Liberal Announcement on Education

Liberals announce education platform Analysis to follow...

Liberal support for students and research will build 21st-century economy

LONDON – A new Liberal government will significantly increase support for students and increase investments to support research to help more Canadians succeed in the 21st-century knowledge economy, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion announced today.

“We have to increase support for students to make sure university and college is accessible to all Canadians. The future productivity and economic success of Canada depends on the investments we make in research and development today,” said Mr. Dion.

To that end, a new Liberal government will make post-secondary education more accessible by:

• simplifying support measures for students by replacing complicated and often irrelevant tax credits that don’t benefit students with an education grant that will be delivered four times a year, putting money in the hands of students when they need it most;

• providing 200,000 needs-based bursaries of up to $3,500 per year by the fourth year of our plan to help reduce the number of Canadians for whom cost remains an insurmountable barrier to education;

• providing 100,000 access grants of up to $4,000 per year by the fourth year of our plan for those who are members of groups that are traditionally under-represented in post-secondary education;

• ensuring that every student is eligible for a $5,000 student loan regardless of parental income; and

• guaranteeing a lower interest rate for all student loans, extending the grace period on repayment post graduation from six months to two years, making that grace period interest-free and extending the time that individuals have to repay their student loans.

“Innovation, new ideas and processes are key components of productivity and ultimately, future economic growth. The direct and indirect funds we invest in research and development today will drive the economy of the future,” said Mr. Dion. “It is also important to support projects that reach beyond the barriers of their discipline.”

A new Liberal government will increase research and development support by:

• increasing support for the indirect costs of university-based research by more than 60 per cent to $500 million a year;

• enhancing support for Canada’s three granting councils by 34 per cent;

• creating an Interdisciplinary Sustainability Fund of $100 million to enable scientists, researchers and graduate students to undertake projects that extend beyond the barrier of their disciplines; and

• extending the tax credit for private sector research and development so that even companies who are not currently making a profit will have an incentive to invest in research and development.

“Support for learning has been a long-standing Liberal value and under a new Liberal government we will make the investments in the post-secondary education and research needed to ensure Canada can compete in the 21st century,” said Mr. Dion.

The Rae Revival?

Dion did Halifax yesterday. After announcing the details of the new Liberal drug plan, he tried his best to invigorate a crowd of grits at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.

Before Dion's speech, however, Bob Rae fired up the crowd with a five minute speech in support of Dion and in sharp criticism of Mr. Harper. As far as political speeches go, this one was high up there. Regardless of whether or not you agreed with what he was saying, you had to give him mad props for the delivery. For a play by play of this speech, see this article from the Herald. No wonder Garth Turner labeled Rae "the sum of all conservative fears" in a blog posting when he was still in the running for the Liberal Leadership.

Dions speech was... interesting. I'm not sure how many liberals were wondering why they hadn't elected the other guy while Dion was stumbling through his stump speech, but the thought was mentioned by some observers.

There were no major announcements in this speech. Dion tried to quote a line from Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry be Happy, but ended up just telling everyone to be happy. Thanks Stephane. I needed a boost.

I'll lay off Dion for now though. The liberals are set to release their education platform within the hour so expect a press release and a blog from us. I am hoping I'll have better things to say about Dion and the Grits later today.

I Say N-D, you say... urinalyis.

Original Blog Posting

Here's a (shaky) video I shot at the Jack Layton announcement on student loan debt forgiveness for family doctors yesterday.

(Facebook users will have to click the link to view it)
Part 1 (Introduction)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVGBxp80zwo

Part 2 (Student Announcement)



http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_edit2?ns=1&video_id=xKXyc74uNS0&next=%2Fmy_videos2%3Fpi%3D0%26ps%3D20%26sf%3Dadded%26sa%3D0%26sq%3D%26dm%3D2

Dippers be trippin'

Jack Layton rolled into Dal this morning to talk about health care with local med-students (and non-medstudents). The big announcement
was about expanding the number of seats available in medical schools, and in line with that increasing the funding available for students wishing to pursue studies in family medicine.

Here's the meat for students: "[The NDP] plan will forgive student loans for health care professionals who stay in family practice for ten years." In addition to this, the plan also commits to creating "50% more training spaces in Canada for doctors and nurses" as well as fixing the foreign credentials program to increase the number of foreign doctors.

Initially it appeared that the plan would forgive debt after graduates stayed in a program for 10 years, but when questioned by a reporter Mr. Layton seemed to do a double take and clarified that this funding would be made available up-front, when students graduated and began their carreers, putting a strange emphasis on the ability of the tax system to reclaim that money should they break their committment to family medicine.

