There’s a new category of RCC invitee – Canada’s university and college students. Their organizations: the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) and all university student unions. Executives are now being contacted to solicit their participation in reform and accountability.
Why is the involvement of these organizations and their members so important? Because students, like the middle class, working poor, poverty stricken, homeless and aboriginal community, have been victims of government corruption and will continue to be unless something is done. Not only have they been hit with ever-increasingly inflated tuition fees since the early 1990s, they and their parents have tax burdens that would be so much less if there wasn’t systemic prosperity theft. Plus they are going to be in the workforce of tomorrow and some of them will take leadership roles. They want a Canada that is democratic; where the rule of law is respected, there's transparency and accountability in government and the administration of justice operates properly and fairly.
The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada stated in an October 2009 press release there were in that year “733,500 in undergraduate programs and 136,500 in graduate programs”. That’s 870 thousand people who have a vested interest in Canada being a democracy where the richest of the rich don’t systemically embezzle trillions of dollars of prosperity.
The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations said this about tuition increases:
In one of the wealthiest countries in the world there is no reason why an academically qualified student with the desire to pursue post-secondary education should face a barrier, financial or otherwise. Indeed, Canada's continued social and economic prosperity depends on our ability to produce creative and highly-skilled graduates. Unfortunately, sky-rocketing tuition fees are keeping many Canadians out of the classroom and forcing students to accumulate unreasonably high debt loads.
Escalating tuition fees constitute a financial barrier to post-secondary education (PSE). According to the Millennium Scholarship Foundation (MSF), the largest single reason cited for not pursuing a PSE was cost. Tuition plays a significant contributor to overall PSE costs. Statistics Canada reports that average undergraduate tuition fees increased 187% from 1990/91 to 2005/06, four times faster than the rate of inflation. That represents an average increase of nearly $8,000 for the cost of a degree in the last decade. In terms of historical context, the tuition increase of the 1990's was the most rapid and consistent rise in tuition since 1857 and at present post-secondary education tuition and fees are at their highest recorded levels ever.
In Who Killed Canada’s Education Advantage? by Roger Martin, published in The Walrus, November 2009, there’s documentation of what the wealthy and their political lackeys were doing to education during the mid-1990s. In retrospect we now understand after six years of research into the true nature of governance what was really going on: the rich and their foreign parnters were pocketing the cuts to education - another way to secretly extract captial from Canadian society:
Over the two fiscal years between 1995–96 and 1997–98, Martin achieved an impressive $33-billion turnaround in Ottawa’s fiscal position, moving from a $30-billion deficit to a $3-billion surplus. The economy had helped him by providing $21 billion of that figure in increased revenues, but he also cut $12 billion worth of federal spending.
[...]
But where did Martin find that $12 billion in cuts? The biggest rollback was in transfers to the provinces, money used to fund education and health care, the two biggest provincial expenditures.
[...]
In Harris’s first two years [1995-97], education expenditures dipped $1 billion, or 5 percent. The centrepiece of this program was a 14.3 percent cut in funding for Ontario universities.
[…]
It would take an increased annual education expenditure of over $21 billion across all levels of government in Canada to return to the per capita spending position we enjoyed relative to the US in 1995.
Source: http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2009.11-policy-who-killed-canadas-education-advantage
The CASA asked the major political parties in 2006 what their positions were on tuition issues* and the evidence lies in what happened after that inquiry: the responses didn’t jive with reality. Again another PR exercise that proved to be as hollow as those made to the poor & homeless** and the aboriginal community***.
Over the two fiscal years between 1995–96 and 1997–98, Martin achieved an impressive $33-billion turnaround in Ottawa’s fiscal position, moving from a $30-billion deficit to a $3-billion surplus. The economy had helped him by providing $21 billion of that figure in increased revenues, but he also cut $12 billion worth of federal spending.
[...]
But where did Martin find that $12 billion in cuts? The biggest rollback was in transfers to the provinces, money used to fund education and health care, the two biggest provincial expenditures.
[...]
In Harris’s first two years [1995-97], education expenditures dipped $1 billion, or 5 percent. The centrepiece of this program was a 14.3 percent cut in funding for Ontario universities.
[…]
It would take an increased annual education expenditure of over $21 billion across all levels of government in Canada to return to the per capita spending position we enjoyed relative to the US in 1995.
Source: http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2009.11-policy-who-killed-canadas-education-advantage
The CASA asked the major political parties in 2006 what their positions were on tuition issues* and the evidence lies in what happened after that inquiry: the responses didn’t jive with reality. Again another PR exercise that proved to be as hollow as those made to the poor & homeless** and the aboriginal community***.
** http://rc2010.yolasite.com/poverty.php and Research Addendum at http://rcc-newsitem5-5-10.yolasite.com
*** http://rc2010.yolasite.com/aboriginals.php In April 2010 this was said by the organization University Affairs:
Some sobering thoughts on tuition
There’s been quite a bit of discussion recently about tuition levels in Canada. Actually, the topic rarely leaves the minds of student groups – particularly the Canadian Federation of Students, which actively advocates for lower tuition.
They’ve had some limited success in the latest round of provincial budgets: Newfoundland is maintaining a tuition freeze, as is New Brunswick, along with a freeze in ancillary fees. But tuition will be going up nearly everywhere else: universities in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan will all be able to hike tuition by 4.5 to five percent next year – well above inflation – while B.C., Alberta and Quebec will see somewhat smaller tuition hikes.
[…]
[T]he Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations laments in a new report that rising fees and declining quality means university students are “paying more money for less education.” In current dollars, tuition was $2,750 a year back in 1967, less than half what it is today, the report notes. Every year since 1990, tuition increases in Ontario have outpaced inflation.
Another valuable study is the CFS’ Tuition Fees in Canada*.
In Wealthy and Wise*, the Canadian Bar Association’s Susan Goldberg argues "In the past decade, reports Statistics Canada, undergraduate tuition fees have risen an astonishing 126.2%, more than six times the 20.6% increase in inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index". “The increases stem in large part from dramatic cuts in federal funding transfers to the provinces for education.”
The CASA asks the question “Why have tuition fees increased so much?”. The answer lies in what the RCC discovered after six years of research. The richest of the rich are so addicted to power and accumulating wealth they don’t care about millions of students and their needs and aspirations. These wealthy families have had and will always have the means to send their kids to the best universities, ensuring they are properly trained and ready to take leadership roles in the public and private sectors. And they will carry on the traditions of their parents, grand parents and great grandparents – continuing and protecting the consolidation of power and hoarding Canada’s prosperity for themselves to the detriment of tens of millions.
