Finance committee  Just briefly, this is a very dangerous road that the government is going down in picking and choosing which fields are valuable. I don't think that's its role. This is a three-year increase to the Canada graduate scholarship. This is only for three years. What do we expect these

Finance committee  I guess it all depends on how it will hit the ground. The budget was very clear about the priority being given to projects that build research capacity or something to that effect. To me, that doesn't include teaching. It can be interpreted to exclude teaching investments. That's

Finance committee  To put a finer point on it, maybe, I think the comparison to the American stimulus package is very interesting in this context, because if Canada did it on the same scale, scaled down for our economy, and if the Canadian budget did what the American stimulus package proposes to d

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the members of the committee for inviting the Canadian Federation of Students to appear today. I will be addressing three facets of the budget: the infrastructure for universities and colleges; research funding; and the student loan crackdown. T

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think that's a good question, and that's the way we're looking at it. I hope the committee is not looking at this through a straw. This is a very specific amendment, yes, but for us it's very hard to talk about improving the proof of residence without talking about vouching pr

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I believe that could work. I can't answer that question definitively, because I don't think Parliament has undertaken a thorough study of the best way to minimize voter fraud and enfranchise those with transient addresses. I don't have all the solutions, but I see no evidence tha

Procedure and House Affairs committee  My name is Ian Boyko. I'm the government relations coordinator for the Canadian Federation of Students, which unites approximately half a million students at colleges and universities from coast to coast in all 10 provinces. I'm going to abandon my remarks today, because two min

Finance committee  Use the money that is currently slotted for tax credits to be—

Finance committee  No, in fact we don't, and we work on a very close basis with the university and CEGEP associations in Quebec. Part of the problem of coming up with a scientific number on what students and their families are owed in transfer payments is the fact that between 1996 and 2004 we had

Finance committee  The history of transfer payments is a matter of public record, and that's clear. We need to go forward. We need to recognize that Canada almost couldn't be in a healthier economic and fiscal position. We need to train our young workers, looking forward to the future.

Finance committee  Our demands are very close to the provincial premiers' demands, which are that there needs to be an immediate infusion of about $2.2 billion into the provinces for post-secondary education. That's the bare minimum. There is about a $6 billion gap that has crept up since 1993, and

Finance committee  No.

Finance committee  The economic and fiscal update, yes.

Finance committee  The expansion of the existing grant, yes.

Finance committee  Again--and I'm not suggesting you are--we don't have to pit infrastructure support against access. I think Canada is in the position to do both, invest in infrastructure maintenance and improvements and enhance access. Frankly, I think there were a number of measures in the fal