moved
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider establishing full tuition scholarships named after each and every Canadian Gold Medal Olympic athlete starting with the 1998 Winter Olympics to encourage talented young Canadian athletes to complete their education at Canadian universities while continuing to excel in their particular Olympic sport and with the consideration of naming the first of such scholarships after the Sandra Schmirler Rink of Regina.
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to speak to this very important motion.
This motion was inspired by the incredible victory of the Sandra Schmirler rink earlier this year. In fact it was on Sunday, February 5, 1998 at the Nagano Olympics, a victory that was watched by virtually every resident of Saskatchewan and made every Canadian proud.
This team of Canadian women from Regina's Caledonia Curling Club had racked up six provincial championships and three world titles by the time they claimed their first ever Olympic gold medal for women's curling since it became a full medal sport at this year's winter Olympics.
These women have become heroes to a new generation of young Canadians dreaming of representing Canada in the Olympic games, in particular those in winter sports. The skip of this rink, Sandra Schmirler, the third, Jan Betker, the second, Joan McCusker, the lead, Marsha Gudereit, and the alternate, Atina Ford, are all Saskatchewan born individuals. They are all Canadians and they excel in their sport.
I believe we should be establishing this particular scholarship for many good reasons and I will get into them right now.
I believe it is time to consider what steps go into making Olympic calibre athletes in Canada and how we can promote excellence in athletics and academics in our country. Canadian universities have long had a policy that they will not provide athletic scholarships in excess of $1,500 annually and not at all to students entering first year.
I support the main thrust of that policy because it is intended to steer our university system away from some of the excesses of the American system in which more money and attention is sometimes devoted to athletic teams, especially in bigger and richer schools, than the academic performance of the students they subsidize.
The big schools raise fairly large dollars from their alumni and draw the best athletes. They have not always been the best students, but it leaves the smaller schools scrambling for funding for their academic programs, which is, after all, supposed to be their core business activity.
This is what Canadian universities have wanted to avoid. However, the generous U.S. scholarships are drawing some 1,800 Canadian students annually to study south of the border. For many young athletes it represents the chance of a lifetime.
For example, the NDP leader of Ontario, Howie Hampton, left Fort Frances, Ontario as a young boy on a hockey scholarship to go to an American university. He returned years later after completing a law degree in Canada to practise law in his hometown, after, of course, making a stop in Saskatchewan to share in some of the experience of the New Democratic government of the late 1970s.
When Mr. Hampton went back to Fort Frances he coached some local hockey teams. From there he was elected to Queen's Park to serve as attorney general and minister of natural resources, and is now leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party.
But the point is that those scholarships are the chance of a lifetime.
Canada has a $350 million education deficit with the United States in terms of foreign students and now some of the universities in our western Canadian provinces are trying to make changes to Canadian policy to stem some of the flow of our best athletes to American schools, because when the students go the alumni and parent donations follow.
We all know that the federal government recently made those contributions tax exempt under Bill S-9 in the last parliament, while slashing federal funding for post-secondary education student aid.
I would like to share with Canadians this incredible betrayal to Canadian education. The Liberal government in the last parliament passed Bill S-9. It was supported by the Reform Party, by the Bloc and by the Conservative Party. The NDP was the only party to suggest that this bill was only a bill for the rich and the wealthy and that it was totally unfair to our education system.
While the Liberal government cut education funding in Canada by $2 billion a year, it is allowing Canadians to make contributions to U.S. universities and post-secondary institutions and take a tax deduction in Canada. Now the tax system in this country is supporting the U.S. education system while we cut back our own students. This is the Liberal, the Reform, the Tory and the Bloc way.
Bill S-9 is an insidious bill. I think the Liberals in this House should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. The opposition parties should be ashamed of themselves for abandoning young people in this country for the sake of American institutions. I cannot believe it.
When I tell people about Bill S-9 they are shocked. We now have tax deductions in Canada for making contributions to U.S. universities and post-secondary institutions. Some people say there is reciprocity. However, the facts show that over 25,000 Canadian students go to the U.S. Following them are donations to U.S. campuses from their parents, family members and wealthy corporations. But just under 5,000 U.S. students come to Canada.
It is a five to one ratio. We are supporting the education system in the U.S. with Canadian tax dollars while we abandon our students, while we abandon our young people in terms of supporting their educational desires and needs. It is incredible.
My proposal is designed to create full tuition scholarships, paid for by the federal government out of public funds. If we can afford to subsidize U.S. universities we can afford to subsidize Canadian athletes and Canadian institutions. My sense is that this will assist young Canadian athletes and provide them with the proper academic qualifications they will require in the global economy.
