Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of her speech I believe the member continued from where I left off for lack of time. She put her finger on it. She mentioned tuition fees and the extraordinary costs, which her colleague had been describing, the increasing costs at colleges and universities. They have been extraordinary, but that is provincial jurisdiction and my remarks were addressed to the federal role.
As I mentioned, we were faced with the horrifying fact that the country was borrowing $42 billion a year. If we accepted that, my colleagues and I, as members of Parliament, had to do something about it so we took that out of the system.
Since then with respect to higher education, we have increased the CHST, the transfers to the provinces, much faster than we have increased the funding of federal programs.
Nevertheless, and my remark was about us having done a good job, we have put money into the millennium scholarships, 95% of which goes directly against student loans. We have increased and improved the Canada student loan program, although I know it is still a loan program. We are funding 2,000 research chairs to help the universities with their funding problems. The Canada Foundation for Innovation directly provides research infrastructure to colleges and universities. The granting councils, which help the universities as well as they can through research, have also had their funds increased faster than other federal government programs have.
My previous remark was that in this area of provincial jurisdiction where, I agree, there have been horrifying decreases in access, the federal government has gone out of its way within the limits of its jurisdiction to improve or alleviate the situation. That was the point of my earlier remark.
I would like to ask this member a question on the same point. Given the fact that the provinces control this area, what other measures would she have the federal government do, without interfering with the provincial jurisdiction, to see to it that these students get better access?