per child which families can obtain and retain until they take those moneys out of the plan and invest them in their child's education.
Continuing with the group of measures built into the 1998 budget, the focus of our discussions today, there was an EI premium holiday for youth at risk. Support for youth employment was provided by more than doubling funding for youth at risk who lack basic education and job skills and by providing employers an employment insurance premium holiday for additional young Canadians hired in 1999 and 2000.
We are no longer dealing with students who are faced with problems of getting into college or staying in college or university. We are dealing with those who lack basic education and job skills. Those provisions are extremely important for young Canadians. Through 1999 and 2000 they and their employers get considerable encouragement so that jobs are created for them.
The last measure I want to mention in this group of co-ordinated measures is designed to create opportunity by expanding access to knowledge and skills needed for better jobs and higher standards of living in the 21st century.
This package of budgetary measures was designed to focus on the area of increased funding for SchoolNet, community access and the Canadian network for advancement of research, industry and education, the acronym for which is CANARIE. The purpose of these investments is to bring the benefits of information technology into more classrooms and communities across Canada.
Let me talk first about SchoolNet. It is very common to say that education is a provincial jurisdiction. Of course it is. The federal government has no interest in running elementary schools, except in certain special cases which exist across the country. However we have great interest and a great responsibility in elementary schools and high schools if in the national interest there is concern about the quality of education across the country.
I believe the federal government should do something about it. SchoolNet is as good an example as I can think of. Under the SchoolNet program, one of the focuses of the 1998 budget, the federal government linked every elementary school and high school to the Internet.
It started in the rural areas and the more remote parts of the countries and gradually moved into the cities. Today all our young people, our elementary school and high school students, have access to the Internet many years before all students in the United States will have access to the Internet. If this is not an investment in productivity, I do not know what is.
I mentioned researchers and university professors getting increased funding. I mentioned graduate students getting increased funding. I mentioned through the millennium scholarships undergraduate students getting increased funding. I mentioned their families getting support to allow students to go to college and university. I mentioned the increased support for people who want to go back to school. Now I am talking about our elementary schools. If we are to have a truly productive society, if we are to stop the brain drain, not just today or next week, but forever, the federal government has to think about the whole pyramid. If we were to fix one part of the pyramid so that, for example, university faculty would be better off, important though they are, in the end, if we were not producing people to replace those university faculty through the elementary and high schools and undergraduate programs, our system would be of little use.
The SchoolNet program was the federal government thinking about productivity, thinking about accessibility to colleges and universities, and doing something in every elementary school and every high school in Canada. That is the way a federal government should think, nationally.
By the way, except in the House, I have never heard a protest from the provinces about interference by the federal government in their jurisdiction with respect to SchoolNet.
I also mentioned, in that same section, the community access program, which does the same thing. It links people to the Internet, but in this case, in my riding for example, it links libraries, township offices and other public places to the Internet so that people who are not in elementary school and high school can link and interact with the great virtual world of the Internet. The Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education, CANARIE, does the same thing. It links research organizations across Canada.
My point is that the discussion we have had about productivity is not simply a matter of manipulating taxation, although in the measures I mentioned there were some taxation changes; it is a matter of the fairest possible and most effective tax system we can have, but also positive investment in areas which encourage productivity such as those I have mentioned.
I have been very pleased to have this opportunity to speak and I move:
That the question be now put.