Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this debate on Bill C-28 regarding student loans and other forms of financial assistance.
I would like to start with a brief historical background. In 1964, Quebec decided to opt out of the student loans legislation, and this has allowed us to develop a different model, more suited to the various regions of Quebec and the different forms of education we have. For example, at the college level, we have one extra year before entering university, something which does not exist in English provinces. We are proud of the model we have developed over the years and, even though there have been a few glitches from time to time, we have something which answers the needs of our students. This is particularly important in regions like the one I represent where we have two CEGEPs, one in La Pocatière and one in Rivière-du-Loup.
There is also one university, the Université du Québec à Rimouski , which serves the riding of Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup, and one vocational training centre which you enter after high school. They are all important for the region, not only from an economic point of view because of the students they attract from elsewhere, but also because once they graduate these people can contribute to the economic development of the region.
It is important that the provisions be an incentive to study. The example I was giving earlier to the hon. member is a case in point.
When you remove the possibility for students who have completed their studies to benefit from an exemption period should they fail to find employment, you introduce a disincentive to education. This is particularly so in areas where unemployment, especially seasonal unemployment, is high and where the likelihood of finding employment a few months after graduation is remote. We would have liked to see in this bill a more decentralized approach. Unfortunately, what we see instead is more of the same as in the UI reform where the Minister of Human Resources Development announced an increase in the number of insurable work weeks and a decrease of the benefit period, which is a direct attack against those economies which rely heavily on seasonal employment.
In the same vein, we find the kind of offensive you would normally not expect from a Liberal government, especially given its electoral promises. For instance, you will find that when a former student becomes disabled, for him to claim his permanent disability as a reason for not repaying his student loan, it has to occur within seven months of the end of his studies. Currently, this period is much longer.
Under the guise of making it easier for students to have access to the Canada Student Loans Program, in fact the government is setting stricter limits. It is making it more difficult to invoke conditions beyond someone's control. Becoming disabled is usually beyond one's control. If, for example, a student is disabled as a result of a car accident, during the winter, nine months after the end of his studies, the course of his life is altered forever, and on top of that he has to assume the burden of student loans and grants he was hoping to pay back as soon as he had a job, which he finds himself unable to do because of his new disability.
The hon. member for Vancouver Quadra was just talking about compassion. I think that the government should show more compassion and treat former students who are in a difficult situation more humanely instead of the opposite.
Another aspect of this bill that we representatives of Quebec find totally unacceptable is the departure from what used to be, that is allowing the appropriate authorities to act in the area of loans and bursaries since appointments were made by the provincial cabinet to the appropriate bodies. In the new bill, the Minister of Human Resources Development takes it upon himself to appoint these people. We think that this is unnecessary centralization that will hurt the practical application of this program in every province.
Secondly, before, provinces opting out as Quebec did had to show the federal minister that their own plan met the general conditions of the federal plan, which left them with some leeway to adjust their loans and bursaries programs to their own needs.
Now the new bill says that the province will have to show that the program which it wants to implement meets the requirements of the federal law in every area covered. Obviously, in the medium term, this will force provinces like Quebec that want to have their own loans and bursaries to comply more and more with federal standards and thus, on occasion, to diverge from their own provincial requirements.
On top of the massive centralization it will bring about, this bill also gives the minister too much leeway in defining the reform. We are moving from a system where most of the elements were provided in the legislation to a reform which will, in the end, be implemented through regulations we know nothing about.
This is like signing a contract without seeing it. Before the government signs the contract, we would like to know exactly in which kind of a regulatory framework this legislation will be implemented; we want to avoid any surprises, especially since the examples I gave earlier show these regulations may indeed contain surprises not altogether to the advantage of students.
Since the minister promises to submit the regulations to a committee, I believe it would be important that we get them at this stage so that we may analyze them globally and see if the program, as it will be when those regulations are implemented, will be beneficial for students and will in fact create an incentive for the youth of Quebec and Canada to study, to succeed and to get well-paying jobs that will enable them to contribute to the development of their community.
I think this bill should be improved in order that the reform meets all the requirements of the students and other stakeholders, that is educational institutions, banks and all other banking institutions, and that it results in a better system, more efficient than the one we have now but also more advantageous for future generations.
The cost of student grants and loans, and on that point I agree with the member who just spoke, must be regarded as an investment. It will allow us to see that the generations graduating in the year 2000 will have a maximum chance of finding jobs, leading decent lives and creating adequate family lives.
In the context of this International Year of the Family, I think that is exactly the attitude we should adopt regarding this situation.
In concluding, I would like to call the attention of the House particularly to the rather more difficult circumstances that could result from the fact that students will be asked to undertake a study program with very little assurance of being able afterwards to make use of the time needed to find appropriate jobs. For instance, a student who is presently in high school meets a professional training counsellor to discuss his future choices, and he tells him to get into a loan and bursary system that provides this and that, that he should get an education in order to have a better chance of ultimately making good money and leading a normal life. But if the conditions that are offered to him are less advantageous, we are encouraging these people to leave the system.
A bill such as this could, through changes that seem economically profitable in the short term, have a negative long-term effect in the sense that students, instead of getting into the education system in order to be the most competitive possible, would rather choose to quit school too early, thus not providing the manpower that Quebec and Canada will need in the coming years.
So, I believe it is important that, in the future, the minister not bring about, through his decisions, changes that would upset a system that took several years to develop, especially in Quebec, where the loan and bursary system has sometimes led to major discussions. The government should not, by interfering in an area of provincial jurisdiction, jeopardize advances made in that area.
We would like the minister to insure most of all the tabling of regulations to make sure that the package is an interesting and logical piece of work, rather than a series of scattered decisions or decisions that will make the life of students more difficult.