Student groups bash throne speech
Leah Speller & Courtney Kaminski
Issue date: 10/13/04 Section: News
Despite campaign promises to make post-secondary education more accessible to Canadians, Prime Minister Paul Martin's response to the Speech from the Throne addressed all the important social issues on the minds of Canadians - health care, Aboriginal issues, international relations, improved living conditions and affordable housing - except financing for post-secondary education.
Instead, Martin focused on the positive changes the government has made thus far, which improved Canada's growth in living standards and employment opportunities, as well as making further promises to better the current health care system and Canadian communities.
The topics Martin covered are important to the quality of life for most Canadians and will serve to further improve our country. However, his response to the Speech from the Throne left post-secondary students without any kind of guarantee that the government is addressing the financial obstacles that are making further education more and more inaccessible to this generation. Unfortunately, the high cost of tuition fees has made financing post-secondary education a problem for many Canadian students.
"[ I am ] incredibly disgusted with the lack of commitment to post-secondary education the government has displayed," said Nick Brown, vice president of university affairs at the Brock University Students' Union (BUSU) and Brock's representative to the Canadian Alliance of Students Association (CASA). "The status quo is not acceptable ... Canada cannot compete internationally or academically on a post-secondary level [because we] don't have the funding, and so the quality of education is decreasing."
The only new education initiative in the Prime Minister's speech was the National Early Learning and Child-care Program. A program aimed at educating children as early as possible, better preparing them for learning when they start school.
However, Martin did make reference to another new initiative for assisting with the financial burden of post-secondary education. The new Canadian Learning Bond, announced in the last budget, will grant students from the lowest income group up to $2,000 for post-secondary education. Unfortunately, the Learning Bond is only awarded to children born to low-income families on or after January 1, 2004.
