Mr. Speaker, literary critic Northrop Frye stated: “If Canadian universities are underfunded so badly they can no longer function effectively, Canada would disappear overnight from modern history and become again what it was at first, a blank area of natural resources to be exploited by more advanced countries”.
Our youth deserve a quality, accessible educational system. I will soon be visiting students in my riding at Sir John A. Macdonald high school and I wish I could bring them encouraging news about the future of education.
Our youth are increasingly faced with a deteriorating, less accessible education system. It is a crisis that the people in my riding of Halifax West, people throughout Nova Scotia and people across the country will increasingly suffer from.
This is not a mysterious complex problem with unknown elaborate solutions. This Liberal government has cut federal funding from post-secondary education by $1.5 billion since 1995 alone. The average student debt is $25,000. Shame on this government for trying to dig the country out of debt by dumping the problem on to the backs of our youth.
The Liberal government cannot hide the truth from Canadians, that it is pushing for the privatization of our post-secondary institutions.
I asked the Minister of Finance about this. I informed him that Human Resources Development Canada predicts that by the year 2000 45% of new jobs will require 16 years of education. I also referred him to a government study which shows that since 1980 public transfers for education have been cut in half, from $6.44 for each dollar of student fees in 1980 to less than $3 in 1995.
Perhaps the government thinks that youth today are more wealthy than the youth of the early 1980s. If so, I invite the Minister of Finance and his staff in Halifax to show me where these hoards of youth with excess wealth are hiding.
The minister, in his response to my question, began talking about how parents could save more through RESPs. Then he went on to talk about tax credits to help pay tuition. Again I wish to refer the minister to all of the people in my riding without work who, whether parents or children, cannot bear the thought of mounting $25,000 in student debt.
The youth of Halifax West deserve the opportunity to learn and to develop skills to build a future, as do all the youth of Canada. We cannot afford to risk their future or ours by wasting their talents or by creating more financial barriers to education.
I wish to go on record as challenging the Minister of Finance and the Liberal government to adopt the following principles.
Accessibility should be a new national standard in higher education.
Post-secondary education is a right, not a privilege for the declining number of people who can actually afford it.
The principles of accessibility and affordability should guide any reforms.
Student aid should be based on need rather than merit.
A national system of grants for post-secondary education should be a priority.
Tuition fees should be frozen.
It is high time to move to a system involving grants for post-secondary education and to ensure that eligibility for grants is based solely on need and not the short term demands of mega corporations which are increasingly driving our research and development.
As a first step of goodwill toward the future of our youth, and thus of the country, the government should immediately commit to reinvest in education, starting with this year's drastic and hurtful cut of $550 million.
This reinvestment should be over and above the Canada millennium scholarship fund, which itself should be based on need.
The youth and their families of Halifax West and the rest of Canada deserve no less. It is time to say yes to Canada—