VICTORIA – The federal Conservative government has finally relented and opened its student loan review to public input after months of pressure by student groups and Canada’s NDP.
“Students and graduates are the ones suffering from unreasonable interest rates, inadequate relief measures, and other flaws that punish them instead of help them pay for the soaring costs of education,” said NDP Postsecondary Education Advocate Denise Savoie (Victoria). “Now, finally, they will have a say in how this broken system gets fixed.”
Since the spring federal budget committed to a review of Canada’s student assistance system, it’s become clear that the review’s mandate is limited to administrative tinkering. Substantive changes proposed by groups representing students and graduates have been dismissed as outside the scope of the review, or met with patronizing pats on the head.
But late Friday, the federal government finally announced that that it would allow public input, through an online consultation ending September 28. Savoie welcomed the news but pledged to remain vigilant.
“I first asked Human Resources Minister Monte Solberg for an open, public process in April,” said Savoie. “If he was genuinely willing to hear the concerns and experiences of ordinary students and graduates, he would have started listening long ago instead of opening a last-minute, three-week window.”
Last week, Savoie launched a national campaign to press Minister Solberg into broadening the student loan review to allow for more meaningful changes. Savoie has proposed creating a single federal system of needs-based grants, lowering the student loan interest rate, creating a federal student loan ombudsperson, and improving debt relief programs.
“While tuition fees and student debt have tripled in the last decade, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have done little but tinker around the edges of the system,” said Savoie. “The student aid system will stay broken unless we tackle student debt head-on.”
The NDP’s Fix Student Aid petition, launched on campuses across Canada, calls on Human Resources Minister Monte Solberg to broaden the mandate of his review to include real solutions for students. It is available online at www.ndp.ca/education.
The student loan consultation page is at:
www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/learning/canada_student_loan/form_en.shtml