Madam Chair, I thank my hon. colleagues for this opportunity to speak on an important principle, one that the New Democratic Party supports.
Throughout the lifelong participation of Canadians in the education system, but oftentimes within government, there is a very narrow focus, a focus that includes only those times when Canadians are involved in the formal education system and not the extension of that education beyond and throughout the lives of Canadians. Report after report and study after study demonstrate the need for Canadians to involve themselves in the pursuit of education and the betterment of their lives throughout their lives.
While we support the intent of the bill, we have a number of questions that cause us some concern. I will outline a number of them as I address the bill tonight in the short time made available to me.
It is interesting to hear the call for the increase in access to education, as the member from the Conservative Party suggested tonight, while there is an intention in the opposite direction.
It is quite ironic to hear from the Liberal Party that somehow there is investment and direction from the party toward lifelong education while at the same time we are witnessing unprecedented growth in the amount of debt load being incurred by our students in this country today. Students are simply trying to improve themselves, become more viable members in our economy and make Canada once again a competitive nation.
The irony abounds. It must not go unaddressed. In the rhetoric on the promotion of education as a principle, that too must be met with action. The numbers speak loudly in black and white. Year in and year out for the last 14 years, the average debt load for a student leaving post-secondary education in Canada has been increasing by $1,000 per year. That is an unprecedented and dramatic rise in the debt load that we are asking our students to incur as they go forth into the world and try to better themselves in society.
The bill also speaks quite dramatically to the precipitous decrease in the music options and the arts in general being offered through our public education system. There is a need for me to emphasize each of those words: public education system.
At one point I had the misfortune of being in education under the Harris regime here in Ontario. I have since found myself living under the auspices of the eminent Premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell. Both of these so-called leaders brought forward an assault on our education such as has very rarely ever been seen in the Canadian political spectrum.
It was a piece by piece death. It was death by a thousand cuts to our education system and to those educators hoping to provide a sound grounding in education for our students. Music programs have eroded. Physical education has eroded. Piece by piece under conservative governments, whether in name or in action, we have been brought to a point where parents are desperate to find whatever forms of artistic education and betterment they can for their children. This must not go unchecked.
It is ironic that at a time when there are many serious issues facing our country when it comes to education we are presented with a bill that is in a sense a one-off and does not capture the debate.
The debate is about the Liberal government promise to restore to the provinces the $4 billion in social transfers that has been taken out of the system. The system has been gutted. The promise was to restore that to the provinces in order for them to be able to properly administer the education system, which they are primarily responsible for. Instead we are talking about a one-off tax credit for what is an important yet narrow field of education, as opposed to the gutting of our education system, which was initiated by the federal government and then encouraged by governments such as the Harris and Campbell governments.
We have talked a lot about the investment in our young people and investment in Canadians in this pursuit of lifelong learning, yet it comes down to the initiation of a tax credit rather than the proper funding of the public programs that are already in place. The instruments are in the room, the teachers are ready to teach, and yet we find conservative government after conservative government, supported by a federal Liberal government, willing to take the fight to the teachers themselves as opposed to taking the fight to the problem, to the challenge of preparing our teachers and our young people for the world we face.
That world we face requires the creativity and ingenuity spurned by those very musical and artistic programs that existed in our public schools but have slowly and quietly been eroded. This bill addresses some small part of that by moving it into the private sector and suggesting that this is enough, by suggesting that this is how we are going to compensate for a continual and consistent erosion of our public education system. Obviously, it is not enough.
Let me speak for a brief moment about an experience of what education in the music and the arts can bring to a community. In my northwestern community of British Columbia, a youth fiddling group started up some years ago. I had the pleasure of working with this group, developing them, encouraging them to go further afield, and watching what the principle of their education system was.
This is a small group made up almost entirely of volunteers and parents who encouraged extraordinarily young people to get involved in fiddle music, as simple as that may be. One might suggest that this was only for the enjoyment of that music, but this group had taken on the principle of what it is to be in a community, to exist within a community and within a larger family, in supporting these young people who have now toured our province and plan to tour the country.
The group has grown to almost 100 young people. The parents are intimately involved in these students' education. Their education through this music has become a vital part of these children's lives, allowing them to prosper and allowing the community and the families to strengthen. We need to encourage such initiatives wherever we can.
Without addressing this fundamental question of the role of public education in our system and the role of public education in the arts, and allowing for what is at best a well intentioned but overly narrowly focused piece of legislation, it is difficult to reconcile. It is difficult to turn to the teachers in British Columbia and to the parents putting their children in those schools, who have been watching the slow and steady deterioration of the services available to special needs children and to all children who enter our public system.
It is no longer acceptable. It is time for the federal government and all parties in the House to raise the cry and finally acknowledge that an investment at this point in a young person's life makes all other investments pale in comparison.