Mr. Speaker, I listened intently and I appreciate the comments of the member, in particular his closing remarks when he talked, I believe quite forthrightly and from the heart, about his experience in the classroom and what that meant to him and running into the students later. I believe that. I have no doubt that it must be a very fulfilling feeling for anyone in the teaching profession. It sounds like he is playing it straight here today and I appreciate that.
But I have to say that the difficulty we have with the bill in front of us now is that we have to get there first; we have to get the students in front of the hon. member so he can do his magic. That is what this is about. It is about what vehicles society will use to ensure that students can get in front of the hon. member and benefit from his learning and his experience.
The member also said some words about just throwing money at education “willy-nilly”; for the Conservative Party, investing in education now has become throwing money “willy-nilly”. Further, the member said, and I know hon. members do not want to talk about this too much, that low income people, if they just knew about the program, would be willing and happy to make the investment. That is all it is: if they just knew. If they just knew, they would be willing and happy to make the investment. These are the low income people, the ones we are concerned about who do not have the discretionary income. The member says all they have to do is know about this.
Here is the difficulty we have with that. If the members who support this would just say that this is to benefit those who already have some discretionary income, who understand how the system works, who perhaps have parents who are university graduates or at least understand how the system works and therefore can plug right into it and “is that not a benefit?”, if they were making that argument they would get a bit of a different response from us, because at least it would be totally upfront. If it were matched with willy-nilly investments to ensure that those who do not have discretionary income could also find themselves in front of the hon. member, then maybe we would have something.
They do not want to argue that today so they try to make an argument that somehow this is going to benefit low income people. We will not let them off the dime on this issue because this is what students are telling us and this is what parents are telling us. I would like the hon. member to explain in detail, not in willy-nilly words, how this is going to benefit low income people even if they become fully aware of this wonderful program but do not have a dime because they spend every dollar they have putting food on the table for their children.