Mr. Speaker, it is nice and it is great that students can have a tax credit for their textbooks. However, in the long run, when students are emerging from university $20,000 in debt, $35,000 in debt, or $50,000 in debt, the tax credit on textbooks is not really going to make all that much difference. To me, it is great. How can anyone argue against doing that? However, it is a little band-aid on top of a big problem.
It is the same with ensuring that scholarship income is not taxable. It is another band-aid on top of a huge problem.
The staggering statistics around post-secondary education are not going to be altered by these two proposals that are in this particular bill.
The millennium scholarship foundation did a study that showed that four out of 10 university students were unable to graduate on time because they dropped courses because they had to go to work to pay for their education and living expenses. Some 66% of students worked on average 19 hours a week to afford to stay in school and three out of 10 students had to resort to private bank loans or family loans because of inadequate government student aid. Those are some of the people who are emerging with these huge debts coming out of university.
A Statistics Canada youth in transition survey found that more than 70% of high school graduates who wanted to go to college or university but did not listed finances as the main barrier that they faced in their decision not to go to university.
Between 1992 and 2002 university tuition fees increased by 135%. That is six times the rate of inflation in Canada. In face of those kinds of statistics, the two programs that the member talked about are really just tiny band-aids on the face of the whole issue.
In the previous Parliament, in this corner, we fought to turn back a tax break to wealthy Canadians and corporations and we asked the government of the day to put that money into reducing tuition. Unfortunately, that has not happened.
I am glad to say that the Conservative government did maintain that billion dollars and put it into infrastructure for the universities. I would have preferred that the money stayed with the original commitment to reducing tuition fees because I think that is where the pressure was. University administrators, I know, welcomed that money, but there is no sense building more classrooms if students cannot afford to get to the university in the first place.
We need to put the emphasis back where it really belongs, in ensuring that people can get to university. As I have said, the two programs that are part of this bill are just way too limited to do that job.