I'm not sure that I'll require all seven minutes. I think most of the points have been touched on.
I am a mature student, and coming back to school, I had the opportunity to speak to you today. It was one that I couldn't pass up. The bill in front of us has highlighted many of my frustrations. Specifically, it's a band-aid approach to fixing the post-secondary education system. I think we need to take a better approach moving forward and we need to take a national approach at it. We need to take a look at putting a solution together that includes one for all prospective students, not just specific groups.
I know for myself, looking at the cost of tuition and looking at the cost of books and looking at the cost of having to pay rent, as a mature student, it's frightening. If you look at spending that was introduced in the 2004 budget, it has made the potential for debt even higher. I took a stat from Amanda's website, from the Canadian Student Federation, where they're looking at by 2009, the debt load is going to be upwards, on average, of $30,000 per student.
However, I was happy to see in the 2007 budget that there was an increase in investment. There was a plan that looked like it was going forward to build a broad-based focus instead of just putting band-aids here and there and trying to fix things. And I think that the problem with this bill is that it specifically looks at two groups. It doesn't take into account mature students. It doesn't take into account middle-class students.
When my sister was going to school, my sister was denied student funding because my parents made $40,000 a year each. Well, as a combined household income, that's $80,000. My parents had a mortgage of $1,000 a month. When you tack in all the bills, you're escaping that middle class, and you're focusing on two specific areas here instead of putting a plan.
And it's typical of in-the-box thinking that has come from the last 13 years of government. If you look at it, when those cuts that other members have been talking about, the transfer cuts that have been passed down to the provinces, they've resulted in service cuts from universities. They've also resulted in tuition increases. And it has been clear that most provinces have stated that they can't handle the capacity to increase the Canada access grant program. They're not in a position at this time.
You look at how many other services that are being downloaded to provinces and the provinces have downloaded to municipalities, it just adds to the enormous amount of strain that's going to be provided in the near future.
I also think it's a lack of concern regarding the position for the provinces. The program is two years old and you want to move forward with expanding a program, and we're not even sure if the program works properly. Member Brown and the Honourable Mr. Chong had asked questions regarding where things stand with this program, and the answers were not there. So how can you move forward on an expansion of the bill when there isn't any information provided by it?
I think you need to take accountability with this in all levels. You need to take accountability spending-wise. We don't need to be spending irresponsibly, but we also need to take into consideration all students instead of just specifically looking at one piece or two pieces, put a plan together.
I've sat here today and I've listened to quite a bit of banter back and forth, and I'm sure I have quite a bit of a differing opinion from some members.
It was highlighted that all members need to come together to make this work, and I think that's where this bill fails. It's not bringing all parties together. It's bringing one person's and one former government's ideas together to try to push their agenda through. If it was such an important agenda for the previous government, they had 13 years to push it through; why didn't they do it then? Why didn't a plan come up in those years to build a foundation for today, so that going forward all students would have the opportunity to receive an education at the post-secondary level?
In my view, it seems as though this is a band-aid bill that focuses on separating the policy into individual groups. It's counterproductive. It's typical in-the-box thinking, which has been constant. Real investment is needed, and I believe that a national focus is the best strategy to fix the problem.