Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs,
Science and Technology
Subcommittee on Post-Secondary education
Issue 14 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Thursday, April 17, 1997
The Subcommittee on Post-Secondary education of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, met this day at 9:05 a.m. to continue its inquiry into the state of Post-Secondary education in Canada.
Senator M. Lorne Bonnell (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, we are honoured this morning to have with us the Honourable Robert W. Mitchell, Minister of Post-Secondary education and Skills Training from the province of Saskatchewan. With him is his deputy minister, whom we met previously in Regina when we had the chancellor of the university with us. She is with us again this morning because she did not want Saskatchewan to be forgotten. She always brings forward the powers of Saskatchewan.
We are pleased to have you here this morning. We have already received your brief. Perhaps you could tell us what is new in EDUCATION and what should be done differently.
Honourable Robert W. Mitchell, Q.C., Minister of Post-Secondary education and Skill Training, Saskatchewan Ministry of Post-Secondary education and Skills Training: Thank you for inviting me and giving me the opportunity to come here and have a conversation with you today.
I had considered for some time and discussed with my advisors how I should open today. We have filed a document that makes a number of points that are important for our province. I will not read that document, nor do I plan to refer extensively to it in my remarks. The appropriate thing for me to do is to begin with a short statement about some of the issues that are uppermost in my mind and in the minds of my government. We can then relax and have a conversation about subjects that are of importance to this committee.
For approximately 35 years, the federal government has provided a very valuable leadership in Canada with respect to the whole range of issues in which this committee is interested. I was reminded of that just yesterday in Regina when I released the Saskatchewan training strategy. I believe that you have copies of those documents filed with you.
The federal government has played an enormously important role, particularly in the training system, right across Canada and nowhere more so than in my province. With very generous federal assistance, we were able to construct the technical and vocational training facilities that we have. We are very proud of them. In addition, the federal government has provided very strong leadership in policy questions. That leadership has continued over the whole 35 years.
As a province, our approach has been to cooperate with federal programming and to supplement and support the federal initiatives and, where appropriate, give it a bit of an adjustment to make it fit Saskatchewan.
In the development of national programs, you will very often have a situation where the program does not fit perfectly with every part of Canada. Often you wonder what part of Canada the federal department had in mind with respect to some of these programs. In dealing with it on a provincial basis, we would have to find ways to adapt the program to our particular circumstances in the province. We complained frequently, as did many provinces, that a program was not appropriate for us or did not work for us or we needed some different kind of programming; but, overall, we were very content with the strong leadership shown by the federal government over many years in this important area.
I am focusing on the training system because it is in that area that we are having to spend so much time these days.
The announcement by the Prime Minister more than one year ago that the federal government was virtually vacating the training field set a challenge to us, as the federal government leaving the scene created a vacuum in the province with respect to a training policy or leadership in the training field. We understood at once that we would have to move and move very quickly with a strategy of our own to ensure that our citizens had access to appropriate training for the jobs that were presented in Saskatchewan and in the prairie region particularly.
We began that work almost at once. Our task took on particular urgency with the announced changes to the employment insurance fund. Those changes, of course, are familiar to the committee. I will not take the time to review those, but it created a fiscal dimension to the problem and added a note of urgency to our work.
It has been a very interesting year for us as we have tried to develop a framework for dealing with training issues in a policy sense and in coping with the financial difficulties created by the changes to the employment insurance fund. Fortunately, we were able to manage the fiscal part of the situation and in our budget that was tabled last month we were able to backfill behind the federal cuts. We have crossed that bridge and we are feeling secure as far as the future of our training system is concerned, from a funding point of view.
With respect to the policy questions, we have put together a plan that is sustainable and should serve our province very well. It is essentially a regional plan.
I mentioned a few moments ago that the national programs did not always fit provinces like Saskatchewan. Similarly, we realized that a Saskatchewan program would not necessarily fit all the regions of the province. I do not know whether this is the case in all of your provinces, but the labour markets differ remarkably from region to region within my province. The labour market in Swift Current is much different from the labour market in Prince Albert or in Yorkton. Senator Andreychuk is nodding her head because she knows that to be the case. It is quite a remarkably different labour market that we deal with in the different regions.
We concluded at an earlier stage that we should push as many programs and responsibilities as we could out to the different regions of the province so that they could assess their own needs in those regions and they could then move to mount training that would be relevant to those needs.
We have found broad public support for that approach. When I released the strategy yesterday, at the political level the opposition parties were in full agreement with the plan, and in the community it enjoys very broad acceptance. I think we are moving in the right direction.
We will be learning a lot of things as we go along. This is a new area for us, as it is for many provinces. We have much to learn but, in a sense, we welcome the responsibility. It is something that we should have done back in the sixties when the federal government became involved in this field. Provinces such as Alberta asserted their own jurisdiction at that point and moved very aggressively to develop their own manpower policies, as we used to call it, and their own training strategies. I think they are in a stronger position now with respect to those issues than provinces like ours, which cooperated with the federal government and allowed the federal government to provide the leadership.
I am not criticizing the leadership, because I think the federal government has done a solid job in this area for the period of their involvement, but the downside is that we sat back and let them do most of it during all those years and now we are suddenly confronted with the responsibility of doing it ourselves. We welcome that. It is a challenge to us, but the whole training community in our province is pulling together and working together as they never have in the past. We are quite excited about what we are doing.
In the past year, I have come to believe very strongly that that we cannot let this go too far. In other words, the federal pull back from the training field cannot and should not be total. I want to explain why I say that.
The danger in the federal government withdrawing completely from the field is that we will then have the training system divided on the basis of provincial jurisdictions with each province proceeding on their own without any appropriate consideration of the national perspective. It is my argument that the federal government should remain involved in training issues in order to bring the national perspective to some of these very important questions. I fear that if that is not the case, we will, over the long run, become increasingly separated from each other with respect to these issues. We will go our own way for reasons which internally seem logical to us but which will have an impact on the unity of the country and the situation of our people as they live out their lives in this country.
It is the case -- and certainly nowhere more so than in Saskatchewan -- that the mobility of our work force is a prized value. I say "nowhere more so than in Saskatchewan" because we export a lot of people to other parts of this country. We train them and give them some experience and then send them off in all directions to live their lives in other provinces -- at least, that is how it seems to us. This is an important element of our life that we should be at pains to maintain.
