Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague knows that tuition fees are in the jurisdiction of the provinces. Therefore, the federal government cannot do anything about controlling those fees.
However, this government has improved the Canada student loan beyond recognition, billions of dollars have gone to students, admittedly in loan form. It set up the millennium scholarship program. A million students, mainly low income students, will receive millennium scholarships. It has set up other scholarship programs. In the last budget it established the $3,000 first year tuition payment for low income students. It established the $3,000 per year, of the current undergraduate year, for disabled students.
I would suggest that the government, given that it cannot control tuition fees, has done more than any other federal government ever has to support students. As a result, we have the highest participation in post-secondary education in the world.
The member is right. There are still many problems. Bill C-5 is a different tactic. We know that despite the fact that enrolment has gone up in the post-secondary institutions and despite these scholarship, grant and loan programs which we have established, participation in the low income groups is not there. There are a variety of reasons for that. This is a different point.
I believe the bond and the money that it will provide to young persons when they reach the age of majority is very useful. They will be able to use that for apprenticeships or any sort of post-graduate education. It is in some ways not a huge sum of money.
The important thing is that from birth, a family will know that it is helping to put aside some money for that child's post-secondary education. It will make these families think throughout the child's growth that post-secondary education is possibility. Our target is to encourage these families to look at post-secondary education. Many of them, if they did, would already discover that their children could afford to go to higher education. At the present time they simply do not.
Therefore, I would say to may colleague, and I know his interest in these matters, that the purpose of the bill is different than scholarship programs, loan programs and the like.