Mary Clancy

[Canada Student Financial Assistance Act, May 24th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I will defend to my dying breath the rights of men to get into graduate school. I reassure the hon. member for Medicine Hat that while I do not have at my fingertips the percentages of women in the physical sciences and the other programs he mentioned, at the moment members of the

male gender are not in any danger of losing their superiority in numbers in graduate schools in the country, particularly in the sciences.

I merely tell the hon. member there is a fairly strong men's group working on the matter. It is called western civilization. However, if he is worried about it, he should get deeper into the whole area of affirmative action to discover that women have been discriminated against most strongly in these areas for a number of years. Any program that comes along to ensure more women in these areas is obviously going to be supported by the government.

[Canada Student Financial Assistance Act, May 24th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question but ask for a clarification. In my experience it was not an 18-month deferral under the previous student loans legislation. It was a six-month deferral and if there were special circumstances the time period could be extended. Before I became a member of Parliament, I acted several times for students who were given longer deferral periods.

Perhaps it was different in Quebec because Quebec had the opting out. There may have been something different in the province of Quebec but, as I understand it, it was six months. As I also understand it, if circumstances warrant deferrals can continue. Given that we have to be very responsible fiscally, if students are working and can pay back they should pay back as soon as possible. Most of us who have bank loans do not get deferrals if we are working. There is flexibility if there is a problem; if the student is not working a deferral can be made. It was not at any time 18 months, but as I say there may have been a different situation in the province of Quebec.

[Canada Student Financial Assistance Act, May 24th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to be taking part in this debate. I am particularly delighted to follow my colleague from Cape Breton Highlands-Canso who is an important part of the human resources team. I want to underline and echo the words that he spoke with regard to the updating of the Canada student loans program.

I represent the riding of Halifax. Within the boundaries of my riding are Dalhousie University, St. Mary's University, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, the Technical University of Nova Scotia and the University of King's College. We also have the Atlantic School of Theology and just outside my riding in Halifax West is Mount St. Vincent University. Halifax is very much a university city. Students in Halifax are very much a part of our culture, if you will, and they certainly are very important to our economy.

In my nearly six years as a member of Parliament one of the things I have been concerned about, particularly representing a university town in Atlantic Canada, and I have said this on many occasions previous in this House, is the fact that in Nova Scotia we have the highest tuitions, the lowest salaries for both faculty and administrative staff, and the oldest physical plants. However we still manage to provide probably, indeed not just probably, indubitably, the best university education that can be received in the country. Of course I include not just the universities in Halifax. I include St. Francis Xavier University, with a bow to my colleague from Cape Breton Highlands-Canso, Acadia University, the University College of Cape Breton and Université Sainte Anne at Pointe-de-l'Église.

We have gone a long time without an update to the Canada student loans program. Certainly over the last six years I have met frequently with students. They come to my office in Halifax, they come to my office here in Ottawa as part of their national lobbying process. My house is on the edge of the Dalhousie campus and I meet with students on a regular basis just doing my grocery shopping or walking around in my riding on the weekends.

One of the unfortunate hallmarks of the last several years has been the fact that university students have been very much afraid. Certainly in my riding of Halifax they have been afraid. Their tuition rates have risen enormously because of rising costs and because the Canada student loans program was not keeping up with their needs.

Add to that the problem with getting jobs, with trying to balance studies and part time jobs, and you have a fairly stressed out population among students. These young people worked hard but they saw problems everywhere they turned and they saw unfortunately in the past a government that was not very responsive.

In consequence I am absolutely delighted that this bill delivers on a commitment made by the government in its youth and learning strategy. That commitment was to improve student assistance to better serve the needs of present and future generations of students.

We talk a great deal in Nova Scotia about the brain drain. Perhaps we can be pardoned for reiterating the statement but Nova Scotians have travelled right across this country. They serve in legislatures. They are on the faculties of universities. They are on the boards and in the management offices of large and small businesses. Many of these Nova Scotians who have fanned out across this great country of ours are a product of Nova Scotian education.

