Mr. Speaker, we view this policy change as a shot across the bow on aboriginal and treaty rights and changing the definition of what education means as it pertains to aboriginal and treaty rights.
This is a fundamental shift, a unilateral policy shift by the government. Were it viewed as an aboriginal and treaty right by the government, there would be a requirement for a consultation process. The government is allowed to deviate from constitutional rights as they pertain to aboriginal people but only with justification, which is what the recent court rulings have told us.
In extreme and rare cases where there is justification, then the government may in fact deviate from these constitutionally protected rights usually with compensation and after consultation. Consultation does not mean just posting the change. It means accommodating some of the views expressed by the other party. Therefore, consultation with accommodation is a much different thing than the government unilaterally firing this salvo on the issue of whether or not education is to be considered an aboriginal or treaty right.
The reservations that I raised about Bill C-5 could be summed up in a simple way. I think I speak on behalf of many of the stakeholders who came before the committee. They said to take the same amount of money that we were dedicating into this program and put it back into the Canada health and social transfer so that the provinces could adequately fund the universities and cope with some of the systematic cutbacks of the last 10, 12, and 15 years, The government paid down the deficit and at least one-third of the money that it put toward the debt came from savings in the Canada health and social transfer. That is education, health and social welfare.
The government must have predictions. Its policy people must have worked out the total cost of this program. If it were to apply the total cost, it could put that back into the CHST and let the provinces shore up their sagging post-secondary education structure in bricks and mortar and fund those programs.