Finance committee  I would just say that one of the largest impacts of debt right now is that it's discouraging entrepreneurship, and absolutely that's something that needs to be incentivized. Innovation is dropping—the OECD is tracking it; the World Economic Forum is tracking it—and a lot of it i

Finance committee  The answer that I would say is that I believe post-secondary education benefits society more than it does the individual. Therefore, that should be the prioritization when we think about what the budget should be and how we invest in it.

Finance committee  Absolutely. First, thanks for pointing out that 1,000% tuition fee. I will get heckled for that when I get back to my office. I should have said it quadrupled and then I should have asked, have wages quadrupled? So I apologize for that one. But it's still pretty severe when you

Finance committee  Yes, and I would echo beyond that. The federal budget attempted to identify problem areas and propose apprenticeships, but it did it in a weird way. Instead of offering grants to students, it offered loans directly to the students themselves and that was very unfortunate because

Finance committee  No, absolutely. In fact, there is a great study to highlight it from TD Economics on this area. I said it in my remarks, but $23.1 billion is the projected loss of wages due to underemployment and unemployment for youth. That is a based on a combination of factors, but the prim

Finance committee  Actually, back to the first question that I was asked about what the Canadian Federation of Students is doing in this area, we've actually consulted and worked quite closely with the government. They are already launching an online portal that will forecast, show job vacancies, o

Finance committee  In which province? Across the board? About $1,700.

Finance committee  Right now, as of this year, it's $6,000.

Finance committee  What?

Finance committee  There's a 1,000% increase across the board.

Finance committee  For the increase?

Finance committee  In 1991, as an example, which is more than 15 years ago, we saw essentially tuition fee levels that were relatively low at $1,200 as an average, depending on weighted. At that point, obviously, Quebec's population was substantially larger as a share of the overall Canadian popula

Finance committee  The overall cost of an education has increased.

Finance committee  Though tuition fees are increasing at a higher rate than any other expense.

Finance committee  Yes.