We are delighted to make this contribution to the national effort. We are proud of the daughters and sons of our province who go farther afield to make their futures. For a long time we have been concerned that this tremendous outpouring of the educated was going to be stifled because young Nova Scotians just were not going to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that our great universities give to them.

It is important to note that loan levels had been frozen for 10 years while tuition fees were rising at an alarming rate. It is important to note that this legislation sets the stage to modernize the whole Canada student loan program which has not been fundamentally changed in 30 years. This means effectively, while I hate to admit it, that prior to this bill the Canada student loan legislation was exactly the same for the students starting university last year as it was when I started university-perish the thought-30 years ago this September. I could say I was two but it would not be true. The need for change and the time for change clearly had come.

A number of us within the caucus, as we worked on the policy plans that led to the red book, had lobbied very long and very hard with the Minister of Finance, as he is now, and with Chaviva Hosek, who was then head of the research bureau and is now chief policy adviser to the Prime Minister, for changes. I am delighted to see that those changes have come about through the presentation of this bill.

What is particularly edifying about this legislation is the increasing of the loan limits for full and part time students and the providing of special opportunity grants. This is something that was long overdue. Special opportunity grants are in this bill to meet the exceptional education costs of students with disabilities, high need part time students and women in doctoral studies, and to establish an objective, regionally sensitive approach to assessing student need. I will address the last point very briefly by saying that life can be very different for a student in Nova Scotia than for a student in metropolitan Toronto and different again for a student in the prairies or in Vancouver. It is

time that the Canada student loan recognized those regional differences.

I want to say that the special opportunity grants are a tremendous addition to the Canadian student loan program.

I attended as an undergraduate Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax where I later taught. I was fortunate enough to be a member of both the board of governors and the senate and I was also president of the national board of the alumni for Mount St. Vincent.

Mount St. Vincent has special programs for women. It has special programs for students with special needs. However for a long time those of us involved with Mount St. Vincent knew that it was necessary for the Canada student loans program to reflect and be sensitive to these particular needs.

I am particularly delighted that this is being looked at and taken care of in this bill. I sincerely hope that no one thinks that the moneys being expended through this legislation are a waste.

I hope we will not hear that this investment in the future of Canadians, young Canadians, Canadians with special needs, Canadian women and so on, is something we should not be doing. The need to invest in our students, in the next generation, in those who are to carry on nation building and ensuring that this remains the greatest country on earth, is never a waste. I for one sincerely hope that no one in the House would suggest otherwise.

I conclude my remarks by congratulating the Minister of Human Resources Development for bringing forward the bill. The students of Canada, particularly the students of universities in my riding, will rejoice that the government has taken its duty to heart and has fulfilled another promise from the red book. It is taking to heart what is in the best interest of Canadians, particularly young Canadians, making it law and making sure that we as a government represent and put forward the very best.

[Petitions, May 11th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to present a petition signed by numerous members of the constituency of York West in the province of Ontario.

They draw to the attention of the House that they support the efforts of Mrs. Debbie Mahaffy in her quest to have the importation of killer cards seized at the Canada-United States border to stop their distribution in Canada.

They state further that they abhor crimes of violence and believe that killer trading cards offer nothing positive for children or adults to admire or emulate but contribute to violence.

[Supply, May 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to say on the advice of the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell very slowly that we did not raise taxes.

[Supply, May 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member for Skeena got up because I wanted to make a comment. I am not particularly going to deal with the meanderings of the hon. member in his last comment, but he did talk earlier about

something very dear to my heart. I happen to know it is dear to the heart of the member for Rosedale sitting over there as well, not to mention a few other members in the House, and that is the whole question of arts funding.

Along with the compassionate face of government and the kind of funding that we in the Liberal Party with our 150-year history in the country will continue, may I say the country that does not funds its artists, the country that does not make representation on behalf of its own culture, is the country that has no soul. The country that has no soul will wither on the vine. If the hon. member would like to see the country wither on the vine, I am sure one the fastest ways to do it is to say that we as a federal government should not be funding the arts.

