Madam Speaker, I support the measure taken in this private member's motion. It has been a theme of mine for a long time.
One of the greatest errors we make is that everyone in our country, all of our young people, our best and our brightest, regardless of their financial situation or the situation of their families, are not being provided with access to education. This has been a theme of mine.
I remember when I was teaching at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology that too often there were students who had to stop their education for the reason that they could not afford to pay their bills. They could not pay for their tuition and their books and the usual costs of living which every person has. Especially with the increased costs of fuel, heating, electricity and all of that, students are being driven out of the education system and we suffer as a country.
I would even go so far as to say it is a great investment. It is a tremendously good investment when we educate our young people. I did a quick calculation. Let us assume that after graduating from a post-secondary institution, a university or whatever, a student earns $200 more a month over his or her earning lifetime. I think that is a very modest estimate. In most instances the salary would be much greater than that compared to the salary of someone who went into the workforce right out of high school.
That $200 more a month over a lifetime of earnings could easily provide that young person with an additional income of about $108,000 accumulated without any consideration of interest at all. If half of that was paid in provincial and federal taxes, which I guess is probably just a little over what it is now, but just using half as the number, it means that in educating one person, we would get back directly in tax dollars collected from that person, $54,000. That is not a bad investment at all.
Of course that totally ignores the fact that it is because of our educated young people that we enjoy the quality of life and the high standard of living that we have in this country.
I would like to see measures taken by the government that would enable students to get an education irrespective of their financial situation. We ought to do that. Of course, this is one possibility.
I have other proposals. I would like to see students earn their tuition and their books in the following year, strictly as a function of how good their marks are. If they worked hard and got good marks, they would be paid per mark, applied to their tuition and books for the next year. That would be a tremendous assistance to students. It is something we should vigorously pursue.
Of course this also is a measure which would reduce the debt load. How terrible of us to allow our young people to graduate from university or college and have a such a high debt load that they cannot put a down payment on a house. They cannot start their own little small business or enterprise because they have such a huge debt load just to pay for their education. That is atrocious and needs to be fixed.
I commend the member for this initiative.