Mr. Speaker, my friend almost threw me with that question because as he was asking it he had one of his hands in his pocket. I was wondering what that was supposed to symbolize, but I will leave that for debate on another day.
Let us be honest about what has happened in British Columbia. When the federal government in its wisdom decided to seriously cut back funding for health care and education, there were very few provinces that decided that they were not going to see actual cutbacks in those two fields in their jurisdictions so they backfilled. They kept their commitments to education and health care and they backfilled so that education and health care would not take the hits that they have in most other provinces across the country.
That was a priority. The Government of British Columbia decided it was crucial as we enter the 21st century in a knowledge based economy that education remain a priority and be accessible to British Columbians. That is another reason tuition fees have been frozen for four years in a row, in order to keep tuition fees low enough so that public education at the post-secondary level is available.
Two very important things are education and health care. I would suspect if my friend had a chance to get to his feet after this question he would admit that he too would value that priority by the Government of British Columbia to keep health care and education as number one and number two priorities in terms of funding.