The government certainly believes that post-secondary education is very critical to our success and to the success of our citizens. We want to make sure it's accessible to all people who wish to participate. As the first thing we've done, for the last five or six years and maybe longer we've had a freeze on tuition rates. We've actually committed to freezing them for the next couple of years as well. Our tuition rates are now, I believe, the lowest in Canada, next to Quebec's.
The second thing we've done is this. In consultation with various student groups—the Canadian Federation of Students, our own Memorial University student groups, and others—we did a revamping or revisiting of the student loan program. In the past, people would have to borrow a certain amount of money. It used to be up to $140 a week that they could borrow. We now allow them to have up to $70 a week of that as a non-repayable grant, and then if they need more than that, they can borrow from $71 up to $140 per week.
The third thing we've done is reduce the interest rate on the outstanding loans that students may carry, so that it is now basically prime interest that's being charged. In the past, it used to be, if memory serves me correctly, prime plus 3%.
All three of those initiatives are things that we will revisit each budget year to see whether we can make any improvements on them. Those initiatives were not government initiatives in the sense that we created them; they are initiatives that were brought to us by the student body, which said, these are three things you can do for us that will make it better for us, so would you please do them. We were able to deliver on that.