Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has said in the throne Sseech and the budget that it was a government for youth. It even announced the millennium scholarship fund for students.
Before going any further, I must explain how this government is really helping today's young people. First, the Liberal government has cut $1.5 billion from federal funding to education via transfer payments to the provinces. Over the past ten years, tuition fees have increased by 240%. Last year, the increase nation-wide was 12%, seven times higher than the rise in the inflation rate.
The average student debt load is $25,000, compared to the 1993 level of $13,000 when the Liberals came in. There are even students in my riding with debt loads of over $50,000.
Student bankruptcies among those with loans have also attained record levels, with a 700% increase since 1989.
Thanks to the Liberal government, there is another factor contributing to the debt load of our young people: poverty. This government continues to impoverish the parents of these young people who end up at the mercy of the banks to finance their post-secondary education. We must not forget either the famous millennium fund, which is contributing to the debt load of thousands of young people throughout this fine country and will help 7% of the country's students.
Despite the increased assistance to students announced in the throne speech and in the budget, the situation of thousands of students is in fact very sad. The intent of the motion is to rectify this injustice, to underscore the hypocrisy of the Liberals and to clearly establish a link between the attempt to privatize post-secondary education and the heightened despair of the young at finding themselves unemployed, and some of them even in a state of poverty at the end of their studies.
The Liberal strategy has undermined public funding of post-secondary education to the point where it is now completely in the hands of the private sector. With this motion, the New Democrats are continuing to try to force the Liberal government to acknowledge that students are critically in debt.
We want the government to listen to what they are saying. We want members to defend public education and say that stronger measures must be taken to reduce the student debt load.
We must keep a close eye on the Liberal government. One would want to think that the government actually cares for our young people, for the ones who will be running this country sometime in the near future, but let us not be mistaken. The government is very clear: profits first, students' future later, much later.
By introducing this motion today, the NDP wants to make it very clear that it resolutely defends our public education system. We in the NDP will not let the federal government forget the debts that students face and the crises these debts provoke.
A number of surveys were carried out in 1997. In one survey done in the maritimes, high school students were asked why they were not going to university. Forty per cent of them said they were not going on to university because they simply could not afford it.
In 1995, the Liberal government gave financial institutions greater responsibility over financial assistance to students. Until then, although they were assessed by the banks, student loans were fully guaranteed by the government.
In the last budget, the federal government announced another giant step towards privatization. Buried deep within the budget legislation is a provision giving banks greater authority to turn down student loans. This provision allows cabinet, outside of the scrutiny of the House, to decide which students do not deserve loans. The implications of this are staggering.
Instead of creating student loans programs or millennium funds, which duplicate existing scholarship programs and are of no assistance to students in need, we have on several occasions asked the government, and we will continue to do so, to take measures that will reduce student debts, rather than defer them.
By the time the millennium fund is established in the year 2000, $3.1 billion will have been cut from post-secondary education. At about $250 million a year for 10 years, the millennium fund will not even come close to compensating what we have lost as a result of this Liberal government's policies.
Today's motion calls on the government to promote public education and restore the $550 million that was cut from this year's budget.
We in the NDP are asking the federal government to create, in co-operation with the provinces, a national grant program for first and second year students. We have had enough of the kind of unilateral actions we have seen in this House with regard to post-secondary education. The millennium fund was established without any consultations with the provinces and other stakeholders. It was an arbitrary measure that was taken by the government with no consultation and no information provided.
We believe that a national grant program has to be established within the context of a new federalism in which the provinces are active participants. The federal government must take the lead in establishing accessibility as a new national standard. The issue of accessibility must be tied to the federal government's financial contribution and payments to the provinces. This is what we need to do in Canada, and what the Liberal government needs to do.
It must also be kept in mind that this is a fine country we live in, but there is something increasingly unfortunate happening to that fine country, as it becomes very clear that there are two systems of post-secondary education. Perhaps, in fact, there is actually only one, a system for young people who can afford post-secondary education, or whose parents can. This must stop.
Too many young people are without access to post-secondary education, and this causes social problems, which result in additional costs to government and to the taxpayers of this country. Steps must be taken today to put an end to this vicious circle, which ends up costing the taxpayer very dearly and is highly unfair to families who need help if their children are to gain access to education, good jobs and success in life. Unfortunately, governments are continuing to present policies that are harmful to our young people.