The reason, Layton stated for rewarding students who stick with family medicine as a practise, was to ensure that their mountain of debt didn't lure them into specialist studies (and more debt) in order to pay off their original debt. He also mentioned that they based the idea for this program off of a conversation he and Alexa McDonough had with a group of med-students just last year.

I spoke with one of Layton's policy advisors after the announcement, and mentioned that we were concerned about how up-front affordability is a bigger concern for students thinking about med-school. Consider the fact that the average Nova Scotian student leaves their university degree with more debt than their counterparts in any other region of Northa America. A reward of student loan forgiveness 5 - 15 years down the road may not be that inticing after already accruing a mini-mortgage. Consider also the fact that many Med Students take debt of other forms, such as bank debt and lines of credit, which seem to be overlooked completely by this plan, as with the Green plan, and as with any plan that focuses solely on Canada Student Loan debt.

I'll have a video of the announcement to upload later in the day, stay tuned.

Your Candidates...

Original Posting from: http://dsu-vped.blogspot.com


On Friday morning the CPC announced their candidate for the riding of Halifax. They were the final major national party to announce their candidate for this riding. So, I've done my worst and snooped around to find out as much as I can about your choices. Thank me later. In alphabetical order, by party name, here you are:


Conservative Party of Canada: Ted Larsen

Occupation: Small Business Owner

Facebook Supporters: 103

Website: http://www.tedlarsen.ca/

Ted's facebook page says he is a single parent of three, former advisor to the premier (it doesn't say which premier, but I'm assuming Hamm). There's not alot of info out yet, his website isn't up yet, and his FB supporters seem to be mix of people from Halifax and a smattering of Conservative supporters from across the country including some other candidates.

Green Party of Canada: Darryl Whetter

Occupation: Writer, Dalhousie Professor

Facebook Supporters: 26

Website: http://darrylwhetter.greenparty.ca/

Whetter recently announced he would be a candidate in Halifax when he removed his name from the ballot in Cumberland-Colchestor Musquidoboit Valley, the riding currently held by Conservative Party Outcast Bill Casey. The Greens then said that Casey would not be opposed, as he was already an "honorary green". Whetter gets props for keeping a regularly updated blog since the campaign began. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much evidence of a strong campaign from his end yet, but I am waiting to be proven wrong.

New Democratic Party of Canada: Megan Leslie

Occupation: Community Lawyer

Facebook Supporters: 192

Website: http://www.meganleslie.ca/

Given Halifax's strong dipper tendencies, it is not surprising that Ms. Leslie faced a tough race to secure her nomination as the NDP candidate. Leslie has been in Halifax for a while, taught at Dal, worked in the community and has established a strong network of supporters on her own. The NDP had 1041 members in Halifax as of last monday. Leslie inherets a strong campaign team from Alexa and the FIVE provincial ridings held by the NDP within the HRM. There was a lot of talk at her nomination meeting about electing the candidate who can keep this riding NDP. A tad too partisan for my likings, and I'm looking to the other candidates to make sure she doesn't get a free ride.

Liberal Party of Canada: Catherine Meade

Occupation: Will, Estate and Property Lawyer

Facebook Supporters:12

Website: http://meade4halifax.com/

Meade has sought the grit nomination before, to no avail. She even forgot to take down her last campaign website and fooled some local journalists into going to the wrong spot for this years nomination meeting. She's been active in the Rainbow Action Project, has a plethora of post secondary education and seems to have a resume full of community involvement. I'm looking forward to hearing more information on this candidate, as with Mr. Larsen.

Living on debt row…

As I mentioned in my last post, the Greens are the first party to unveil their post secondary education (PSE) platform. There were three major parts to this announcement. Boosting support to the CSLP and bursary programs, increased transfer payments to the provinces for PSE and a forgivenes of 50% of your student loan for completing your degree or certificate program."Young people in Canada deserve a quality education that doesn't leave them with a debt sentence,” Green Leader Elizabeth May says, stealing a line from another federal lobby group who have yet to launch a campaign website. But, back to the Green Plan.

The first two announcements shouldn't count for much yet, because there aren't any dollar figures attached to them. Increased support for CSLP and bursary programs is obviously a good thing, but how much increased support are we talking about? How will the bursaries be awarded? Based on need? Underepresentation within the PSE system? Parental income? "Students need to hear more details about their proposals," CASA National Director Zach Churchill states. "Specifically, we would like to see the Green Party target the increases in bursary funding towards raising the participation rates of underrepresented groups, such as Aboriginal students and students with disabilities.”

