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Feb. 2: CFS Day of Action
STUDENTS RALLY AGAINST HUGE DEBT LOADS
By Greg Dubecky, Toronto
(This article is from the Feb. 1-14/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
CRUSHING DEBTS, rising tuition, lack of financial assistance to students and years of cuts to public post-secondary education - these are the issues as thousands of students across Canada take to the streets for a one day national student strike on Feb. 2.
The strike is part of the "Access 2000" campaign launched by the Canadian Federation of Students to confront the crisis in post-secondary education, created by years of neo-liberal policies at both federal and provincial levels. Since 1993 the federal Liberals have slashed $7 billion from post-secondary education and training, as well as $24 billion from cash transfer payments to the provinces.
Canada is also one of only three industrialized countries in the world that does not have a system of national grants, despite the fact approximately 80% of all students require some level of financial assistance. Instead, students are milked by the banks through the Canada Student Loans Program, an exploitative dinosaur, which does not meet the needs of students and most often leaves them buried in debt.
Since 1990, average tuition fees for undergraduates have skyrocketed by 126% (7.1% in the last year alone even with fees frozen in three provinces). Not only has this placed higher education and training out of the reach of many working-class youth, but it has caused the average debt of a student graduating from a four program to more than triple to $25,000 and increased poverty among students in general.
Students are more indebted than at any previous time in Canada's history, and real earnings for 18-30 year olds have decreased 30% over the last decade. Who gains from this? The banks! Not only do they profit from the loan interest which drains millions from students, and even from the federal government in the form of interest relief, they are also transferred about $75 million federally as a "risk premium" on the loans they issue.
Currently $1.3 billion is spent each year simply to administer the Canada Student Loans Program (and this is before payments to the banks are factored in!). The CFS estimates the cost of a national grants program at about $1.2 billion, with additional savings because of the elimination of bank payments.
The CFS is calling for the roll-back and elimination of tuition fees, a federal grants program, restoration of social funding and national standards to ensure that public, accessible and properly funded post-secondary education is available everywhere. The federation's campaign, consisting of lobbying, petitioning and student mobilizations, has received broad support among students and a strong labour backing.
Already student pressure has brought about tuition freezes in Newfoundland, B.C. and Quebec, and promises by the Saskatchewan and Manitoba governments to roll-back fees. Building on this momentum, students hope to force the federal Liberals to restore $3.7 billion of the $12 billion federal surplus to provincial transfer payments, and to stop and reverse Ottawa's neo-liberal privatization agenda.
In 1976 Canada signed the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which clearly states: "Higher Education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education." (Part III, Article 13, Sec.2(C)). Yet the Liberals, Tories and Reform all aim to move us in the opposite direction. Education is a RIGHT! It's time to take to the streets to defend and advance that right.
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