Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to partake in this debate on the budget. I think most members will agree and demonstrate by their votes that it is a solid budget for the people of Canada, and we look forward to that acceptance tonight.
I could be talking about health care and improvements made there. The secretary of state just talked about seniors. We have great improvements in the environment and environmental technologies, heritage and the military. However, given the nature of my riding of Kitchener--Waterloo, I will focus on three areas: immigration, students and post-secondary education, and research and development.
My constituency of Kitchener--Waterloo is part of Canada's technology triangle. Within Canada's technology triangle there are 554 technology enterprises plus 404 others that provide related services. The technology sector provides 10% of the employment in the Waterloo-Guelph region and accounts for 45% of job growth.
The post-secondary institutions in my riding include Conestoga College, which is the number one college in Ontario. The college has 65 full or part time programs in applied arts, business, health sciences, engineering technology and trades.
The University of Waterloo is known worldwide for its leading computer science, mathematics and engineering programs. It has the world's largest enrollment in mathematics, 10% of Canada's engineering graduates, 15% of mathematics and computer science Ph.D.s in Canada, and 30% of all mathematics graduates in Ontario. The university has the world's largest co-op education program with over 10,000 co-op students each year. It was the University of Waterloo that pioneered cooperative education in Canada.
Wilfrid Laurier University is best known for its excellence in business and economics programs. Its faculties include arts, science, business and economics, graduate studies and social work. Since 1984 The Laurier Institute has designed and delivered management development programs to organizations in and around Canada's technology triangle.
There are 53 research institutes at the University of Waterloo: fifteen in information and communication technology, seven in engineering, six in science, five in life sciences, three in environment, three in education, three in mathematics, two in business, one in biotechnology and eight others. The Conestoga College of Applied Arts and Technology hosts one centre of excellence in engineering.
There are other research institutions in the Waterloo-Guelph region including the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and the Grand River Regional Cancer Centre. In addition, institutes for technology transfers include Guelph Food Technology Centre and the Waterloo Biotechnology Research Centre.
I would like to point out that when I first came into this House in 1993 and I listened to the first Speech from the Throne that was put forward by the government, there was no mention of post-secondary education or research and development.
At that time I, along with the member for Peterborough and John English who was the member for Kitchener, started up the post-secondary education caucus. We were pushing for research and development in our post-secondary institutions. We really believed that the future of Canada lay in our innovation, and to that end, technology research funding in post-secondary education is very important. The member who chairs this committee for our caucus is the member for Dartmouth--Cole Harbour. I might add that this is one of the strongest caucuses we have in the Liberal Party.
If I go back to the whole area where we as a federal government got involved in research, which was probably in 1998 and 1999. At that time the cumulative money that we put in that year was $165 million. This year we are putting in a total of $2.085 billion or a total from 1998-99 of $9.97 billion. This is an incredible investment. I think members have seen from the budget and from our economic performance that it reflects the reality that innovation has been driving the economy in Canada.
When I compare the realities of what happened prior to the Liberal government assuming office and now and when we look at those figures, it clearly is good news. The national debt left to us by the previous Conservative government amounted to $562 billion before we were able to turn it around by balancing the budget.
This year we will for the first time be under $500 billion on the national debt. This is important. When we had a huge debt, as we had back then, 37.6% of every dollar went to finance that debt. The debt financing charges even today are too high. They are 19%. We are working on bringing them down and because we have done that, we are able to invest in programs for people in our communities across Canada.
The unemployment rate before we assumed office was 11.2%. At the present time nationally it is below 7%. I might add that Kitchener-Waterloo recorded the lowest unemployment rate in the last census. We were in the 5.4% category. All of this is very important. The best social program we can have in the country is to ensure that those people who want to work are able to find jobs and find meaningful employment.
Another issue I want to touch on in the budget relates to immigration. I commend the government for putting in an extra $298 million for settlement services, as well as $100 million over five years to target investment in the department. Also, $75 million has been put in to ensure that internationally trained health workers have an opportunity to become engaged in a sector where we really have a manpower shortage, and I commend the government for that. I look forward in future budgets to have the refugee appeal division as a budget line item in the budget so we can put the refugee appeal division in place.
As we look to the future, Canada is one of the leading economies in terms of having a budgetary surplus, paying down debt, being able to invest in programs and reducing the amount of money spent on interest payments. Ultimately it is our investment in people, our investment in our young people, our post-secondary institutions and our investment in research and development that will ensure we have an innovative economy that can provide the kind of standard of living that Canadians have come to expect.