Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for his reflective speech and the points he brought out. In the last question I think he brought out an interesting point, which is the question of the elimination of the deficit, the creation of a surplus and maintaining and sustaining surpluses year after year. That has permitted this government over time to reduce the national debt by some $50 billion, giving the government some room to move, some room to manoeuvre, with less money going abroad to pay debt servicing charges, money that the government can invest in Canadians.
I think we have to recognize the work that was done in negotiations between the Liberal government and the NDP in looking at priorities. I ask the member if he would not agree that those are priorities shared by the Liberal government, which were in the platform and which were part of the Speech from the Throne, but this is advancing them forward.
A lot of investments have been made in post-secondary education, research and capacity building within post-secondary education, including research chairs and millennium chairs. There is one very important element in this, which we can afford because we are paying less debt, and it is the question of the assistance directly to students in maintaining lower tuition costs. Would the member not agree that this is important to all our communities?