I fear that if we lose the involvement of the national government on these questions, then we will pay a price of an increasing balkanization of our labour market, where the provinces proceed in their own direction without appropriate regard for the interests of the national labour market and national consideration as far as working people are concerned.
I want to give you one example. We have now the red seal program with which you are familiar. That enables our journey people in Saskatchewan to obtain their qualification in their home province and then take that qualification practically anywhere in Canada and use it to obtain employment as a qualified journey person. That is a small example of what the federal government can do through a program like the red seal program. If the federal government is vacating the field of training altogether, then a red seal program would be a dream. It would be very difficult to achieve. It would require a degree of interprovincial cooperation which would be difficult to achieve in the absence of the leadership of the federal government.
My argument is that the federal government should stop and consider the implications of withdrawing from training totally. A national presence is important here and should be maintained. I have come to really appreciate that over the past year as we grapple with many of these question for the first time at the provincial level.
The second and related point is that for provinces such as ours, we need continued federal funding in this area. The poor provinces will simply not be able to afford to meet the challenges presented by the post-secondary system, including training, without a significant infusion of funds from the federal government. We will not be able to afford it ourselves.
In my province, as I mentioned earlier, we were able to meet the fiscal challenge of the changes to the CHST and the changes to the employment insurance fund, but we were lucky to be able to do that. We were only able to do that because of a turn around in our province that gave us a few extra dollars that we could devote to this area. If this had happened one year earlier, we would have been in a very bad way. If we had not been able to backfill behind the employment insurance rposttions, we would have lost 27 per cent of our training capacity in our vocational and technical training facilities. That is a big ticket number. It is just good fortune that enables us to be able to backfill to that extent and to be able to carry on. I worry that if the federal support for the post-secondary system and, more particularly, the training system disappears or diminishes, it will impact very heavily upon the poorer provinces.
In summary, we need the federal government to continue to be present with respect to the training system, first, to bring a national perspective to some of the issues surrounding training and some of the elements of the training system. We also need the federal purse to support us in our efforts at the provincial level.
All of the things I say recognize, as you did, Mr. Chairman, in our brief conversation this morning, the provincial jurisdiction for these matters. That is appropriate. I am not arguing any changes to the Constitution, but we have a country here that we are all interested in maintaining. We are talking about issues that have the ability to contribute a great deal to the unity of this country -- that is, the free movement of our people back and forth across boundaries, the recognition of each other's qualifications. The kind of country which that gives to us, and which we want to maintain, is a set of values that are worth maintaining. I fear that if the questions of Post-Secondary education get too far away from the federal government, we will lose our cohesion and level of cooperation with respect to these matters and in the long run we will become increasingly balkanized on these issues.
That is the important message that I wanted to bring to you today. It is not fully developed in our written presentation, so I spent some time on it.
In our presentation, we have dealt with a number of other matters that we know are of interest to the committee and are of interest to our province. Student assistance is one of them. We have dealt with that at some length. I would enjoy a discussion of that this morning, but I have nothing to add to the brief that we have filed.
We made one point in our presentation that I should like to enlarge upon. This is the question of technology and being able to capture some of the marvellous things that we are doing in this country using that technology both to capture it and to exploit it. This is a difficult point for someone as technologically retarded as I am to develop properly.
There is a lot of junk on the Internet and there are no mechanisms to sort out the junk from the good things. Increasingly, EDUCATION will be available on the Internet. There is no doubt about that. I am told that you can obtain university degrees on the Internet now from your own home. However, there is no quality control, as we have known it within the university system, with respect to the degree that you will obtain that way. This will be a fascinating area as time spins along here.
We in this country have a lot to offer to each other and to the world. We wanted to raise the idea that this committee might encourage some work in this area -- that is, some research and development -- to try to use the modern technologies to catch hold of this situation and to develop Canada's position and exploit the possibilities to our economic advantage and, in the long run, to our cultural advantage as well. That point is referred to in the brief and we would be happy to discuss that with you.
In conclusion, I wish to return to students. The situation of student financial assistance is in a state of flux. Discussions have been occurring between the provinces and the federal government. The federal government made some initiatives in its last budget in this area. There are elements of our program that we should like to urge on the national scene, for example concerning our remission and forgiveness policies and that sort of thing, to ease the situation with respect to some students. The amount of their debt load is of great concern to them. You have heard about that again and again here. We must pay some attention to that and, in one way or another, help students -- particularly those who are from modest backgrounds or have special needs. We owe it to them and to the future of our country to be generous as far as they are concerned.
I will stop on that note.
The Chairman: I will ask the former chancellor at your university in Regina, Senator Andreychuk, to lead the questioning today.
Senator Andreychuk: Thank you, Mr. Minister, for coming here this morning and for your brief and your explanation concerning not only some of the day-to-day issues confronting your ministry but also those issues in your ongoing dialogue with the federal government.
In our briefs and in the hearings that we have had to date, people seem to narrow in on the specific problems. I am pleased that you are standing back and looking at the effect and the global issue because that is what we want to do in the report, namely, not only talk about where we can recommend and adjust the system but also look beyond that.
If you have any suggestions concerning how this fine line can be drawn, I should like to hear them. How can we make a recommendation? On the one hand, the provincial authorities want the jurisdiction back for training in many of these areas. Yet there seems to be some need for some national presence. We have yet to hear how we can accomplish that as a recommendation. The obvious one is funding, but that is not where it ends. How do we create a new relationship between the federal government and the provinces? What I keep hearing is that we should go back to the kind of effort that the federal government made in the sixties, which now seems to be unacceptable to some provinces.
My broad question is: How do we suggest that framework of leadership from the federal government? Is it under the umbrella of the Council of EDUCATION Ministers? Is it creating a new capacity within the federal government that will bring together the threads of EDUCATION, training and employment in a way that has not been done in the past?
Mr. Mitchell: That is precisely the question that my remarks raise. It is a challenging one because I am not able to think of very solid analogies. Let me mention one that is an analogy and perhaps there would be argument about whether or not it is the proper analogy.
The situation with respect to health is instructive on this question. You have an area of provincial jurisdiction but you have a federal presence which is very largely a funding presence at its root and leads to extremely important consequences or by-products not the least of which is the Canada Health Act, which sets out the conditions for the federal funding to continue.
In my opinion, those conditions have literally held the health system together in this country during times of fiscal stress. It has required provinces to include in their health system some basic elements that the national health act sets out and which Canadians think to be important.
