Madam Speaker, I am delighted to join in this debate on the Speech from the Throne. It is very special because it is the first speech of a new Prime Minister and a first speech for a new cabinet. Although all speeches from the throne are important, this one will be particularly important because it will be carried through to an election.
I want to speak particularly on the parts of the Speech from the Throne that deal with post-secondary education and research. In my remarks, I am going to be referring to the open letter that was published, long before the speech, by the government caucus on post-secondary education and research and circulated very widely in the country. It can be found on my website at www.peteradams.org.
Before dealing with the speech itself, I want to comment on the new cabinet and the way that it has been structured from the point of view of post-secondary education and research and the federal government's involvement in those things.
First, we greatly appreciate the division of the former department of HRDC into two departments, including the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development. We believe and we hope, when we look at the vision statement of that new department, that it will become the depository for information and resources to do with lifelong learning as we know it today. It is not, by the way, that this department will take over everything the federal government does in lifelong learning, but it will become knowledgeable about what is going on and as a result make the federal programs, whichever departments they are coming from, even more effective.
We realize that post-secondary education in particular, as well as research, is a shared jurisdiction with the provinces. We are very conscious of that. We want the federal government to be much more proactive in dealing with the provinces and so we hope that the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development will in the future become the permanently designated representative for the federal government with the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada.
In the past, senior federal cabinet ministers have attended that particular council, which is the nationwide group dealing with education. I think they have been well received but they have been different ministers representing different departments. We think now that this one minister should be briefed on all those matters by all the federal departments and should be our representative on that council.
Second, we were delighted that the parliamentary secretary to the new minister that I have just mentioned has particular responsibility for the Canada student loan program and for student loans in general. We think this is particularly important. We have supported the development of the Canada student loan program to where it is and we would support further development of the program, but we, like many others, are concerned about student debt.
The time has come for us to wean ourselves away from heavy dependence on loans. We were delighted to see in the Speech from the Throne that there will now be grants for lower income students to cover their expenses in the first year of university or college. These will be grants and those grants will be added to grants that go with the RESP program. We are glad that there is now a parliamentary secretary doing nothing else but looking after student loans.
We know that in the new structure of cabinet there is also a parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister who is responsible for science and small business. From the point of view of research, this is extremely important. Having this person, one of our colleagues, reporting directly to the Prime Minister is very important for science, that is to say, science in the universities and colleges and other schools in Canada and science in the private sector.
For example, the R and D tax environment has greatly improved in recent years for small business and larger business. It needs to be even further strengthened so that the private sector is encouraged to participate in real research.
It also includes responsibility for in-house federal science. Groups like the National Research Council, which work with small business and maintain vital government labs, deserve support. Groups like the Geological Survey of Canada and researchers in Environment Canada and other federal departments need a voice to deal directly with the Prime Minister. This parliamentary secretary has been named and we hope that he--and perhaps in the future it might be a she--will deal with this.
I referred to our open letter. There were various sections in it. One dealt with the north. We do notice that the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs now has a parliamentary secretary dealing specifically with northern economic development and other matters related to the north. In research and development, we believe that the federal obligation in the north, both in the territories and in the near northern parts of the provinces, is particularly important. We hope that this new position will help with that.
Also mentioned in the Speech from the Throne but existing before then is the appointment of a science adviser to the Prime Minister. This is the first time in Canadian history that such a person has been appointed. The actual individual involved is currently the President of the National Research Council, a very distinguished scientist. He will be reporting directly to the Prime Minister on science in general. My understanding is that he will start in April.
For those of us who are interested in research, whether it is within the federal system or whether it is within the colleges and universities or in the private sector, this appointment of a permanent person who will report directly to the Prime Minister and future prime ministers is going to be a major step forward.
As is known, our objective is that by 2010 Canada will be in the top five countries in the world as far as research and development are concerned. We believe that is quite feasible, but only if we coordinate better. By the way, there are many things we still need to do, but if we could coordinate better what we are already doing, it would be a major help toward achieving that objective.
In the open letters I mentioned, which we have had for a number of years now, we have always mentioned international studies and internationalization on the campuses of colleges, universities, high schools and so on across the country. We believe the federal government has a very special role in research and development in the international sphere.
We hear about the Canada corps that the Prime Minister is proposing. My understanding of it is that it will be as we have had in the past: a youth corps doing volunteer work and so on overseas. I think this is admirable and I look forward to that happening very actively again to reinforce Canada's roles overseas.
We also hope that this Canada corps will become a sort of repository of knowledge of what is going on in civil society, in high schools, in colleges, universities and in government departments, be they provincial, territorial, or federal, in the international sphere all across the country, so that in this one place, in addition to equipping teams that will help in developing countries, they will have some knowledge of what is going on in a particular developing country. Again, this will focus better what is happening already in the international sphere across Canada.
In regard to the Speech from the Throne, let me say that in our letter we mentioned other investments that happened before this. I would like to express our feeling of great relief that some years ago the government invested in a number of foundations, for example, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the climate change foundation, human Genome Canada. We invested money that will flow in millennium scholarships and graduate student scholarships over a period of years so that they are no longer subject to the economy or to the annual vicissitudes of the government. We think those early investments are going to stand Canada in good stead.