Thank you, Madam Chair. The federal government has no responsibility in the area of education. It is an exclusive jurisdiction for the provinces and territories, but the Canadian government does offer a program called Canada Student Loans. They are available to Canadians across the country. They are typically offered to those who have trouble qualifying for the provincial programs or territorial programs. We have opted out of the program and opted, in the past, to take the million dollars, because we didn't think that many people would, or that was a better deal for us than to have northern residents applying for the Canada Student Loans Program.

I would be quite happy to give a chronology of the program and why we have made the choices that we have here to the Member. The last time an assessment was done, we found that we were still farther ahead to take the million dollars than to opt back into the program. It is not likely that we will see the federal government getting into direct funding of this kind of program again. In other words, we don't have anybody in the federal government we can go to, like an education Minister, to say you should be helping us out more.

Having said that, the Council of the Federation has brought up the issue of post-secondary funding with the previous government. I know that they are quite interested in seeing this situation addressed in some way largely because, in the mid-1990s, the transfer payments to provinces were cut significantly in the area that they were using for post-secondary funding and health and social services. The Premiers have all been addressing this issue. That is the table at which this is being discussed. The Council of the Federation is having a post-secondary skills session at the end of February. There will be some of the Premiers and Ministers of Education from across Canada participating at that in order to discuss with stakeholders where it is we should be going in trying to re-engage the federal government to get back into providing some funding in this field, because they pretty well dropped out in the mid-1990s and have not ever come back in this area. Thank you, Madam Chair.