I am not certain whether that would fit this situation and I am certainly not at the point where I would recommend that to the committee as the model, but it illustrates a number of important points nonetheless.
You mentioned the Council of EDUCATION Ministers in your question. That council has done very important work over the years and has a high level of commitment from the provincial governments. It has focused to this point on the K to 12 system but it is expanding its focus, particularly in the last year, quite noticeably to include these issues. That may be the forum in which we could realize the kind of federal involvement or federal presence that I am talking about. It would be much more informal than the analogy of health that I have used, but that may be all that is required. It may be sufficient to have an informal mechanism like that as the place where the national government could enunciate the national priorities or the national concerns, especially as we move along with our provincial systems taking on maturity as provincial systems, and the federal government present at some such council raising the concerns of the national government about the directions in which we are going or making suggestions as to what we could consider as new directions in light of changing economic or technical changes in the national environment.
Absent some mechanism, we will go our own way. We have always done so in this country. If you leave it up to the provinces as an exclusive matter for their jurisdiction without any glue to hold them together or without any cohesive forces, we will head off in our own direction. That is what I have tried to express as a major concern of mine.
Senator Andreychuk: I also want to thank you, Mr. Minister, for carrying on a tradition in Saskatchewan of thinking ahead, particularly in EDUCATION. Today, I laud the present government and previous governments that have paid attention to EDUCATION as a top priority, even though we seem to export most of our products. However, we keep a few, as demonstrated by your colleague seated beside you.
You talked about modern technologies. I have just read a lot and participated in a number of seminars on the point that you are talking about. Our whole EDUCATION system from K to 12 and into the post-secondary system had quality controls on the dissemination of information. While we have had differing ideologies and different mechanisms for assessing facts from time to time -- and, I think that has been the richness of the development of our society, where we have allowed a lot of freedom of expression and thought -- the new technologies are putting disreputable information next to reputable information, with no mechanisms.
In a recent book, it was reflected that children are accepting materials on face value because our system still provides the environment for them to ingest this as if it is legitimate information. Through curriculum development and not waiting to Post-Secondary education, are you thinking about how we can reform our EDUCATIONal tools of young people so that they develop some skills for discerning the differences that were never in our society before?
Mr. Mitchell: Yes. I think that is a very good idea. We should conceive of some mechanism to put a stamp on the good stuff and not put a stamp on the bad stuff so that the students who you are speaking about will have some way of knowing whether or not what they are receiving meets a certain standard.
Presently, the range is between very, very good and very, very awful, and there is no way to discern which is which. You are correct when you say that when the kids enjoy it so much, they believe everything they read on it. It is similar to what we used to say in our day, namely, it is in the book. That was enough because it was written; it was printed. If it is on the Internet, it has a lot of status in the minds of the young people to whom I have spoken.
Senator Andreychuk: But that was the point. When we were told, "It is in a book", at least we knew that the book had some legitimacy and there may be varying books. I do not see the EDUCATION system readjusting itself by teaching children that their information base is much different than the information bases we worked on. Yet I find teachers, parents and parliamentarians still working as if we have the old information base.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes.
Senator Andreychuk: Parenting and the development of a child's cognitive skills has not been adjusted yet. There is not much research or much crystallized thinking yet on that area.
Mr. Mitchell: That is right. In the mean time, the technology keeps galloping along and we will never catch up. In other words, this is a moving target. This area deserves a good deal of study and a good deal of development. I repeat: We have a lot to offer.
We feel excited about it in Saskatchewan, because we have the SCN facilities, which are technologically on the cutting edge, and receiving sites all over the province. There are approximately 67 receiving sites in the small province of Saskatchewan, so we can get stuff out to our people. The possibilities for us in the area of using the technology to get our EDUCATION programs packaged, perhaps in an interactive format, and out to the various communities in Saskatchewan as EDUCATIONal tools is tremendously exciting.
The Chairman: Before I call on Senator Forest, I should like to tell you that some years ago there was another politician in your province who helped very much in Canada to put that Canada Health Act together, namely, Tommy Douglas.
Would it not be great if we could use the name Mitchell when it came to leadership in EDUCATION and Post-Secondary education in Canada; how they are frequently quoting what you have said in their report, and how you thought there should be some federal relationships to keep the country together so that we do not have all these little Balkan states with different views and training?
Mr. Mitchell: Well, Tommy Douglas is an icon in our province.
Senator Andreychuk: He is more than that.
Mr. Mitchell: We were talking about it this morning. Mr. Perrins was saying that he talked to someone who said he knew Tommy Douglas. I interrupted and said that Tommy Douglas slept in his house, because that is an old story in Saskatchewan. If Tommy Douglas had actually slept in all the houses that people say he slept in, he would have lived to about the age of 300.
The Chairman: I do not know what kind of reputation he had in Saskatchewan, but he certainly got a reputation in Canada as being the man responsible for health care.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes.
The Chairman: I should like to have the name Dr. Mitchell as the man for EDUCATION. It would certainly make a great book. People would say, "Did you know the minister slept at my house?"
Mr. Mitchell: Well, I do not think it will work.
The Chairman: I will ask Senator Forest from Alberta, another chancellor from another university, to ask you some questions.
Senator Forest: Thank you very much.
Mr. Mitchell, I was very pleased with your presentation. I think you have hit the nugget of the problem. How do we maintain a national presence while respecting the autonomy of the provinces?
Mr. Mitchell: Exactly.
Senator Forest: I was in the school systems in Alberta when vocational training came in. It was a struggle then for the province to try to keep a certain amount of its own autonomy while accepting the federal purse. I think a national presence and the national purse is a very good combination. Furthermore, it is necessary.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes.
Senator Forest: We have heard, from quite a number of people, the idea that the national presence is very important. Perhaps something along the lines of health care might be possible here, where there would be principles or guidelines -- some people call them standards -- which would respect the differences in the province but still keep a level that all provinces could meet.
Do you think that perhaps the provincial Council of Ministers of EDUCATION might be a body that could together to discuss this? You probably cannot speak for the other provinces, but do you think that this would be an idea that might meet with interest, if not enthusiasm, by some of the ministers? It might be a place where there could be a real partnership forged between the federal and the provincial jurisdictions.
Mr. Mitchell: I welcome that question. I will answer it, prefacing it with the remark that I have not discussed this with the other provinces, so I cannot speak with any authority. However, I am certain that a significant number of provinces would be happy to discuss this subject and to see what progress could be made, because a number of them share the concerns that I have expressed to you. They would express it in different words, but the idea is there.
