Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today and address budget 2008. I will be sharing my time with the member for Provencher, the President of the Treasury Board, and I look forward to hearing his speech.
I think it is important that I start out today by congratulating Premier Stelmach on his crushing victory last night in Alberta. As an Albertan, it is important for me to acknowledge that. It is particularly exciting to see him not only go way beyond expectations but reduce the official opposition to a fraction of what it was. I believe the official opposition was and is the Liberal Party. I am sure my friends across the way will not be very excited about that, but those are the facts.
It is important as we talk about budget 2008 that we place it in context. Today in Canada these are good times. The economy in Canada is strong. Jobs are being created. Taxes are going down. The budget is balanced. Our national mortgage, the debt, is being paid down. All of these are very good things. People have reason to be confident.
Canadians have reason to feel confident about the future. Our financial situation is more stable than that of any other G-7 country, and the government is showing leadership at home and abroad thanks to its long term economic plan, Advantage Canada.
Obviously, in this country today Canadians generally are doing extraordinarily well. That does not mean there are no big challenges in some sectors, but given some of the struggles we see in other parts of the world and certainly south of the border in the United States these days, these are good times.
However, we cannot take that for granted. That is why the Minister of Finance moved last fall to lower taxes to get ahead of some of the problems he saw coming in the United States. That is why we are paying down debt and being prudent in our spending. But when we do spend, we spend with an eye to making sure that this country can compete today and go forward. I want to talk a bit about some of those investments.
I am the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development and I am very proud of some of the changes that we made in budget 2008. I want to talk about some of them.
One of the most important things that any country can do is make sure it has an educated workforce. We have that in Canada today substantially, but we must do more. We face great competition around the world, so therefore it is incumbent upon us to do everything we can to make sure our workforce is ready to compete.
That is why in the last budget we invested heavily in training. Today, we invest more in training than any government in history. It is also why we increased funding for post-secondary education, colleges and universities, by 40% in a single year. That is $800 million. We are not resting on our laurels either. That is why in this budget we said we must do more than we do today to encourage students to enter post-secondary education.
Seventy per cent of all the new jobs that are being created require some post-secondary education. Today, we are not getting enough people into post-secondary education. We believe that one of the reasons why is that some of the tools we have in place today just are not encouraging people to take the step of going into post-secondary education, particularly knowing how expensive colleges and universities can be. We have made some important changes to encourage people to take those steps.
We are dissolving the Canada millennium scholarship foundation and replacing it with up front and predictable grants. These are called Canada student grants. They will encourage low and middle income Canadians to go into post-secondary education because if they are from a particular income group, apply and are admitted into post-secondary education, they will be eligible without respect for where they live in this country or what program they are going into, whether it is college or university.
Under the old program, the access grants, they did not get that. They did not get it under the CMSF. They will get it up front under these new grants. They will apply every year students are in undergraduate studies, whether it be in college or university, ensuring that people will have a lot of funding going their way to help deal with the problem of expensive tuition costs.
There will be $250 a month for low income people for every month that they are in university or college. There will be $100 a month for middle income people. We noted in the Speech from the Throne that today many middle income families struggle with the high cost of post-secondary education. It is our commitment to make sure that we start to deal with that very difficult problem for many Canadian families and we are proud of some of the changes that we are making.
By the way, this will touch a lot of people. Under the previous regime, the way it was established, the various types of support in the form of bursaries and grants touched only 140,000 people a year. The new initiative will touch 245,000 people every year and we are very proud of that. We believe that will encourage many low and middle income families who otherwise felt they could not afford it to take the step and go into post-secondary education.
We have made other important changes as well. One of the criticisms we have received is that student loan financing was very complicated. We did a survey of people who were involved in this sector and we talked to students, educators and families. They told us the system was far too complicated.
We have taken that to heart, so in addition to taking the previous six grants and boiling them down to one, the Canada student grant, and getting them to students who go to school, no matter whether college or university, we have also made changes that will allow students to go on and manage their student loan via one account. This is what we are working toward with the provinces. The provinces are very excited about it.
Up until now it has been extraordinarily complicated, Byzantine, when people attempt to get a student loan. We are going to simplify it and make it much simpler for students, so that they will be able to go online ultimately and manage their entire account, both provincial and federal, through one window. We think that will be a real step forward.
One of the other criticisms we received is that there are about 20% of students who, when they apply for a student loan, have trouble paying back the loan. Irrespective of the reason, this has been a real burden for thousands of students over the years. The changes we have made will make it possible for students to finally get out from underneath those loans and to make it possible for them to repay them in a way that is much more realistic.
For instance, we are now going to make sure that we attach the amount of student loan they pay back to their income. These student loan repayments will be sensitive to the income and will never exceed a certain percentage. This will be extraordinarily helpful to people like medical students who have complained for a long time rightfully that we are penalizing them for going into an expensive program and ultimately then we turn around and complain about the fact that we do not have enough people becoming doctors. We are fixing that and I am proud of that.
I want to speak for a moment about the guaranteed income supplement. We have made changes so that earned income will be exempted from the current $500 to $3,500, meaning that seniors can go out and earn income and will not have their benefits clawed back.
I want to acknowledge the work that the member for Wild Rose has done on this issue. He told me the story of someone from his riding who really could not go to work, help out in the labour force, and look after herself without losing those benefits. He pushed for this for a long time. I am very proud that we were able to introduce this in the budget.
I also want to make one final point to the important changes we have made to employment insurance financing. We have created an arm's length corporation that will make it impossible for future governments to rip-off the EI fund, like the Liberals did when they were in power, when they ripped off over $50 billion from workers. That will never happen again.
We have preserved the ability of Parliament and the government to look after benefits and that will not change, but never again will the Liberals be able to rip-off employment insurance like they have in the past. We are proud of those changes.
