Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak tonight to a question that I asked of the minister shortly before the budget came down. It had to do with students and the important need that Canada has to educate young Canadians.
I asked specifically about student grants and I talked about loans. My question had two parts. One part had to do with the Millennium Scholarship Foundation. I had guessed in my question that the government might be trying to get rid of the Millennium Scholarship Foundation. I asked the minister if his government was going to get rid of the Millennium Scholarship Foundation or rebrand it some way in Tory blue. One did not have to be Kreskin to know that the government was going to get rid of a program that worked, a program that the Liberal Party had brought in.
What the government did with the program is no improvement at all. I think it is much worse. What is even worse is the justification. The budget indicates that the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation is also a significant intrusion into provincial jurisdiction. Every province and territory in Canada loved the Millennium Scholarship Foundation and advocated for its renewal but the government killed it and, I suspect, we will have another Canada summer jobs fiasco like we had last year.
However, I want to talk about student loans because every time a question has been asked about student loans in the last little while we have heard that there is a great review going on in the Canada student loans system and we should wait because we will love it. The minister and his department would not have had to go very far to get some great ideas. It could have done a lot of stuff.
The student organizations in Canada, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations and the Coalition for Student Loan Fairness, which is headed by spokesperson, Julian Benedict, who I had a chance to visit with recently in British Columbia, came out with eight points and I just want to talk about a couple of the really important points that were in their plan, which was made quite public.
The most significant thing that could be done with student loans to make it a better system for Canada and the one that they highlighted as their number one need would be to reduce or eliminate the interest rates on student loans. A number of countries are doing interesting things with student loan rates. Some countries do not charge rates on student loans. Some charge cost of borrowing.
The Canadian student loan program charges between 8.75% and up on student loans. It does not make any sense. In the economic update of 2005, brought in by the member for Wascana, then the minister of finance, pledged a complete overhaul of the student loan system. One of the things we would have done, I am quite sure, is to have looked at that and asked if it made sense, because I do not think it does. Why would we not reduce it to the cost of government borrowing, which could be just over half of the rate we are charging? Why would we want to squeeze money out of Canadian students or have a disincentive for kids to go to university?
How about their recommendation on a student loan ombudsman so that students could actually navigate the system better? Again, in the budget some $123 million were provided but it was very vague as to what it would do. It would have been a very simple positive step for Canadian students and former students who are debilitated by this debt, who get out of university with a mortgage but no house. If we had given some signal to them that there would be an ombudsman or commissioner of student loan fairness, that would have been particularly helpful to them.
Enforcing collection derivatives and increasing the interest relief period. Here is another one, not necessarily from the coalition but that all parliamentarians have heard. Medical students should not have to repay their loans with interest while they are still residents and not making a full family income.
These are not new ideas. These are things that could have been enacted. This student loan review was not sufficient. It did not get the job done. I think it could have been a lot better for Canadian students and they are disappointed.