Senator Forest: Yes.
Mr. Mitchell: That would be one appropriate forum in which the discussion to take place. However, it would not be unanimous.
Senator Forest: No.
Mr. Mitchell: But I think there would be some interest in it.
I mentioned that the council will be moving into these areas, and that is happening in September.
Mr. Dan Perrins, Deputy Minister of Post-Secondary education and Skills Training for Saskatchewan: Yes, in the fall.
Mr. Mitchell: We are having our first session dedicated to these issues and we have been instrumental in pushing that forward. There was a time, I think, when EDUCATION ministers were concerned almost solely with the K to 12 system, and the rest kind of looked after itself. However, as the years have gone by, we have seen ministers of advanced EDUCATION, continuing EDUCATION. The provincial responsibility has been steadily growing in that area. I think that the council is prepared to move into a consideration of these issues.
Senator Forest: That is a possibility.
Mr. Mitchell: Most of them would be interested in pursuing the idea that you put forward.
Senator Forest: You mentioned that you were presently in negotiations with the federal government with respect to this labour training, is that correct?
Mr. Mitchell: We have not begun formal negotiations with respect to their offer to devolve services, if that is what you are referring to.
Senator Forest: No.
Mr. Mitchell: We have a very good relationship with the federal department and particularly the local officials in Saskatchewan who have been involved in our training strategy, at least as interested bystanders. They have been kept informed. We have discussed all our plans with them and have obtained their informal views on everything that we have done. We are working closely with them, but we have not actually entered formal negotiations. We have been hanging back a bit because we are not ready.
Senator Forest: No.
Mr. Mitchell: Until we get the training strategy out, which we did yesterday, and we start to get some of that implemented, we are not in a position to move on the federal offer. However, we plan to do so. When we do move on the federal offer, we will probably wrap it up quite quickly.
Senator Forest: I was interested in your comment that you wanted to maintain the safeguards for financially distressed students, and so on, because we have certainly been hearing a lot about that. It is very important that that critical issue is addressed at both levels.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes, I agree. Thank you.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Thank you for your presentation.
If I understood you well, you are quite upset about the transfer back to the provinces of the vocational training and manpower training. I can see your point when you say that it will take away a sort of national concern or objectives, or whatever.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: On the other hand, I think it has a lot of positive things in terms of duplication of expenses and people not knowing where to apply. I come from Quebec, where we have been fighting for 30 years to get it back. It might not be the same situation in Saskatchewan, but I do not think it is all bad. I think it has a lot of good points.
I understand that you will have to work through some resistance from certain provinces regarding Post-Secondary education, but I still think that the Council of Ministers of EDUCATION is the best forum to commence the work on these issues. When you are dealing with EDUCATION, I do not think any political forum is very successful in becoming involved in this field in a precise manner.
What do you think will happen to Post-Secondary education, particularly at the university level? It is not that bad up to the college level, but when you get to the university level -- and, if the federal does not ease up a bit -- it becomes a bit more difficult, especially in Quebec. All the universities have been cutting their costs. Perhaps they still can be more efficient on an administrative point of view. I do not know if we have used up all the possibility. For instance, when we were in Regina, we visited the French college.
Mr. Mitchell: The Language Institute?
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Yes. They are finding it hard. The money is not coming from Ottawa as it has in the past. It is nice not to want to tell the federal government that it is not doing its duty, but -- and, it is not a matter of partisanship -- either the federal government decides that it wants the universities to carry on and that it will continue to aid them or it does not want to do so. We must then make some kind of adjustment. Although you have only two universities in Saskatchewan, in Quebec we have approximately six or seven. I cannot remember the exact number right now.
Mr. Mitchell: There are seven at least, yes. Nova Scotia has 12.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: However, I think they count colleges there.
Mr. Perrins: No.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: They have 12 universities?
Mr. Perrins: Yes, and they have rposted them from 17.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: I should know that. We were in Nova Scotia.
These are my general comments. I am very concerned. There was some easing up in terms of funding for research innovation and for students, but those students have not been born yet. It will not help students right now. Maybe I am exaggerating, but they will probably be four- or five-years old before they can benefit from it.
The only positive initiative is that the period of reimbursement can be extended, which might help the issue. Otherwise, I did not find anything in the budget to rejoice over in terms of Post-Secondary education.
Mr. Mitchell: No.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: I do not think I am too strict.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: This is not a partisan thing. I am concerned about EDUCATION. I taught in university. There was a time when there was much more money but many less students. It was a different world altogether. Today, we must live with what we have.
Let us not say that we are doing things that we are not. Put the tools and the resources in place so that the talk is converted into action.
Mr. Mitchell: I am very glad that you raised this subject. I feared for a moment that no one would do so and I have some things I should like to say about it.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Even if we do not agree, that is good.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes, that is right.
First, I agree with you that there are very positive aspects to the provinces assuming responsibility for the policy around training. You mentioned that in Quebec they have been engaging in this fight for 30 years.
Approximately 20 years ago, I was the Deputy Minister of Labour in the province of Saskatchewan. At that time in our province the Department of Labour had responsibility for what we used to call manpower issues. I remember very well the arguments then. They came from Quebec primarily, but I agreed with them and argued to the same effect.
My government and I welcome the opportunity to take charge of the training agenda and to try to move it in a way that is compatible with the needs of our province.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Yes.
Mr. Mitchell: I wish to acknowledge the federal leadership on the way, because that has been very important. They have produced very sophisticated programming over the years, and quite an extensive knowledge of what works and what does not work in the labour market. We have all profited by that and we cannot lose all that knowledge and that capacity. In one way or another, we must retain it, because it had such a national perspective that I talked about earlier.
I am not upset with this. I think this is a positive move. As long as we can afford to do it, this will be good for the county, especially if we can solve the problem of the national presence to which referred. I am inclined to agree that the council might be the best of the existing mechanisms. It will take someone wiser than I am to know what the best answer is here, but the council is certainly my choice right now.
Moving to the universities, the federal government should definitely ease up. It is a depressing situation to look at it from the point of view of a poor province. I class our province as a poor province. We are in receipt of equalization payments and we certainly have a very staggering debt level and a difficult fiscal situation that will continue all through the lives of all of us and into our children's lives before we get that under control and paid off.
