For sure. Thank you for the question.
One of the main reasons I focused so heavily on debt within my presentation was that the two are very intertwined. You cannot separate the level of debt a student is currently incurring to obtain the skills they need to work from their ability to find successful employment within that field.
I spoke briefly about those impacts on the post-graduation finding of a job in your field. I can't underscore enough that things like unpaid internships and those types of precarious work result in skill degradation. People are losing the skills they obtained through their education because they aren't able to find work in that field. That's a serious factor.
Many people could find an unpaid internship within a field. Let's say somebody in engineering, as an example, could find an unpaid internship position. They can't necessarily take that position if they don't have the financial capacity and if their student loans are due. While Quebec's level of student indebtedness is lower than the national average, we're talking about being $27,000 in debt at the federal level. The Statistics Canada report that came out identified $28 billion as the current holding of student loan debt.
I think that's a major factor for someone, and it weighs quite heavily when making those decisions about your future. It results in people not pursuing the field they are trained in, so they lose those skills altogether, or they find themselves in an underemployment status.