Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to participate in this debate. It gives me an opportunity to talk about a town hall I attended a week ago today. The town hall was at the University of Toronto's Scarborough Campus, UTSC, and was hosted by six Scarborough MPs: the members for Scarborough Southwest, Scarborough Centre, Scarborough—Agincourt, Scarborough North, Scarborough—Rouge Park, and myself, the member for Scarborough—Guildwood. It was a really good event. It was an opportunity to invite the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance to talk about the very subject we are discussing today.
As everyone can appreciate, this budget is of great interest to the people of Scarborough. In particular, as we know, Scarborough is the eastern cornerstone of the GTA. It has a population of 600,000 or 700,000 people and is very ably represented by all of its MPs.
The big message out of this town hall was transit, transit, transit. The reason it is transit is because this is a severely under-serviced area in the GTA.
The location where this town hall took place, as I said, was UTSC. UTSC is a community of scholars. At this point, there are 13,000 students, a mix of both graduates and undergraduates. It is going up to 15,000 in a couple of years, yet it can only be accessed by TTC buses. That is a very poor way of getting that volume of people on and off of the campus on a daily basis.
Principal Kidd introduced the evening by talking about this need, but also the larger needs of the campus, particularly with respect to infrastructure. He made the point, or maybe I made the point for him thereafter, that UTSC had been home to the top scholars at the University of Toronto for the last four years running. Think about that. This is a suburban campus in the eastern-most part of the GTA and for the last four years it has been home to the top scholars at the University of Toronto. This gives us a feel for the quality of education that one would receive on a campus like that.
In addition to UTSC, there is also Centennial College, which would probably have double the number students if we add in part-time and full-time students. We are talking in the order of 40,000-plus students coming and going in the eastern GTA, in Scarborough, from two of the top schools not only in Ontario but in all of Canada. Centennial College has received quite a number of awards recently for the quality of its scholarships and job training.
The point of the principal and of the people who attended the event, and the point of us in Scarborough, was that transit was the number one ask. That is entirely consistent with the direction this government is going. There is a consensus that governments need to invest not only to boost economic growth in the short term but to set the stage for long-term growth as well. That is exactly what the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister are doing today.
They are talking to some of the most savvy investors in the world, inviting them to give Canada a real look. In giving Canada a real look for potential investments in all kinds of infrastructure projects, we may actually be able to free up a serious amount of money so we can make the investments necessary to address what I and others have described as an infrastructure deficit.
The beauty of having a town hall such as this is that we get to hear what the people want. The worst thing in politics, and I know because you are a very successful politician, Mr. Speaker, is that 90% of politics is just showing up, listening to what people want. When we can have a useful and constructive dialogue such as we had last Monday night, we can then respond in a way that deals with fiscal realities, but also deals with the needs and wants of Canadians.
This is why that town hall in particular, which was well attended, was very successful. We heard from a variety of interests. Naturally because we were on a university campus, the interests of students was of considerable concern. They particularly appreciated some of the relief that had been given to students in the last budget. Naturally, and not surprisingly, they are looking for more. Nevertheless when we hear what they have to say and they hear about other competing needs, they realize the government has a bit of a balancing act to stay fiscally sustainable but simultaneously that they may also be able to meet many needs right across the spectrum.
We are rather fortunate as a nation that we have some fiscal capacities. The discipline from the Chrétien-Martin years has stood us in good stead. We drove down the amount of the national debt. We had our debt-to-GDP ratios down to levels that were sustainable. Because of the work of Prime Ministers Martin and Chrétien, we are able to contemplate investments in the future.
I would like to say the same would be true of Mr. Harper's government, but I would note that the Conservative government added $150 billion to the national debt. I would not say that totally constrains our fiscal capacities, but it does have some constraint. One wishes that some of the decisions around revenue depression and expenditures had been made differently, but we are where we are. It is still a position that is relatively good, and exceedingly good compared to many other nations.
Hence the sales job by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance gets a lot easier when they can say the debt-to-GDP ratio runs around 30% on an annual basis and is on track to maintain or reduce that slightly. That enables those who would be investing literally billions and billions of dollars in our country to have some confidence that the fiscal management of our nation is in good hands.
The final point I want to make is with respect to many middle-class Canadians feeling they are working a lot harder. This speaks to an alienation that we have seen reflected in other countries, but we are not immune from it. It is the distribution of the wealth in our country. There is a feeling of concern that some people are doing exceedingly well, referred to as the 1% and sometimes as the 1% of the 1%. In the efforts on the part of the government in the last budget and in this budget implementation bill to address that concern, there is a need to have some redistribution of wealth so all Canadians feel they have a stake in this nation.
We have seen populist uprising in a whole variety of nations. A lot of that is driven by the fact that some people feel they are getting left behind. Fairly, unfairly, rationally, or otherwise, that is the feeling. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance addressed that somewhat in the last budget. None of us are immune from that sense of alienation.