Our capacity for funding universities is quite limited. The distressing part about the rposttions in the CHST transfers was that it signaled a retreat by the federal government from the shared cost understandings with respect to funding universities. I do not see any evidence around that either that retreat will be reversed or that the federal government is prepared at any point to resume its previous arrangements with respect to those shared cost agreements. That is an alarming thing from the point of view of a province such as Alberta, which is trying to maintain four universities, two of which are full-program universities. They are expensive places to operate, and they should be more expensive than they are, because they are all feeling the pinch to which you referred. That is happening not only in Quebec; it is everywhere. Universities are felling the pinch.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Yes, it is all over.
Mr. Mitchell: We know that in our province administrative savings can be realized. You may be aware of the steps that we have taken there. We have embarked on a process which has had remarkable results. I will spend a few minutes on the process, if that is all right.
The two universities in our province were operating in competition with each other and not in cooperation with each other. That is natural enough. They are competing for students, for research money and for government funds. They are not cooperating at all. That is the situation as it seemed to us, as a government. They are both trying to present a broad array of programs. In the case of the University of Saskatchewan, which is practically as old as the province, they have a very wide array of programs. The college of engineering is maybe their best example. It offers the broadest programming for engineering in western Canada.
Mr. Perrins: Yes, some say in Canada.
Mr. Mitchell: In Canada, perhaps. More than what is offered by the University of Alberta and Calgary, put together, is available at the University of Saskatchewan. We graduate dozens of engineers every year. We may retain four or five of them in the province of Saskatchewan. So that we postate them for the country. And, we postate them very well. They are marvellously successful and much sought after.
We want to continue to do that, but we realize that we are doing it for the nation. We are really doing it for the world, but for the nation in particular. We do not mind doing that, but to continue to do it properly, we need some significant help. That will only come from the federal government. As you said, Senator Lavoie-Roux, I wish they would ease up and take a realistic look at this in the future.
I convinced a friend of mine, a senior lawyer in Regina by the name of Harold MacKay, who will be known to Senator Andreychuk, to act as a facilitator between the two universities and get them together to see what could be accomplished by way of cooperation in administrative matters, initially, to see what they could do together that would give them savings, compared to what it cost to do it separately. He has achieved a remarkable degree of cooperation. He set the stage for them to cooperate on a wide variety of administrative matters.
Further, he was able to establish agreements between them for processes whereby they can cooperate on program matters so they do not launch new programs that duplicate a program that is available in the other institution. So that they will talk to each other before they do that and sort out who will do what. More importantly, they will begin to work on the question of mandate. In effect, they can divide up the university field between them in the long run, decide who will focus on what subjects, and try to become excellent in those areas where they are able to do that and not try to be all things to all people. I am extremely pleased and proud of that process. I think we are on a very good track there.
I want to take advantage of your question to make one other point. We have heard of a study that predicted that eventually there would be approximately 10 universities in Canada that would be first-class universities. The rest of the universities would be something else -- that is, second class or third class. We have also heard that in the prairie basin only the University of Alberta would be designated a first-class university. That is of great concern to us, because most of us can only afford to send our kids to university in either Saskatoon or Regina.
We are very alarmed about a system that would mean that in order for your child to have the best opportunity to have a successful life, they would have to go to Toronto or Edmonton or Halifax or Vancouver. We understand that some universities will be better than others because some are better endowed; some have better faculty; some have had better planning; and some have had a longer history and have been able to achieve excellence in certain fields. That is normal. However, to think that we would just sit by and watch the development of what would be a two-tier university system in the country, with 10 recognized universities as excellent first-tier universities that receive a lot of research money and a lot of support from the federal government and from industry while the other universities pick up the scraps and try to soldier on, would be an unacceptable situation. We simply must do something about that.
Senator Forest: I think everyone in this room would agree with you. No one else has a federated Indian college like the University of Regina.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes. That is a remarkable thing.
Senator Forest: If there is one response, that is it. Everyone admitted that the federal funding this year was a good start.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes.
Senator Forest: No one thinks that it is anything more than a good start. We must do better.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Could you give us the reference for the study that you talked about?
Mr. Mitchell: Yes, we could.
Mr. Perrins: It is Dr. David Cameron's work.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Thank you.
The Chairman: Is there anything else?
Mr. Mitchell: I wish to add one more note, Mr. Chairman.
I have probably taken more than my time here, but we are sufficiently alarmed about it that we have opened discussions with Manitoba and, to a lesser extent, Alberta, concerning how to cope with this problem. We have laid on the table the idea that we might actually combine all of our universities into one prairie university, with campuses in Edmonton, Calgary and Lethbridge and Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Brandon, using the existing facilities to form one university that would be able to compete in this new world scenario or this 21st century scenario that I referred to earlier. I do not know whether that will take root and develop, but the province of Saskatchewan is certainly prepared to work on that idea with our sister provinces.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Thank you very much.
Senator Andreychuk: I neglected one area that I think is very important. I think we have a very compelling case in Nova Scotia. Combining and combining is not the answer for excellence in EDUCATION. Even before embarking on a prairie basin idea, one must understand what universities are all about. It is not just competing in size. There is a decided disadvantage to that.
That seemed to be the attitude in government circles, namely, why do we have two universities? I give the MacKay study a lot of credit for putting the emphasis on excellence in EDUCATION. A lot of good things flowed from that. I think that expediency should not be what drives our EDUCATION system. I am sure you will factor all that in.
Aboriginal EDUCATION is something that preoccupies me, as it has the Royal Commission, a large segment of our society and this committee. There is a fundamental difficulty for aboriginal EDUCATION at a post-secondary level. There is the federal responsibility for aboriginals -- at least the majority of them -- and the provincial funding of universities. I know the struggle that the Saskatchewan Indian Federated Colleges experienced in order to be recognized as an accredited but self-regulated university -- that is, if I can use that term to get away from the term self-government. As they pointed out to our committee, they spent 10 years in limbo in AUCC, but they now have received full status on the question of the excellence of their programs.
Between the federal system that we have in place, the responsibility for aboriginals and the provincial system, how do we get aboriginal EDUCATION legitimized before the crisis accelerates and accelerates? To me, EDUCATION is a key.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes, that is a very important question and nowhere more important than in Saskatchewan.
Senator Andreychuk: Yes.
