Thank you, Mr. Speaker and thank you, honourable colleagues. As I said the other day, and again, I am not trying to avoid the questions on the budget, I am trying to answer them to the best of my ability. First of all, we were encouraged by the fact the federal government has placed a great deal of emphasis on education at all levels, whether it is post secondary or whether it is for grants to students and scholarships. What I have learned so far, late last night and early this morning, I am optimistic there will be some benefits
for northern students. Certainly, if you watched Mr. Martin earlier today, in his comments on the early morning news show, he indicated monies will be provided. For example, in post secondary education, he talked about it being provided to NAIT in Alberta, to Dalhousie in Halifax and to the different institutions across the country. I am assuming this will include, for example, our Arctic College, et cetera. I have spoken to Mr. Dent as late as yesterday afternoon, and as you know, he is down there right now and, hopefully, he is going to come back with more detail.
One of the areas that may be advantageous to us is, student grants where it indicates that 100,000 students will be given scholarships over the next ten years. These scholarships will be based on need, merit and mobility. Mobility to me means the cost of moving from point A to point B. Many of our students who choose not to use Arctic College or go to university or whatever, there is a significant cost attached to that. I am hoping this will be part of the benefit for the north, but as I said, Mr. Dent will be able to speak to that later next week. He is trying, as we speak, to get a more detailed interpretation of how these significant educational initiatives affect us. Thank you.