This would help Canadian universities as well. It would keep some of our best athletes at home, without unduly taxing their own alumni fundraising efforts and without creating further disparities between Canadian universities such as we have witnessed in the U.S.
By naming the scholarships after Canada's Olympic gold medalists, starting as I have suggested with the Sandra Schmirler rink of Regina, we would serve the dual purpose of recognizing their accomplishments and taking advantage of their status as role models to inspire the next generation of Olympic calibre athletes.
The government could finance this proposal easily, by the way, out of the savings it could reap in tax expenditures if it reversed the odious provisions of Bill S-9 to which I referred a few moments ago.
I also want to take some time to express the concerns we hear every year at about this time in my Regina constituency office from students and their parents about the state of student aid in this country and about the outrageous levels of debt students are required to take on if they do what governments, industry and indeed the future of our economy demands they do, which is to acquire at least an undergraduate degree.
Post-secondary training has never been more essential to the future of our country and it has never been more expensive. The benefits accrue to industry, government and society as a whole, as well as students, but the associated costs and risks are being more and more assumed by only the students. In fact many recent changes to student assistance on the federal side, including some incredibly discriminatory provisions last year prohibiting bankruptcies for 10 years to anyone carrying a student loan, are being driven by the big banks, which hypocritically lobby against student grants and lower tuition and then make money from the interest charges on student loans.
It is no wonder the banks are among the targets of next week's week of action planned by the Canadian Federation of Students. I salute and support those efforts by the Canadian Federation of Students.
The big corporations are tying the hands of our young people because those corporations will not pay or assist in funding their education, which would benefit our own country, but we allow the Reichmanns and the Bronfmans to write off hundreds of millions of dollars, almost on an annual basis, against our tax system, and they can write it off in the regular term of one year. Our students are now handcuffed. They have to take 10 years to pay back the loans because we have burdened them with an average debt of $25,000.
To come back to where I started with this proposal, this morning I reread some of the news stories about Schmirler's win last February and was reminded of something she said at that time.
She was asked about being called the best-ever female curling team and her answer typified the Canadian ideal of sports personship that endeared her so much to the people in my province of Saskatchewan. She said “It does not matter if I believe it or not. We go out there, we play for fun and we play the best that we can, and we happen to play at this level. Yes, we have won quite a bit, but I even know that back in Regina there are plenty of good teams”.
“But are they the best?” she was asked. “It is a good combination for us and it has been right ever since the day we put this team together. The personalities click and we are not bad curlers to boot”.
Wherever they went the women talked of their families, of their communities and of their country. Their win was an accomplishment for them. However, it was not in boasting as an individual achievement, but more as an expression of the importance of teamwork within a supportive family and community environment.
Sandra Schmirler and her team represented the best values of Saskatchewan and they still represent the best values of Saskatchewan. We in Saskatchewan are very proud of our athletes for their values of family, of community, of hard work and of modesty.
We need more heroes like that. This is why I am proposing a federally funded, full tuition scholarship program to keep young athletes in Canadian universities to benefit Canada. I can think of no more fitting example than Sandra Schmirler and her rink to name the first fund after.
I happen to have a list of other gold medalists who I would like to see these scholarships named after. They are: Ross Rebagliati, a gold medalist in snowboarding; Catriona LeMay Doan from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a gold medalist in the 500 metre long track speed skating event; Annie Perreault, a gold medalist in the 500 metre short track; Marc Gagnon, Derrick Campbell, Eric Bédard and François Drolet, gold medalists in the 5,000 metre men's relay short track; the women's curling team, as I mentioned, which won the gold medal; and Pierre Leuders and Dave MacEachern, gold medalists in the two-person bobsled.
We also won silver and bronze medals. At some point I would like to see this kind of a scholarship program extended not just to the gold medal winners but to those who receive silver and bronze medals in the Olympic Games.
In summary, I believe this is a very significant move which the government could make to assist some of the challenges that face our athletes in Canada and to make them Olympic calibre athletes.
I submit that we could pay for this probably 10,000 times over on an annual basis if we repealed Bill S-9, which literally drains money from our Canadian education system and gives it to the Americans. This is again a bill that was supported by the Liberals, the Reform Party, the Bloc and the Conservatives.
I think the more young people learn about this insidious legislation, which is costing them their birthright in terms of sufficiently funded post-secondary education, they are really going to make a serious decision come the next election and decide that maybe what they need is a government that will look at education from a very serious minded perspective and from a perspective that will be supportive for our young people because they are the future of our country.
I look forward to hearing the comments of my colleagues when they stand to speak to this motion. I will be happy to provide a five minute wrap up at the end.