Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Vancouver Centre for her comments. I want to ask her a question about student loans. She did not mention this subject once. Yet, student debt is a very significant part of this bill. The government is prepared to reduce the waiting period from ten years to seven years, so that former students can discharge their student loan debts in bankruptcy.
The Bloc Québécois committed long ago to totally eliminating this waiting period. In reality, having a waiting period for student loan debts makes no sense. First of all, it is based on prejudicial belief that declaring bankruptcy is easy, that anyone can do it and that students are immature enough to decide to finance their education with loans and then say, “No problem, I will just declare bankruptcy and get out of debt”.
Very few students would even think such a thing. A judge could dismiss an application based on such nonsense. In fact, we know that, in the event of a bankruptcy, a judge must rule whether to allow or dismiss an application.
Furthermore, we are wondering why the change from ten years to seven years? Why not five years or three years, or even zero years while we are at it? I want the member on the government side to tell us what she thinks about this.