Mr. Speaker, I will be dividing my time with the member for Kitchener Centre.
I am very proud to get up on behalf of the people of Skeena—Bulkley Valley to speak to the motion, which is on the federal Canada student grant for full-time students. This brings me back to 20 years ago when my small first nation, the Haisla Nation, was trying to integrate our people into the economy, specifically into the workforce. Basically, what we are debating here is a motion about the federal government restricting student grants for public institutions and not-for-profit private institutions.
While we are talking about this, I have to talk about the Kitimat Valley Institute, a private post-secondary institute in my riding, in the town of Kitimat, that was bankrupt. We could see the value in saving the Kitimat Valley Institute. As a small first nation band under the Indian Act, we had no money, but we could see its value because coming down the pike were forestry, LNG and mining jobs, so we did what we could to scratch together the dollars to purchase this private post-secondary institute and save it. Did we get any government help? No, we did not. It was the private sector that came to our rescue, the corporations. Those first few years were a struggle without government support, provincial or federal.
Our people back then were facing the same situation that young people in Canada are facing right now. There is no opportunity or future for young people in Canada, so they are trying to leave. They are trying to go to the United States for a better opportunity to build a life. What was proposed at the Liberal convention just recently for these young people who want to leave is a $500,000 exit tax. If anybody wants to leave Canada for employment or to build a business outside of Canada, there could be an exit tax, which the Liberals debated at their convention. Not only are they stifling the economy so that young people cannot build a life, but they want to punish them with this proposed exit tax.
This is not the way to build Canada into the best performing country in the G7, let alone an energy superpower. To do either of those things we need a workforce, preferably a Canadian workforce that is trained and created in Canada, within our borders. Without that, we are basically supporting the economies of other countries, especially when we are talking about labour shortages in skilled and technical fields.
Now, many students rely on those grants to afford their career programs, including first nations students. First nations have no real opportunity to engage with respect to what we are talking about here today. If the average aboriginal person who has never left and does not want to leave the reserve has to leave for training or employment, they will want to return to their community or their territory at some point. This is a real struggle. Not only are we telling that person to go out there and find their way in the outside world, but we are basically telling them that they are going to have to struggle with affordability issues under the Indian Act because they will not get 100% of the funding. For a first nation that does not have own-source revenue, it becomes a budgetary exercise and puts limits on what it can do with its younger generation. That is why we bought the Kitimat Valley Institute. We scratched together the dollars to accomplish that.
This proposal excludes the Kitimat Valley Institute, which my band operates on private land, by the way. We bought the land from the provincial government, kept it in fee-simple status and keep paying the taxes on it because we understand that the economy is a lot bigger than what we are thinking about.
I do not think the government is truly thinking about all the aspects that go into a private post-secondary institution, which includes taxes and employment of instructors and custodians. Everybody who works at a facility contributes to the economy, locally, provincially and federally. However, it is the next generation of workers who are going to feel this crunch, because they cannot get the training in public institutions alone.
For first nations trying to be creative, trying to chart out their own futures for their young people based on the circumstances they have been given under the Indian Act, it is a tough slog. We cannot think about the idea of the chicken and egg when we are talking about economy versus education. I learned pretty quickly that everything we did for training, for education, actually returned to me in anger, because there was no economy in our region. There was a job expected after this training. At that point I understood that training and education go hand in hand with economic development. They have to, otherwise we have people leaving our community. We have a brain drain, and that is what is happening right now in Canada with our best and brightest, whether they go to a public institution or not, going to the United States.
This motion does not help. It punishes young people, it punishes Canadians, and why? Is it a budgetary question? If it is, just say it. However, if we want Canada to be running on all cylinders, we have to consider all the components that go into training, especially when we are talking about what we do as small first nations communities all across B.C. and Canada that want to contribute to the economy and want to get our people into the workforce.
If not for the Kitimat Valley Institute, KVI, we would not have the number of people entering the workforce to build LNG Canada. When we think about LNG Canada, there are 50,000 construction workers. I am sad to say that not all of those construction workers came from Canada. They came from all over the place. They came from the United States. They came from all across Canada, from different provinces. I see it as a specialized industry. I get it, but we do not build the Canadian workforce by limiting our options.
Canada is in a really tough spot with the trade war from the United States and the trade talks coming up. I agree, we have to be independent as a country. We have to diversify our trade, and we have to rebuild our economy after 10 years of stifled policies, regulations and legislation. However, to omit a certain educational entity is wrong. It is not building our workforce. It is not building the future.
If we are going to be the energy superpower in the same vein as LNG Canada, or maybe Chevron, which left Canada, a $30-billion investment, and if we want to rebuild this, we have to rebuild the people. We have to show them hope. This motion does not do it.