Mr. Mitchell: We are extremely pleased and proud of the SIFC for reasons that this committee will understand fully. The jurisdictional issue to which you referred still exists and is not sorted out. It stands in the way of SIFC development and progress. We simply must make that go away in one way or another.
We will try to negotiate our way through it. However, it is tied up with a lot of other questions regarding federal and provincial responsibility for status Indians. The federal government will acknowledge responsibility while they are on the reserve, but the moment they step outside the reserve they somehow magically become not Indians and become provincial responsibility. I distort that argument a bit for my own purposes, but that is standing in the way of SIFC. We simply must untie that knot quickly.
We also have a number of other aboriginal institutions such as the Gabriel Dumont Institute and Dumont Technical. We are working very closely with them and working hard on it to try to breathe fresh life into those organizations. We make progress, but not without difficulties.
The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Mitchell, for an excellent presentation. You answered our questions very clearly.
You mentioned several times that you had this manpower training policy ready to negotiate with the federal government. You announced it yesterday or the day before in your province. Would it be possible for us to get a copy of that policy to our clerk?
Mr. Mitchell: Yes. We have them here.
The Chairman: Could you leave one with our clerk so that we may have a copy of it?
Mr. Mitchell: Yes.
The Chairman: I think it might be worthwhile. I was looking at that as well.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes.
The Chairman: We want to thank you and your deputy for being here today. We met your deputy in Regina and we appreciated his input. If we have an EDUCATIONal policy on manpower training known as the "Mitchell Policy", it will certainly be an asset to Canada.
Mr. Mitchell: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just want to mention the MacKay work. If you have time, reading the report of Harold MacKay is one of life's great experiences. I have been around government for a long time. I have read a lot of reports, but this is clearly the best report that I have read. It is a piece of literature. It is very rare in government reports that you find a real gem, a real piece of literature. I recommend it to you if you have the time to read it.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Perrins: A bureaucrat did not write it.
The Chairman: You may remain here to hear what the next witness has to say, if you so wish.
Mr. Mitchell: I appreciate that offer. However, I have a full day of meetings, so I will have to leave. Thank you very much for the opportunity to come here and meet a committee such as yours on such an important question.
The Chairman: We want to thank you especially, Mr. Minister, for coming here today and showing such interest in Post-Secondary education.
We now have Professor Ross Finnie and Professor Saul Schwartz from Carleton University.
Welcome to our hearings. I will miss what you have to say, but I will be able to read about it afterwards. Thank you very much for coming here today.
I will ask the Deputy Chair to take the Chair at this time.
Senator Thérèse Lavoie-Roux (Deputy Chair) in the Chair.
The Deputy Chair: Bienvenue, Monsieur Finnie. Welcome, Mr. Schwartz. Please proceed.
Professor Saul Schwartz, Carleton University: We will limit ourselves to about five minutes each, because we would rather respond to your questions than have you listen to us. We will draw on all of our work, which extends from Mr. Finnie's previous testimony on another subject. Our work extends well beyond the fairly narrow but important topic of student loans.
First, higher EDUCATION is now more important, more risky, and more expensive than it has ever been. That creates the problem. If you take the point of view of the students, they are being asked to take chances that their predecessors were not asked to take. So that if we have in mind the idea of letting our children strive to fulfill their dreams, we should make sure that we have something in place for those who fail, because many of them will inevitably fail. For every person who wins an Olympic medal, there are many others who do not.
Second, student loans and the loans from the Canada Student Loans Program in particular are, in general, a very successful and positive program for Canada. In fact, they have been a model of cooperation between the federal government, the provincial governments and the post-secondary institutions. I wish to communicate that message first, because you will hear me criticize them soon. In general, it is quite a positive program.
In the last five years, two things occurred. First, provincial grant programs, especially in Ontario and in the maritimes, have essentially disappeared. So that provincial grants to individual students have essentially disappeared. In general, the amounts of money that students have had to borrow have risen dramatically. Our work, which Mr. Finnie will talk about in a minute, deals with people who graduated from university in 1990. Since that time, grants have been diminished dramatically and the borrowing levels have gone up dramatically. We now estimate that the average student borrows about $6,000 per year for each year that he goes to school. They do not all go to school for very many years, but that is the average amount per year.
I am involved in an evaluation of the CSLP with Human Resources Development Canada. As part of that, we have done some focus groups with borrowers. You hear some very scary stories. For example, in Nova Scotia a single mother told us about borrowing $12,000 to attend a dog-grooming program. She realized halfway through the program that she could never get a job -- that is, even if she could get a job -- that would give her enough money to pay back those loans.
You hear many stories about people doing exactly what we want them to do, namely, going for further training and EDUCATION, yet not seeing any reward for that. That is inevitable. In general, I think the loans are a good thing. However, beginning in a couple of years, you will hear scary stories. People who have borrowed a lot of money cannot find a job. That will occur more and more.
Third, in general, many people have the stereotype of a student borrower. It is a student who is in a university program trying to get an undergraduate degree. However, that is not the norm. Approximately half the students who borrow from the CSLP are not in university undergraduate programs. They are in community colleges and private training programs. Some are learning how to do computer network maintenance. They are paying $6,000 to $8,000 because those private schools are not funded by the government.
Let me give you an example. I was in Newfoundland last week talking about skill loans and grants. Skill loans and grants are a training program through the employment insurance program. It conflicts somewhat with student loans, because in some cases training is the same as university EDUCATION. In Newfoundland, because of the TAGS program which gave a lot of money at that time to U.I. recipients to go to school, approximately 100 new training schools were established in order to take advantage of the money that was available for training.
You must recognize -- as I am sure you are in your deliberations -- the interaction between training programs and traditional Post-Secondary education.
Professor Ross Finnie, Carleton University: First, I wish to talk about the overall patterns of borrowing and repayment. The old saying that comes to mind is that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. As was the case with child support and is somewhat the case with this, there is very little good data out there that documents most of the questions that we want to know about post-secondary-EDUCATION borrowing finance. I stumbled across some data that I have been able to exploit, and various publications, and entered it into our book, copies of which have been given to you.
Mr. Schwartz: Do not turn it upside-down. Someone in Newfoundland pointed out that if you turn the cover upside-down, it has this image of eyes crying or tears falling. I had never realized that. I hope it is not a conspiracy.
