Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure for me to rise and speak about and in favour of the motion, which states that in the opinion of the House we should consider introducing a tax credit based on the repayment of Canadian student loans to a maximum of 10% of the principal, per year, for the first 10 years after graduation, with the important proviso that the individual remain in Canada.
I want to begin by thanking the member for Fundy--Royal. As my colleague from Vancouver East said when she spoke on the bill, it is important that we do talk about post-secondary education, and we do not often have an opportunity in the House to do so. I think we all agree, regardless of which side of the House we are on, that in this information world in which we now exist, post-secondary education is important and indeed will become much more important in the years ahead. We have all heard it said that every future job in this knowledge based economy will require post-secondary education and, indeed, life-long learning.
The second reality is that we do have a growing crisis in our post-secondary institutions. Tuition fees, for instance, have gone up by more than 120% over the past 10 years. The average student debt load has tripled in that time from about $8,000 on average to more than $25,000. Indeed, we hear horror stories of student debt loads in the range of $40,000, $50,000 and even higher.
How did this crisis come about? How did it develop so rapidly? I think members can look at a couple of reasons, including the end of the Canada assistance plan, the beginning of the health and social transfer program and, indeed, the social union that was instituted a few years ago. As a result of the end of CAP and the beginning of CHST some $7 billion has been removed from federal transfers in the area of post-secondary education. That amounts to a drop of more than 17%. This has to be met by provinces and territories that have post-secondary institutions and also has to be absorbed by the students themselves in the form of higher tuition fees. That is why there is a crisis at the moment.
One part of the consequences of this crisis is that we are eroding accessibility for low and moderate income students, as the member from Calgary noted in his remarks. Documentation provided by Statistics Canada shows that high income families are now more than two and a half times more likely to send sons and daughters to post-secondary institutions than low income Canadian families. The reason given most frequently is that households with perhaps $30,000 or less of total income lack financial resources with which to send their sons and daughters. It amounts to discrimination, pure and simple.
Education must be a national priority and the federal government must be an equal partner. This means that long term, stable funding is essential. We need a national grant program, something that the Canadian Federation of Students has advocated. In fact, at the moment Canada is the only industrialized country without a national grant program.
We also need the bankruptcy law repealed. Changes were introduced by the government against students simply on the basis that they were students. It is regrettable in the extreme that this has happened.
As I indicated, this is a good motion as far as it goes. It is not a panacea, as the mover has acknowledged both publicly and privately. We believe, he and I and others, that we have to go further. We believe that education is a right and that the federal government has a responsibility to provide leadership on funding and establish national standards.
The motion before us would allow students to deduct up to 10% of the principal of their student loans for up to 10 years if they stayed in Canada. This would permit loans to be repaid more quickly because the economic stimulus would be there. It may also reverse the brain drain if one exists.
The real catch 22 in the current dilemma is that with tuition fees 126% higher than they were 10 years ago many students are unable to choose post-secondary education. This in turn threatens our competitiveness in the international arena. Tuition fees have gone up to $3,400 a year, double what they were 10 years ago.
The manager of the Canada student loans program, Claude Proulx, says federal efforts have missed the target. He says people are not qualifying in the magnitude that had been anticipated. It would therefore be debt forgiveness in name only. In the meantime some 350,000 students rely on federal loans worth a grand total of $1.6 billion.
Fifteen years ago there was virtually no difference between low and middle income earners who planned to send their children to post secondary institutions. By the mid 1990s, eight years ago, pollsters could discern a 7% gap between low and middle income earners in terms of their ability to send their children to post-secondary education.
The gap has continued to grow. Some 80% per cent of parents with household incomes of less than $30,000 a year hope their children will go on to post-secondary education. However the sad reality is that less than 20% of them are able to save to assist their children in this worthwhile endeavour. In contrast, virtually all parents with a household income of $80,000 or more not only hope to send their children on to post-secondary education. More than 60% of them are able to put money aside for the opportunity.
The Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, introduced after the 1997 election by the current Prime Minister, has not been a great success. It has often gone directly to provinces. It has been applied to existing debt. It has not assisted cash strapped students in the way that was envisaged when it was announced.
We need to make post secondary education a national priority. Lifelong access to training and education must be a right for all. Public investment in this is crucial. However Canadian industry is lagging behind in investment. Colleges, universities, professors and especially students are suffering as a result.
We need to work toward eliminating college and university tuition fees altogether. We need to establish a national grants program and national standards for accessibility. We need lower tuition fees; interest free student loans; and a ban on private, for profit universities. We need to insist on affordable education and research in the public interest. They are an important part of developing a better Canada.