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Ministers, thank you for being here.

For Minister Stronach, I've been a strong supporter of the Canada student loan program improvements, Minister, that we've made right to the present time. I've been an even stronger supporter of the grants and scholarships programs, and I'm very pleased to see we've continued to move along the path of more scholarships, and in particular more grants.

My colleague from New Brunswick mentioned the grants associated with the RESPs. There are access grants already for disabled and low-income students in the first year. Now there is a proposal to extend them to each undergraduate, right? I strongly support those.

Also, I strongly support the Canada learning bond, which seemingly extends the concept of grants and RESPs to the very lowest income people—to infants who are in care, and so on.

Minister, I'd be grateful if you could give us an update. I realize it's a small sum of money compared to some of the others we've mentioned here, but what is the current status of the Canada learning bond? What sort of uptake has there been from the provinces?

Madam Chair, on the question of the provinces, I understand one province has established a similar.... There's a provision in the legislation for provinces to match for whatever.

Thank you.

Do I have more time?

Ms. Bradshaw, I commend you and the Literacy Secretariat, like the others. I think the Literacy Secretariat is a classic example of what the federal government can do in lifelong learning. This you've indicated. It reaches from the very young to the very old, from the newest Canadians to the oldest, established Canadians.

I wonder if you could comment a bit, because it seems to me its success has to do with how it's able to reach not just the provinces but the municipalities in some way—then also to these institutions and groups with which HRSDC works all the time. Can you just describe how it works?

I did forget to mention that Mr. Devolin made a mistake. He was talking about Peterborough, not Lindsay.

Madam Chair, I have a point of order.

I'm not sure, Yves, which document you're referring to.

That's right.

Can you hear me, Wayne?

I just want to say that I lived for a number of years in Shefferville, which as you know is now a small community, and also Labrador City and Wabush there.

It does. I think it was the community Brian Mulroney closed down.

I also have been up and down the coast a number of times, so I know where you are very well.

My name is Peter Adams. I'm the MP for Peterborough sitting here next to Todd. You must find Elliot Lake to be like the banana belt, because I see it's 300 miles or 400 miles south of where you are now.

I think you know that two of the key factors in the allocation of these grants are the number of full-time students between the ages of 15 and 24 and the full-time student unemployment rate in the area. Those two factors are used in a formula that is key to the way this money is allocated.

We're trying to get at regions like yours because it's sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. What happens is the number of students goes down so you get less money, and because you get less money the number of students goes down. Do you see what I mean?

When your students go away to the College of the North Atlantic, MUN, or Grenfell College, do they sort of officially change their place of residence so you lose them in part of this formula? Do you see what I mean? I wonder if you know that.

Todd mentioned 40% of aboriginal students.... We're very concerned about that. The aboriginal youth population is one of the strongest growing youth populations in the country. We only have a short time, but I wonder if you could comment on any particular problems you know of that apply to aboriginal students.

Wayne, that's fine. I think my time is up, and we really appreciate the time you've taken.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I know you were here earlier and you've heard these various questions. We are concerned that, the way the program has developed, it disadvantages rural areas and it compounds problems. The trends, which I'm sure you know, the unemployment and population demographic trends, are occurring in rural areas. In terms of the student population calculation, we suspect there's something wrong with it. And in terms of student EI, we do. Whatever is wrong with the way that feeds into the formula compounds problems that rural areas already have.

Barry Devolin's riding is a typical--large in numbers and, by the way, large in area--Ontario riding that has one of the highest percentages of seniors in the country, but you can imagine there's a student element to this seniors thing. You heard part of the discussion with Labrador, which is sort of the opposite. It's a small number, large area, 40% aboriginal; therefore, it has a very high percentage, I would imagine, of students.

I'd like you to bear that in mind when I ask the questions, and then perhaps you could talk about it.

Can you provide us with information on which constituencies experienced the greatest growth in student population and which the greatest decline in the period 1996-2001?

Can you tell us in which areas, constituencies if possible, the unemployment rate changed the most in the same period?

Can you comment on or give us information on the extent to which the 15- to 24-year-old population, which is the one that's being targeted here, has shifted from rural to urban between 1996 and 2001?

With respect to aboriginal, I mentioned that because of the growth rate in the aboriginal population. Do you have information for the same period on the growth of the 15- to 24-year-old group among the aboriginal people?

Last, another way entirely of dealing with this would be to come up with a completely other definition of rural. We in our constituencies get different constituency allowances depending on the size of our ridings, so if it's a very big riding you get a large one. And it's broken down in great detail into eight different sizes.

Then also, cutting into that, there is another definition that I don't understand properly yet. My riding, for example, is technically 40% rural, and there are some other measures--I don't know if my colleagues know what they are. But if you accept that there is a problem with the statistics, I wonder if another approach would be to say these are rural ridings, and just throw in a factor that deals with rural ridings of a certain type.

Any comments you have the committee would be most grateful for.

Madam Chair, not to interrupt the flow, if you have a simple way of getting at two or three examples of the way rural can be defined, the committee would be quite interested--not now, but in the future.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, I understand that, and it might take months or something, but are there some Stats Canada unit areas that could be used as examples? I understand they wouldn't coincide with the ridings, but there might be one in a very remote area.

Do you understand what I mean? You can see what we're getting at here.

If you could, give us anything that would give us an indication, certain types of it. Are the urban areas defined benefiting in some way, the way we think, by creaming off people from rural areas? If you could, give us some census examples of that.