Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to address my comments today regarding Bill C-36 and my concerns regarding education in Nova Scotia and the country at large.
With this budget and with the policies and directions this Liberal government has implemented over the past five years, it has created an educational deficit in this country which threatens our ability and our children's ability to grow and prosper in the future.
In my home province of Nova Scotia funding for post-secondary education has been ravished since the federal Liberals imposed their severe cuts to education with the Canada health and social transfer in 1995. The provincial Liberals have matched the feds cut for cut. The results are rapidly rising tuition fees, spiralling student debt and a serious threat to accessibility.
Here are some sad, I would say outrageous, facts regarding public education in my province since the advent of Liberal cost cutting federally and subsequently provincially. Between 1993 and 1996 $50 million has been taken from provincial grants to school boards. That is nearly a 10% decrease. I have personally watched the tortured process by which school boards fight over whether to cut full day elementary classes, band, speech therapists or class sizes. In the late hours of these meetings we hear them bickering over elements of education, none of which are frills but are all essential to the growth of our students. Yet that is what they are being reduced to doing now.
Between 1994 and 1996 there have been 764 teaching positions cut across the province of Nova Scotia. That was a 7.5% reduction. Meantime enrolment has dropped by just 1.1%. Is it any wonder some classrooms are overcrowded and many teachers stressed out? Specialist teachers have been hit especially hard. By 1997 the education funding review work group identified a $33 million deficiency in special education funding. All these cuts are directly related to the severe cuts imposed by the Canada health and social transfer.
In Nova Scotia there is also a new twist to public education which has been brought about again by Liberal cuts. There is not enough money for textbooks, special needs students or the replacement of some of the overcrowded and substandard schools, yet the Liberals found the cash to indulge in a new scam which is called public-private partnerships to build new high tech schools. The government has gone into partnership with some companies such as IBM and Systemhouse and others of its corporate backers to build and run schools. They will not reveal the terms of the partnerships or the long term costs.
When Liberal friends and corporate backers who make up the consortium building the private schools could not find the private money to finance the construction, the government quietly loaned them more than $45 million interest free.
Here are some more facts about post-secondary education in my province since the budget cuts to education. In Nova Scotia funding for university and community colleges dropped from $270 million to $230 million this year. On average Canadian students who graduate now have over $24,000 debt in student loans. Declining government support means that universities must rely on tuition fees for an increasing share of their revenues. Nova Scotia students are paying more than 22% of the university revenue in their tuition, this versus a national average of 14.5%.
The average tuition for arts undergraduates in Nova Scotia is over $3,700. This is the highest in the country. On average Nova Scotia undergraduates paid $500 more than the next most expensive province, Ontario.
The cost of living for Canadian students in 1996 was over $12,000. Expenses for an undergraduate arts student for the 1997-98 academic year at Dalhousie totalled $9,000 in tuition, room and board and additional fees. Only the University of Toronto was higher among 10 universities surveyed by Statistics Canada.
It is not a surprise that Dalhousie, one of the proudest and oldest universities in the country, is now on strike. There are 117 professors at Dalhousie who have been laid off. This university is now in the throes of chaos and again it has to do with our lack of commitment to post-secondary education in this country.
I think it is no surprise that the people of Nova Scotia have voted very roundly against what they see as Liberal cost cutting to some of their essential services and that includes education. They have voted with their ballot against Liberal policies in Nova Scotia and continue to do so also federally because they are concerned about the future of their children. I think this budget is going nowhere to allay their fears on that score.