I can also say I would be very interested to see how many hon. members on the other side would be prepared within their own communities to stand and deny the kind of general small group funding they were probably working on. I saw a number of reports in the newspaper about how they worked on their SEED grants. Did they cut in their ridings all those SEED grants to all the groups they mentioned? I doubt it. If they did, I think that getting off the plane when they get home, even after flying economy class, would be a bit more difficult than they heretofore encountered.

[Supply, May 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Beaver River for her comments. I must have missed something which I suppose is possible but unlikely. However I have just a couple of points in case the hon. member has missed something.

The government has not raised taxes and the government has not raised the debt. Indeed the government is lowering both. Perhaps if the member paid attention to the comments of the Minister of Finance she would realize that.

I listened, I listened hard, and the member for Brant said to me as she went across to her seat: "Have they said where they are going to cut?" I did not hear them say where they were going to cut. They said they were going to cut the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, a favour whipping post, I might add. May I say that on occasion the national action committee and I have not always seen eye to eye on process although our goals are very similar. It may come as a raving shock to members on the other side that according to most statistics and most polls over 90 per cent of Canadian women, whether they call themselves feminists or not, happen to hold the same goals as the national action committee.

Probably what the hon. member does not know is that some groups belonging to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women such as women's institutes, the United Church Women of Canada and the YWCA of Canada, mainstream women's groups, hold very strong views and are part and parcel of the group. I do not want to cut the funding to them.

Perhaps the hon. member, not having a whole lot of experience in the area of feminism and gender equality, would not know that women making 60 cents for every dollar that men make have to do fairly basic things like pay the rent, feed their children and a few other important things. They do not have a lot of money to give away. Governments are important in this regard. We are not going to cut off our noses to spite our faces which appears to be the kind of thing the hon. member is advocating.

[Supply, May 3rd, 1994]

Somebody is yelling over there. I do wish he would keep quiet.

At any rate when I conclude my remarks I promise the hon. member I will give ear to any comments he wishes to make, at least briefly.

The motion today in somewhat florid language states that this House implore the government. The government does not need to be implored. I do not think there has been a government in the history of Canada that has gone further in consultation with Canadians.

In case hon. members across the way have forgotten, the Minister of Finance met with Canadians from all walks of life in five major centres across this country. I happen to remember the minister at the meeting in Halifax saying: "Tell me where to cut. Where do you want me to cut?" I remember him listening and I remember him reacting.

The hon. member across the way says he did not listen. I trust the hon. member got a few letters for example from the doctors and a few other people in this country. The hon. minister did listen.

What this government does best and will continue to do is it listens. This government with its majority, put here by the vast majority of Canadians, will continue to listen. It will continue to remember that the most important thing for government is to remember compassion, to remember humanity, to remember equality and to remember who put us here.

[Supply, May 3rd, 1994]

They do not have to push because they know where the wheels are.

Hon. members on the other side do not seem to realize that all they have to do in actual fact is look at the most recent polls. Call me naive, but it looks like people are relatively happy with what is happening on this side of the House. Not just in Atlantic Canada where they are more than happy, but it looks like right across the country the approval rating for the Prime Minister and for this government is fairly high.

Now that cannot last forever and those of us who have a little experience in politics understand that. But the point is that you do not cut your cloth in policy on the government side of the House according to prevailing winds. You cut it according to what is best for Canadians, what is a tried and true policy, what is something that has been proven to work, and what is done in the judgment of a Prime Minister who has 30 years experience in this House of Commons and in every major portfolio in the Government of Canada.

That is the kind of policy and the kind of work and the kind of government Canadians want, deserve and have asked for. That is the kind of thing a number of the hon. members on the other side could certainly benefit from listening to. But again-

[Supply, May 3rd, 1994]

The people are on the policy bus with their 176 MPs.