Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak this morning to my bill, Bill C-284, which I hope hon. colleagues will support.
Even though I note there has been an objection from the government in terms of the question of royal recommendation, I still hope that hon. colleagues from all sides of the House will find favour with the bill and will recognize the importance of this issue. I think the bill could have a dramatic impact on the future of not only students across this country, young people, particularly those from low income families and those with disabilities, but also on our country and its future prosperity.
I am well aware these days of the issue of post-secondary education because my oldest daughter has joined the many thousands of young Canadians who go off to university and community colleges across this country every year. This fall she started at Acadia University. I wear what is called an X ring, which indicates that I am a graduate of St. Francis Xavier University. Although I did point out to my daughter the odd time that in fact St. FX was selected over and over, and again this year, as the number one undergraduate university in the country, that did not seem to persuade her. Sometimes we parents do not get our way, but I must acknowledge that Acadia is certainly an outstanding institution as well. I know she will enjoy herself there. She is a good student and I am sure she will do well.
Mount St. Vincent University is located in my riding of Halifax, Nova Scotia, as are many others in my province. We have St. FX, as I mentioned, Cape Breton University, St. Mary's University, Dalhousie University, Acadia University, King's College University, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the Nova Scotia Community College. We do have a large number of universities and post-secondary education institutions in my province where this issue is particularly important.
One of the concerns people in Nova Scotia have had for many years is that funding for education is provided not on a per student basis, but on a per capita basis. When many students immigrate into a province to study then that province incurs the cost of educating those students who from other parts of the country. The real concern is that funding is not provided in relation to the fact that a province has all those additional students. It is a real challenge.
At the national level and in my region there are some disturbing trends at the post-secondary education level. First year enrolment is starting to go down a bit now that the double cohort from Ontario has passed through its first and second year and is moving on. For instance, first year enrolment at St. Mary's University is down 7%. This is expected to continue at many schools and universities across my province and across the country over the next decade. Acadia also reported this year that first year enrolments were sluggish, at least in August, although I think they may have picked up since.
Surveys have found that as many as 36% of high school graduates cite financial reasons as a barrier to going on to university or community college. This bill would help to eliminate some of those barriers. Let me go through some of the highlights of the bill.
Bill C-284 would expand Canada access grants, which is a program that already provides financial assistance to students from low income families or those who are disabled. Currently, the grants under this program are available for the first year of study for those who are from low income families and for those with disabilities. The bill would extend the availability of this grant to all four years of study. This is an important measure for low income students and those students facing the challenge of having disabilities.
The bill would also create a statutory base for the Canada access grants, making it, in my view, much more difficult to cancel or change without Parliament having a say in the process.
Investing in education is not about promoting the individual wealth of those lucky enough to be able to afford to go to higher education. It is about creating a stronger, more prosperous, more personally enriched, in a sense of enriched with knowledge, society. We do that by providing opportunities to all Canadians. As government, as Parliament we have a responsibility to improve our country by improving opportunities for all our citizens, and this bill would help to do that.
Education is a nation-building investment. We have an education deficit in this country that needs to be addressed through measures like those in Bill C-284.
It is important to note that nine million working age people, or 42% of Canadians, have literacy skills that are below the level considered necessary to function in our society today. This relates to the whole question of education and higher education. I was quite alarmed last week, and colleagues on both sides of the House should be alarmed as well, at the government's decision to cut $17.7 million from funding to literacy groups across the country. That funding is very important for those groups to train the teachers, to develop curriculum and to keep the programs going all over the country that helps adults to learn to write and read.
If Canada is to be productive in the future and have a more competitive economy, I believe, and I think most hon. colleagues will agree, we need to invest in those people and in those kinds of programs. I think cutting that program is a huge mistake. I hope my colleagues on the Conservative side of the House will work to persuade the President of the Treasury Board and the Minister of Finance to rescind that cut. It is wrong to write off these adults who are working hard to learn to read and write. It is not the answer at all. I was alarmed by the Treasury Board president's comments in that regard last week
So far we have seen no indication from the government that it intends to help low income students or those with disabilities to obtain higher education and to pay for it. Otherwise, if the government were really interested in these things, it would not have cut, for instance, the summer career placement program, a summer employment program for students. Next year that program will be cut in half. Many employers in the country are already saying that if they do not have that kind of funding to assist them in paying the salaries of these students that they will not be hiring those students.
Many students will be affected by that program being cut because they will not have the income they need next summer to return to school in the fall. This program is being cut in half. I hope my hon. colleagues will be lobbying the ministers and pushing them to rescind that cut as well. I think it is an error. It is not a huge amount of money in terms of the overall budget of the government. I think the government could certainly afford it in the excellent financial condition in which it has been left.