Increasing the transfer payments to the provinces is definitely a good idea. A dedicated transfer for PSE is an even better one. Another problem with the PSE system that Elizabeth May (and all NS politicians) should be attentive to is the fact that the Canada Social Transfer (the fed-provincial transfer mechanism for PSE, among other things) is delivered on a per-capita basis, which doesn't account for the number of students studying in a province. Nova Scotia is a net importer of students, and per usual gets the proverbial transfer payment shaft. Essentially, Ontario sends their students here, but their tax dollars don't follow them. This has led to our provincial government choosing the short-sited root of charging differential tuition rates to out of province students. Any increased transfer payments to our province ought to be calculated on a per student basis, otherwise we'll continue to get a smaller share of the PSE pie.

The major announcement from the greens, 50% student loan forgiveness upon completion of a PSE program, is intriguing. It makes me think of the Liberal's 50-50 plan from the 2006 election, whereby the government would pay 50% of a student's first and last year. I am slighlty baffled by both of these approaches, they both use the magic number "fifty", both are obviously aimed at decreasing high university drop-out rates (of nearly 15% across canada), and both seem as if they were thought up a few minutes before the announcements were made (which, for the Liberals at least, is true).

The nifty-fifty green deal is worth examining. On first glance, a few things jump out. It's definitely good for students with student loans, as well as former students still struggling with debt. In fact, if I were a graduating high school student it would appear to be a huge incentive to get a student loan, as opposed to some other type of credit. But most interestingly, this plan would also forgive 50% of the debt of graduates, which would be a HUGE investment, given the amount of student debt already accumulated in canada, which the CFS debt-tracker charts at almost 13 billion at the time of writing. The Greens might be unprepared to make a budgetary committment this big, but the point is moot since they have a slim chance of forming government anytime soon.

Do you like handcuffs?

Stephen Harper decided to make a pit stop in Halifax this morning. Just days after Halifax Conservatives lost their candidate because of a criminal record check gone bad, the big cheese rolled into town. It's no surprise that that this particular campaign stop was made at Chamber of Commerce at a special breakfast. His announcements, however, took an interesting twist.

This is still the exciting portion of the election campaign, when platforms aren't yet released and we're hearing about new proposals every day. Harper picked this campaign stop to reify some ideas that we should expect from the conservative party. His speech was heavy on the principles of free trade, competitiveness in the global market, and encouraging foreign investment in the Canadian economy. He emphasized the conservative government's eagerness to become competitive in the global uranium trade, and their opposition to the Liberal Green Shift. Nothing new here, really.

While Harper was quick to critique the Green shift, saying it was bad for Canadians, bad for business, and will ultimately have a negligible effect on the rate of greenhouse gas emissions, he was short on alternatives. While the Harper Conservatives claim to have a better tax plan, PMSH didn't even attempt to suggest he had a better plan for GHG mitigation. Environmental groups have said this all along; is this a sign the conservatives finally giving up on the eco-vote?

After the breakfast we stuck around to try and get some face time with PMSH, and unfortunately didn't get as much face time as some people, but I did get a handshake and told the prime minister we were looking forward to hearing platform announcement about post secondary education. "We're crunching new things up everyday," he replied, "and can't make all our announcements in one day." A few minutes later we met Peter Mackay, and he hinted to us that in we should look to expect some new announcements on Debt Relief programs for those of us with student loans. Debt relief, as the conservatives have promoted, is great for the students who are here now, but is a reactive measure and doesn't show any commitment to increasing access or affordability in our PSE systems. I'll blog more about this once the official announcement is out.

Speaking of announcements, only one party has made an official announcement about PSE, this one. The Greens are looking to offer a type of university completion award, that will forgives 50% of your student loan once you complete university. So, debt relief. I have a feeling this isn't the same kind of debt relief the Cons are talking about. Wait and see.

The Green Party PSE plan has got to be taken at face value as well. Remember two things: not everyone leaving university with debt, has student loans. Lines of credit are very popular, as are coupling university expenses with parent's loans for better interest rates, or convenience. Secondly, this plan seems to be the result of half-think, something that is still in the incubation stage. I'm not saying its a terrible idea, I think it might even bring students into the PSE system. I think it needs more work, and it bears striking resemblance to the plan released by the Green Party last election .

For those of you who clicked on this post for the racy title, it's actually a quote from Stephen Harper (remember tough on crime) during his tour around Halifax today...