Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and also for his concerns about people in this country, about training, and about the direction the budget is taking. I thought he might be interested in something pointed out to me by a number of my constituents regarding the development of a highly skilled workforce in the budget. This part of the budget would invest $87 million over three years. Some of it would go to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, some to the Canadian Institute of Health Research, and some to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for scholarships for a variety of students.
However, the government has said in the budget that “Scholarships granted by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council will be focused on business-related degrees”. In other words, the government has once again degraded the whole aspect of academic learning by saying that the important thing right now is business, where truly to all Canadians the requirement for knowledge and understanding in all aspects of our society remains and in an economic downturn, even becomes more important.
We must first understand how to deal with problems. We have trained professionals, people working in the humanities field to understand the problems that Canadians face, and to provide solutions to the problems that Canadians face. What does the government propose in this one sentence? Because it would eliminate the possibility of these people getting support for their work and improving their ability to deal with Canadians' problems. How does my hon. colleague feel about this?