Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very soon, within the next month and a half, there will be young people coming back from all over Canada, people who are going to school. Many of them will have heard about this document and will wonder what it all means. When I read through it I had some difficulty in understanding exactly what was hidden in the statement. Very often a statement will hide just as much as it reveals. In this instance, it seems to indicate that changes have to be made because there are so many more students now. There has been a 30 per cent increase over the past five years. This puts pressure on the amount of money which we have available in the program.
When I look through the document the only thing which I could see where there have been revisions on the revenue side of things or the cost side of things rather is with regard to the rate structure for allowances as they relate to aboriginal post-secondary students to make them in line with students in the rest of Canada. It seems to me then that all this document does is to say that we are going to spend more money. That we need more money in order to provide a level of service for people who are not getting the level of service which exists elsewhere. I want to know, where in this document do we find evidence of decreases so that you can get the money to provide for those people who are not getting the same level of service as aboriginal people are getting in the rest of Canada. There are cuts here somewhere, but I cannot find them. All I can find is an indication of a need to increase the level of financial assistance to students and no indication of a decrease. I would like to have some indication from the Minister, what decreases are in here because there is no specification of where they are.