But it is not for the federal government to be telling universities and other post-secondary institutions how to do their job; it is for the federal government to set standards for the country.

You do have the leverage of money, and that is a critical leverage, and by establishing national standards of accessibility and anything else that might be critical to producing change in the system, people are going to have to readjust their thinking. It seems clear to us that this is the place to start. If there are strings attached to the financing of post-secondary education that meet certain objectives for the well-being of the general population of this country, the parties involved are going to have to readjust their thinking, their planning and their institutions.

On the point, the entrenched special interests, it is always difficult to fund new educational resource needs if it is at the expense of existing and perfectly legitimate educational resource programming. It is a case of robbing Jane therefore to provide computer education to Alice.

I see no reason why education has to toe the line of this wonderful thing called restraint, 6 and 5. If that had not been there for 1983-1984, we would have had 118 million more bucks to provide all this education we are talking about, and for 1984-1985 we would have had 260 million more bucks. So I ask the question, the fundamental question: Why are we putting this restraint lid on education when we all agree that education is critical to Canada's success in the future? Furthermore, you have a political public out there agreeing with this point. A 1982 Gallup poll revealed that people believe education to be the prerequisite to a healthy economy for Canada's future, even more important than an industrial strategy. That is very important.

I would very humbly submit that the lever in a negative sense that you are dealing with is a rising gender gap. Women across this country have identified both the fact that they need education and that the educational resources that are available to them are inappropriate, plus all the inaccessibility problems we have outlined here today. Therefore, if we continue to have the restraint on educational resources, while at the same time pushing more people into the educational system, and if the government were to implement some kind of a paid educational scheme, without at the same time implementing the accountability measures to ensure equity for women, what you would be doing is contributing to a terrible discrimination where women already marginalized in terms of education would be further marginalized. And let us tell you, that has direct political consequences.

You have a lot more influence in this situation than you seem to recognize. At the moment, it is the National Training Act that has the most impact on the post-secondary system and that is federal legislation in the field of education. So this has more impact on the adult population in Canada. It is federal intervention but there is something missing where systemic intervention is concerned.

The National Training Act provides for a certain number of women. Through the student loan reform, the door has been opened to part-time students, who are often women. So, some steps have been taken to assist underprivileged sectors of the population. However, generally speaking, the National Training Act does not favor women. It is a federal statute that has a great deal of impact on post-secondary education. We are encouraging you to adopt a systemic approach. If you intervene here and there while the population remains generally underprivileged, that is a shame. We are encouraging you to take a good look at it. You carry a lot more weight than you seem to want to recognize where post-secondary education is concerned. It is thanks to your Act that changes are being made in the community colleges in the provinces. We can see the effect your statute is having in community colleges.