Mr. Finnie: I was able to come across these data, which are large, representative surveys of those who complete their college or university programs. There were three different generations included in the data: Those who finished in 1982; those who finished in 1986; and those who finished in 1990. One set of questions in these data are questions relating to student loans, for example: "Did you have a student loan? If you had one, how much was it?" Approximately two years after graduation, they were asked, "How much of it have you paid back?" Have you had problems? If you have had problems, what are the sources of those problems?"
The data that I was able to use were very representative, so we were able to do analysis by level of EDUCATION, by province, by field of study, by particular field of study, and by sex. We were able to do a detailed analysis and link these together with subsequent data, for example, the earnings of the individual in the early years in the labour market.
It would be nice to have annual figures concerning how much are people borrowing at each point through their EDUCATION. That is to say, at the end of their EDUCATION and then, following those individuals past graduation, what the situation is with their debt; how much they have been able to pay back; how that affects their lives; does it affect if they go on to graduate school, and so on. There are a whole range of questions. We could sit down and design a questionnaire that would be very useful. Maybe it would be worth doing. However, that does not exist. This is probably the best information that you will be able to find.
The problem is that the last group of students at which we were able to look are those who graduated in 1990. Obviously, things have changed since then, but even for 1990 the results are interesting, because they are kind of surprising and go against what most people thought was the situation, even in 1990.
The major results that we found, for example, for the graduates and those who finished in 1990, were that the percentage of graduating students at the bachelor's level, about half of them had student loans of any type. That means half of them had no student loans. First, that often is surprising for a lot of people who think most people have loans.
The average amount of borrowing at the successful completion of the program was about $8,500. Half the students had an average loan of about $8,500. There are a few interesting characteristics regarding that. The levels of borrowing seem to be about the same for men and women and there is more or less the same level of borrowing by field of study. It was a different case in the field of medicine, but for engineering, the high-income fields and the low-income fields, it was about the same. Another thing that was quite interesting is that about the same total were borrowing by level of EDUCATION. Master's graduates finished with approximately the same total amount of borrowing as bachelor's students, and it is the same with the Ph.D.
That is particularly interesting, because it goes against the story or the image that some people have in their mind that people go through when you hear about the average borrowing that goes on at the bachelor's level, and then you have to add to that the master's and then the Ph.D. It is not necessarily like that. The simple fact is that as people go through they accumulate more borrowing, but those people who tend to go on tend to have less borrowing at each earlier level. For example, master's graduates tend to have had much lower borrowing requirements when they were bachelor's graduates. This is discussed in the book. That is an important result.
The important result here is that in these data -- and, whether or not it is still true is an open question -- there is not this steady increase. You hear stories about people saying that they are finishing now with $20,000 and a bachelor's degree and that that will deter people from pursuing a further degree. Yes, it could be a deterrent factor, but the dynamic is not as simple as that. That is in terms of borrowing levels.
In terms of repayment, we actually found that rates of repayment were quite high, even over the first couple of years. Amongst those people who had borrowed -- and we are talking half the population of those who finished -- on average, somewhere about one-third of their debt had been repaid after two years. A substantial number had repaid their loans entirely. Some individuals had made very little progress, but repayment was relatively rapid.
More interestingly, of those who still had loans at two years outstanding, a relatively small proportion actually said they had difficulties repaying their loans. The numbers are contained in that book. Overall, it was 20 to 25 per cent. It is important to keep in perspective that the 20 to 25 per cent who said "Yes" had experienced difficulties. Remember that we started at the top. Only half the students had loans and about one-third of those had paid off their loans entirely by two years. Once the dust is settled, approximately 7 to 8 per cent of all graduates actually experienced problems repaying their loans under the Canada Student Loans Program.
The Deputy Chair: Is that for a bachelor's degree or for all degrees?
Mr. Finnie: It varies. That would be starting from the bachelor's. That is at the bachelor's level. The numbers are in the book.
For the master's level, it about the same -- that is, 20 per cent of those who respond. At each level, it works out to about that.
That is an important result concerning the difficulty that graduates were facing repaying the loans because that is probably a lower rate than one would have thought, even for 1990. I would again emphasize that the situation has changed since then. It would be interesting to know what the current situation is.
The Deputy Chair: It might have gotten worse.
Mr. Finnie: Yes. There is no question that it has become worse, but we cannot say to what degree. I do not know of any data that are really good at nailing down this sort of question.
In 1997, there will be another survey of this type, which will give us a better idea. On average, debt loads were not particularly high and people did not particularly have great problems in paying their loans back. However, there were pockets of problems. There is no question about that. That is an important way to look at this. On average, things were not so bad, but there are those pockets of problems for which we must be careful.
I wish to say something about the equity issues involved with post-secondary EDUCATION. Generally, students do not have that much money, but that is because they are at that point of their life cycle. No one has that much money at that age. On average, post-secondary students tend to come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and, more than ever, tend to go on to have higher earnings than others. As a result, transfers to Post-Secondary education are, in general, regressive. If you look at the average taxpayer, whenever money is transferred to Post-Secondary education -- that is, when studied in this longer time frame -- on average, it is a regressive transfer. That is to say, from the average person to those who tend to be better off. That is a consideration that should always be kept in mind. For example, as students are paying $3,000 or $4,000 in tuition now, a lot of the $8,000 or $9,000 or $10,000 that is being paid by the governments is going towards those who tend to come from socio-economic backgrounds and who will have higher incomes in their later years. That should be a consideration.
Related to that, though, is the issue of access. Not everyone who goes to Post-Secondary education comes from a favored background. Whatever policy is applied needs to take both of these things into account -- that is, the regressive nature on average and the fact that the average does not cover all cases. For families who do not have much money to support their child, particularly if it does not work out well, it is a different issue. For most individuals, $5,000 or $10,000 of tuition would be manageable if there were the mechanisms in place to borrow and to pay back over a reasonably long period of time. However, that will not be the case in all cases. It is a problem especially for those who do not have the family background to fall back on.
The next set of points is about the Canada Student Loans Program. That is in the title of the book. In our analysis, we conclude that the recent changes have been virtually all in the right direction. The most important changes are that the borrowing limits have been increased so that there is more money available for students who need it. There is also standardization of the borrowing; that is, who can borrow and who cannot. There is more equity across the country.
Most importantly, there have been increases in the programs that help out those individuals who are experiencing difficulties in the early post-graduation years, for example, for those who are unemployed. That has been extended now to those with low earnings. There is income support there. That is good. It is helping those for whom things do not work out so well through those rough, tough periods of time.
