Mr. Speaker, the week before last I raised a question in the House with the Deputy Prime Minister about the proposals in the green paper for post-secondary education funding.
We all know that there is much in the green paper which talks about the importance of education, skills upgrading and training to Canadians and to Canada in terms of our ability to compete in the new world economy.
I am glad to see those comments in the green paper but the proposals which the Minister of Human Resources Development goes on to suggest for post-secondary education belie this rhetoric.
The minister is proposing that the $2.6 billion which each year goes to the provinces for post-secondary education instead go to students in the form of loans. We remember that federal government transfers to the provinces were first cut by the Liberal government prior to 1984. Those cuts were continued by the Mulroney government through the 1980s and into the 1990s and of course, as we all remember, were vigorously criticized by the Liberal Party while in opposition. Now the Liberals are back in government and those cuts continue.
The government rationale here appears to be that the cash portion of post-secondary education funding coming from the federal government to the provinces is going to disappear anyway because of this trend begun first by the Liberals and continued by the Conservatives. As it is going to disappear why worry about tuition fees going up, they are going up already. Let us just let them go up even further.
What the government is planning to do in spite of arguing, quite rightly, for the importance of post-secondary education, is planning to slash $2.6 billion from post-secondary education and make that available as loans to students and have an income contingency loan repayment system.
The contradiction is quite clear. It is time the government recognized that it cannot say good things about post-secondary education and then cut funding to post-secondary education and expect Canada to compete in the world economy.
The imposing of a heavy burden of loans on students will of course lead to less accessibility of education as more and more potential students decide that they simply cannot afford to incur such heavy loans.
A study in Australia which has a similar program to that being proposed by the government has found that the average man repays 50 per cent of his loan by the age of 28 years but it takes an average woman until she is 38 years old in order to pay 50 per cent of that loan because of the difference in earning capacity for women. We know that Canadian women earn significantly less than Canadian men and thus they will be the most heavily burdened by this process.
Perhaps the most cynical and disturbing part of this proposal is what this government is doing is saying to Canadians and to Canada that the agreement that we have always regarded as important, that post-secondary education is an important contribution both to the student and to Canada as a society, is no longer the case.
What this government is saying is that the burden of paying for post-secondary education and thereby the benefits will all fall to the student and Canada will not benefit in the slightest.
This completely contradicts every study done in Canada since the Massey commission in 1951. It is stupid and the government should change its strategy and position on this.
It has done a good job of politicizing students in 1994. I am glad to see the students have seen through this government's action on this. I urge the government to change its policy and make post-secondary education an investment in Canada and Canadians and stop imposing the burden on Canadian students.