Mr. Speaker, I know my friend was a provincial member and I believe he served with Bob Rae. I will answer him by reading from one of Bob Rae's papers from a current study in which he indicated quite clearly that “Canada is spending willy-nilly on post-secondary education”. The problem is not with the amount we are spending but with how we are spending it.
We are spending more as a percentage of public spending on higher education. Canada, at 4.6%, is spending more than Australia, Ireland, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S. In fact, we are spending close to double the mean in the OECD as a proportion of our public spending on education. Therefore the problem is not the amount because we certainly are spending more than enough. The problem obviously is that it is not being as well spent.
One of the things we see with the Canada learning bond is that it is targeted spending that is done intelligently and leverages. I know leveraging is a principle familiar to many who do business in the private sector, and that it may be foreign to those in the NDP, but leveraging seeks to maximize the return for the investment made. The Canada learning bond would do exactly that. It may be an investment that perhaps is modest in the view of my friend but I believe it is an investment that is significant.
Others will also make an effort to invest. Everybody is contributing. Individuals themselves are contributing toward their own education. In that sense, a greater return is achieved rather than if the government were simply providing the money. The total amount in the pot to finance a child's education at the end of the exercise is far in excess of the money that the government has contributed. Other matching grants do get triggered along the way.
Overall, the Canada learning bond is a positive way of targeting investment that achieves greater returns. It targets investment in a way that has secondary effects of increasing ambition, aspiration and the desire to achieve higher education.
This is a very positive initiative and it should be viewed that way on all sides of the House. The problem is not, as Bob Rae has indicated, that we are not spending enough. We are spending more than all those other jurisdictions as a percentage of our public spending on higher education. I am only relying on what the member's old colleague, Bob Rae, said. The problem is how we spend it and whether we are getting the right returns for it.