The Canadian Federation of Students estimates that up to 25,000 summer jobs for students are being eliminated by that cut. As the Canadian Federation of Students has pointed out, university and college is already beyond the means of thousands of Canadian families and cutting the funding for that program will mean that many students will not be able to go back to school next year and those who do return will be saddled with even more debt.
We all know that tuition fees have been rising dramatically in recent years. Nationally, the average undergrad tuition is $4,347 for the 2006-07 academic year, which is a big hike from the $1,464 average in 1990-91. This is another reason for us to provide more assistance to students. We should be keeping the pressure on the government to move forward and keep its promise of a dedicated education transfer. We have not seen it. We did not see it in the budget. We have not seen any indication of that promise being kept. It is important that we see some action on this important point.
It is true that the government is holding post-secondary education and training consultations but who is it consulting with? A number of student groups, such as the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations and the College Student Alliance, have written to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development to express their concern about not being invited to take part in this process. That seems an odd decision. If the minister is going to consult about post-secondary education, surely the students should not be totally ignored. Surely that should be corrected.
The government has also cut or eliminated a series of youth and international internships, such as the Fulbright scholarships, which provided the opportunity to study between the U.S. and Canada, for students to go to another country and have exposure there and learn about that country. Those are very important programs for our students to get exposure to the rest of the world and to develop a network for the future. As a trading nation, a nation that exports so much of its goods and services, it is absolutely important that we continue to develop the contacts we have and the understanding our young people have about other countries. Cutting these kinds of international scholarships is a grave error. Again, I hope that the government will reconsider this approach.
I think we saw a very different approach a year ago when our government was prepared to, for instance, expand the Canada access grants to cover all four years of study and to have the fifty-fifty plan, which would have paid for half the tuition for all Canadian students for both the first and the last year of study. Of course, what we need to see here is a comprehensive review of student assistance in total. That is an important step to take. We should not just look at some small aspect of this, but at the whole picture of how students are paying for their education and what government can do to assist them, because Canadian students need more support if they are to be able to afford their education.
In last fall's fiscal update, we did see additional funding for Canadian students studying abroad and a 50% increase in funding for graduate scholarships. However, forcing students from low income families to shoulder heavier and heavier debt loads to get their education is unconscionable. It is not in the interest of our country. It is not in the interest of our economy. Those people need to be able to get a good start in life as they come out of university. If they have huge debt loads, it is a lot harder for that to happen.
Again, in terms of our future productivity, the imminent retirement of the baby boom generation demands that we train and educate as many Canadians as possible to replenish our workforce. This is an absolute priority. I think we need to see more recognition of that from the government side.
Without a comprehensive grant system, the kind this bill would create, thousands of Canadian students who qualify for post-secondary education and have the marks to get in will not be able to attend. We should be gravely concerned if that occurs, whenever it occurs, and it is occurring now.
Expanding the Canada access grants is the most effective and efficient way, I believe, to provide support to Canadian students who need it most. The average debt for university graduates with a bachelor's degree is $20,000. That is according to the latest information available from Statistics Canada. The average debt for college graduates is almost $13,000. Fourteen per cent of university graduates have $25,000 or more in student debt.
Providing a statutory base for the Canada access grants, as the bill would do, would make it much more difficult to end or change the program without parliamentary scrutiny. I think it is important that this be the case. It should not be the case that the government can simply scrap this willy-nilly. I think this Parliament has supported this idea or concept of support for students with the Canada access grants. I think we need to put this into law and make sure it is a permanent program, because education and training are clearly a fundamental cornerstone for building a sustainable economy.
How are we going to have a competitive nation? How are we going to have a competitive economy and a more productive economy if we are not prepared to invest in these areas?
In fact, the Council of the Federation recently reported that 70% of the jobs created in the coming years will require a post-secondary education. Let us imagine that. It seems to me that one of the challenges we face with high school and pre-high school students is to make more of them aware of what it means to have a university or community college education and what it can mean for future income. There is the fact that one's chance of being unemployed if one goes on to higher education is dramatically lower and one's income will be dramatically higher. We see that in study after study.
It is true that when we see a situation like the boom in the petroleum sector in Alberta, for instance, there are a lot of jobs right now that may not require a higher education, but more and more of them do. When we look at the skilled trades, for example, we see that those trades are becoming more and more complex. Reading the manuals alone is becoming complex. Higher levels of reading, arithmetic and mathematics will be required. Higher levels of education will be essential for for all those things. This bill would help those students who are facing the challenge of being from low income families or the challenge of disabilities to afford to go. I think it is an important measure. I hope my hon. colleagues will support the bill.