Madam Speaker, I am delighted to be taking part in this debate. I am particularly delighted to follow my colleague from Cape Breton Highlands-Canso who is an important part of the human resources team. I want to underline and echo the words that he spoke with regard to the updating of the Canada student loans program.
I represent the riding of Halifax. Within the boundaries of my riding are Dalhousie University, St. Mary's University, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, the Technical University of Nova Scotia and the University of King's College. We also have the Atlantic School of Theology and just outside my riding in Halifax West is Mount St. Vincent University. Halifax is very much a university city. Students in Halifax are very much a part of our culture, if you will, and they certainly are very important to our economy.
In my nearly six years as a member of Parliament one of the things I have been concerned about, particularly representing a university town in Atlantic Canada, and I have said this on many occasions previous in this House, is the fact that in Nova Scotia we have the highest tuitions, the lowest salaries for both faculty and administrative staff, and the oldest physical plants. However we still manage to provide probably, indeed not just probably, indubitably, the best university education that can be received in the country. Of course I include not just the universities in Halifax. I include St. Francis Xavier University, with a bow to my colleague from Cape Breton Highlands-Canso, Acadia University, the University College of Cape Breton and Université Sainte Anne at Pointe-de-l'Église.
We have gone a long time without an update to the Canada student loans program. Certainly over the last six years I have met frequently with students. They come to my office in Halifax, they come to my office here in Ottawa as part of their national lobbying process. My house is on the edge of the Dalhousie campus and I meet with students on a regular basis just doing my grocery shopping or walking around in my riding on the weekends.
One of the unfortunate hallmarks of the last several years has been the fact that university students have been very much afraid. Certainly in my riding of Halifax they have been afraid. Their tuition rates have risen enormously because of rising costs and because the Canada student loans program was not keeping up with their needs.
Add to that the problem with getting jobs, with trying to balance studies and part time jobs, and you have a fairly stressed out population among students. These young people worked hard but they saw problems everywhere they turned and they saw unfortunately in the past a government that was not very responsive.
In consequence I am absolutely delighted that this bill delivers on a commitment made by the government in its youth and learning strategy. That commitment was to improve student assistance to better serve the needs of present and future generations of students.
We talk a great deal in Nova Scotia about the brain drain. Perhaps we can be pardoned for reiterating the statement but Nova Scotians have travelled right across this country. They serve in legislatures. They are on the faculties of universities. They are on the boards and in the management offices of large and small businesses. Many of these Nova Scotians who have fanned out across this great country of ours are a product of Nova Scotian education.
We are delighted to make this contribution to the national effort. We are proud of the daughters and sons of our province who go farther afield to make their futures. For a long time we have been concerned that this tremendous outpouring of the educated was going to be stifled because young Nova Scotians just were not going to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that our great universities give to them.
It is important to note that loan levels had been frozen for 10 years while tuition fees were rising at an alarming rate. It is important to note that this legislation sets the stage to modernize the whole Canada student loan program which has not been fundamentally changed in 30 years. This means effectively, while I hate to admit it, that prior to this bill the Canada student loan legislation was exactly the same for the students starting university last year as it was when I started university-perish the thought-30 years ago this September. I could say I was two but it would not be true. The need for change and the time for change clearly had come.
A number of us within the caucus, as we worked on the policy plans that led to the red book, had lobbied very long and very hard with the Minister of Finance, as he is now, and with Chaviva Hosek, who was then head of the research bureau and is now chief policy adviser to the Prime Minister, for changes. I am delighted to see that those changes have come about through the presentation of this bill.
What is particularly edifying about this legislation is the increasing of the loan limits for full and part time students and the providing of special opportunity grants. This is something that was long overdue. Special opportunity grants are in this bill to meet the exceptional education costs of students with disabilities, high need part time students and women in doctoral studies, and to establish an objective, regionally sensitive approach to assessing student need. I will address the last point very briefly by saying that life can be very different for a student in Nova Scotia than for a student in metropolitan Toronto and different again for a student in the prairies or in Vancouver. It is
time that the Canada student loan recognized those regional differences.
I want to say that the special opportunity grants are a tremendous addition to the Canadian student loan program.
I attended as an undergraduate Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax where I later taught. I was fortunate enough to be a member of both the board of governors and the senate and I was also president of the national board of the alumni for Mount St. Vincent.
Mount St. Vincent has special programs for women. It has special programs for students with special needs. However for a long time those of us involved with Mount St. Vincent knew that it was necessary for the Canada student loans program to reflect and be sensitive to these particular needs.
I am particularly delighted that this is being looked at and taken care of in this bill. I sincerely hope that no one thinks that the moneys being expended through this legislation are a waste.
I hope we will not hear that this investment in the future of Canadians, young Canadians, Canadians with special needs, Canadian women and so on, is something we should not be doing. The need to invest in our students, in the next generation, in those who are to carry on nation building and ensuring that this remains the greatest country on earth, is never a waste. I for one sincerely hope that no one in the House would suggest otherwise.
I conclude my remarks by congratulating the Minister of Human Resources Development for bringing forward the bill. The students of Canada, particularly the students of universities in my riding, will rejoice that the government has taken its duty to heart and has fulfilled another promise from the red book. It is taking to heart what is in the best interest of Canadians, particularly young Canadians, making it law and making sure that we as a government represent and put forward the very best.