Thank you for that.
To start with your second question, when I shared my own experience of access to post-secondary education, I shared it not because I think that scholarships are a sustainable model for ensuring access to low-income communities. I shared it because I want to draw attention to the fact that I likely wouldn't be here had it not been for the removal of that barrier.
I don't think that we need to get to a place where we're sustaining our education system, particularly for those who are the most marginalized or the most low income and who come from backgrounds like my own, so that the opportunity or chance given depends on a risk such as whether or not you're able to access a scholarship. I think this idea and denotation of a deserving poor has meant that an entire generation who looked just like me wasn't able to access university or college. I think that is a particularly heartbreaking story for our country.
In particular, in thinking about the obligations our government has to indigenous learners and youth, I'm going to quote this number again. The Assembly of First Nations estimated that 10,000 students were on a wait-list for funding to post-secondary education. These are 10,000 indigenous youth who had the grades, the passion, and the will to attain a post-secondary education and who were failed by this government when it came to access to funding.
Our government is a wealthy government. There are 27 countries around the world that have fully-funded, public, universal access to post-secondary education and have prioritized funding for youth. Our government is also a signatory to numerous international conventions that guarantee the right to education as a fundamental human right.
When it comes to what we can do, this idea of free education is not new to Canada. We have a working system of free college-level education in Quebec, and we've seen the benefits of it in that province. We also already have an understanding of universality when we talk about health care. We understand that if I get hurt in Saskatchewan, I shouldn't have to pay more or less for care depending on which province I end up being in at the end of whatever journey my injury has taken me on.
I think this patchwork system that we have around access to post-secondary education means that, disproportionately, young people who come from marginalized backgrounds, low-income backgrounds like my own, are the ones who are ultimately falling through the cracks of a system that is not designed to uplift them.
When we talk about student financial aid, we're talking about a system today that primarily relies on providing more debt instead of upfront grants and upfront access. We need to completely overhaul this system. We need a universal one. We need to abolish tuition fees. We need a dedicated transfer to post-secondary education. We need to meet the provinces' investment through the creation of a national post-secondary education act that guarantees that, from British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador, young people can go to university and college and pursue their dreams of being who they want to be and contributing to the society as they would like to.
