Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning.
I'm here on behalf of our president, Joan Jessome, who is unable to attend. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you this morning.
We're following a letter that was sent by my friend Chris Parsons on behalf of our Post-Secondary Education Coalition, which includes the Canadian Federation of Students; us; the Association of Nova Scotia University Teachers; and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3912.
I'm here just to present a few opening remarks for your consideration before the discussion begins, and I think you have our submission from earlier on.
In general, we support the right of all Canadians to participate in public education and training, including post-secondary education. Unfortunately, we don't see a great deal of progress being made either nationally or provincially toward the achievement of this principle. If anything, we seem to be moving backwards.
In our view, there should be little doubt about the importance and even the centrality of post-secondary education for the pre-budget consultation theme of the committee, Canada's place in a competitive world. For all the stated objectives in your media release of June 27, post-secondary education must play a central role.
As we've outlined in our submission, we see a critical situation developing for post-secondary education in this province, and probably across the country. That includes decreasing affordability and accessibility, diminishing teaching and staff resources, and crumbling infrastructure, all leading to a reduced quality of education and, worse still, a possible collapse of the system as a whole. In fact, even as reported today in media outlets here, enrollment is down more than it has been in five years in this province, in Nova Scotia universities.
At the same time, we're disappointed and frustrated—and my friend just talked about this—with what has happened to Bill C-48, passed by the last Parliament in May 2005, and, going with that, Bill 207, also passed by the Nova Scotia legislature in May of last year. At first we were pleased with the passage of both bills, with Bill C-48 allowing up to $1.5 billion in additional funding per year for two years in supporting training programs and enhancing access to post-secondary education, and we were pleased with the passage of the companion bill in Nova Scotia that required that the funding, when it was made available, would reduce post-secondary education tuition fees and provide needs-based grants to post-secondary students.
We understand that if it had been provided earlier, this funding would have been enough to reduce tuition fees by more than $300 for every student enrolled in university this fall. It would also have been more than enough to reinstate the needs-based grants program that had been cut more than a decade ago by the then Liberal provincial government. Since then, however, we've seen buck-passing from one level of government to the next.
We're especially concerned that in the Harper government's first budget, the federal government “confirmed” the $1 billion to support urgent investments in post-secondary education infrastructure. In turn, this change by the Harper government led the MacDonald government here in Nova Scotia, in its budget measures legislation, to change the whole intent of Bill C-48 and Bill 207.
The amendments the provincial government brought forward allowed the funding that was to be provided for tuition reduction and needs-based grants to be made available for other purposes that are different from or even inconsistent with the purposes set out by both the Nova Scotia government and the Government of Canada. In other words, the provincial bill effectively scrapped Bill 207 in order to bow to the whims of what the federal government seemed to be saying.
Even after the federal government announced on September 26 that it was sending the money to Nova Scotia under Bill C-48, amounting to $28.8 million over two years for Nova Scotia, and even after it was apparently clarified that this funding could be used to reduce tuition fees, improve access to apprenticeships, and establish needs-based grants, the provincial government still hasn't decided how it's going to use these funds. The end result to date is that not a single student in Nova Scotia has been helped, even though the money was committed over a year and a half ago.
We ask the committee to accept the recommendations that we put forward in our submission: that the government ensure that the funding under Bill C-48 be used to improve access, as originally intended; that the government move to provide a per student allocation of funding for post-secondary education instead of a per capita allocation; that there be a separate dedicated funding transfer to provinces for post-secondary education established in this budget year; and that there be a national post-secondary education act to develop national objective standards and mechanisms, similar to what's done in health care with the Canada Health Act. And I'll just skip down to the last one, which I think is important: that the federal government establish a national department of education to better coordinate the provision of post-secondary education and ensure that all Canadians have a right to post-secondary education.
Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions and comments.