Finally, they have transferred the responsibility of the repayment over to the banks, which we think might actually lead to more flexible and more efficient collection of student loans. There should be lower default rates.
The old system was a very rigid payback, supposedly over a certain 10-year period of time. If someone was going through a difficult time, if the banks sat down and actually negotiated repayment, they risked, in many cases, putting the federal guarantees for those loans at risk. There were actually strong disincentives to be flexible in the past. Most of those disincentives have been reversed, because now the banks are fully responsible for the loans. That could lead to banks sitting down and saying, "You are having a tough time now? Okay. When can you start to pay it back," and so on.
We think that the Canada Student Loans Program has generally been significantly improved in the last few years. In fact, it has gone a long way towards having the sort of flexibility that an income-contingent program would have. It will be interesting to see what the results of that will be.
The last point I want to make has nothing to do with my research and has only to do with my experiences, the experiences of my colleagues and the experiences of students. What we hear and see and live is that things have changed dramatically in the post-secondary system over the last three or four or five years. We are talking about a serious decline in the quality of EDUCATION. No new professors are being taken on and student class sizes are increasing. They are higher than ever. Students going through whole programs rarely have a class with less than 200 or 300 students. There are cutbacks in teaching assistants, so for their exams, instead of writing real answers to real questions, they are multiple choice. This is the system today. It is a factory, and a deteriorating, falling-down factory.
Our notion of what EDUCATION should be, which has always dealt with Plato and the marketplace, discussing ideas and getting that sort of exchange, putting ideas to paper and having those ideas evaluated, and the exchange amongst students and between professor and students, has deteriorated significantly over the last few years.
Whether tuition is $3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000 a year, that matters to many at the individual level, but by and large the bigger question concerns the Post-Secondary education system in Canada. What should it do? For whom? Who should pay for it? The biggest issue is the notion of quality. The quality of our post-secondary institutions, in my subjective viewpoint, is going down fast. That is whether you are at Carleton or at Queen's or at any university. It is the same situation everywhere. That is of concern immediately and for the future. When we talk about the knowledge-based economy, that is the heart of the knowledge-based economy.
Every time we lose a professor because he or she goes down to the United States because there are better facilities to do the research or they can make two or three times as much money; every time a student has a multiple-choice exam instead of expressing his or her ideas on paper and getting useful feedback; all of that is eliminating the possibilities for the future. We will pay for that.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
I am glad that you came here today. We heard from students everywhere. They placed the emphasis on the quality of EDUCATION and also on the debt load. Some told us that they would end up with $40,000 debt and they are not guaranteed jobs. You have examined the problem more closely, and it is interesting for us.
Mr. Finnie: Journalists always stumble into these students in cafeterias. All these students owe $40,000. For example, I ask you to look specifically at table four in our book.
The Deputy Chair: On what page?
Mr. Finnie: It is on page 30. We actually show the distribution there. This is for 1990. It shows the proportion of students with different levels of debt. If you look, for example, at those with greater than $15,000, you are talking about 15 per cent of the male B.A. students; about the same for women. Only about 15 per cent at the bachelor's level are graduating with more than $15,000 in loans and for those with more than $20,000 -- and this was in 1990 -- it is 5 per cent.
Mr. Schwartz: There is a little-known fact about student-loan borrowing that will make sense as soon as I say it. The students who borrow the most are the students who have been the most successful, because you do not get to borrow $40,000 or $30,000 or $20,000 unless you have been in school for a long time. The student who goes to a one-year program which turns out to be irrelevant to their job situation will not borrow $30,000. It is the student who has graduated from a bachelor's program or gone on to a master's program; they are the ones who are borrowing the big numbers, but they are also the ones who are likely to be the most successful in the labour market and therefore most able to pay off the large loans. The amount of loan is correlated with post-secondary success. However, it is not perfectly correlated. You will get people who borrow a lot and do not do very well but, in general, those who borrow most are those who are most able to pay.
Senator Andreychuk: I am getting increasingly confused. Could you go back over what you said, namely, that the borrowing does not accelerate for master's and Ph.D.?
Mr. Finnie: Yes. It is an interesting result, is it not?
Senator Andreychuk: Do you know why? There is a myth or a reality that we have heard from other people who say that you can borrow less for your first degree because that is the degree where you need the least specialization. As they climb into master's and Ph.D. programs, the sophistication of the tools and the added costs are so much greater that it is not just a tuition borrowing but all the other things that they must do. We have been told the contrary. You are saying that the borrowing does not go up. Yet I heard a moment ago that it is the student who has been the most successful, in the longest, and working on his next degree that is borrowing $40,000. How do we tie all that in?
Mr. Schwartz: The key point is that the students who are in school for a long time are those who come from higher-income families. There is a pattern in the data that says that, for example, if you looked at master's students, on average, they will have borrowed less when they were undergraduates because they were not eligible to borrow as much. Their parents were wealthier. That is the pattern Mr. Finnie was talking about.
I am talking about those few students you will hear from or read about in the newspaper who say, "I have borrowed $40,000." Those few people are the ones who did not come from high-income families and who had to borrow $6,000 a year for four, five, six years. That is anomalous. The general pattern is that people who get MAs and PhDs have come from higher-income families; therefore, were not eligible to borrow as much when they were undergraduates.
Is that fair, Mr. Finnie?
Mr. Finnie: Yes. That is an important result. For example, the table on page 25 shows the average borrowing levels. We do not know exactly why, but, for example, at the bachelor's degree people finish with a debt load of $8,700; those who completed their master's degree had incurred a debt load of $8,400 and $8,600; and those at the Ph.D. level had a debt level of $7,500 and $9,000.
Senator Andreychuk: However, you say your data stops at 1990. We will be writing a report in the near future. If we listen to a lot of evidence that we have heard, the title of our book should be "Sounding the Alarm"; if I listen to you, it should be "Dispelling the Myths."
I am uneasy because the dramatic cutback of transfer payments to universities and to all the social infrastructures that go into families, students and universities has occurred from 1990 to now.
Mr. Finnie: That is correct.
Senator Andreychuk: Whether or not it is based on fact, there is a high level of anxiety. I am firmly convinced, as I said yesterday, that there is a certain amount of cynicism built into students, and a questioning nature, and so on, which is very healthy. They will confront whether or not they are getting a certain quality of EDUCATION and if they are paying too much for it. I discern that, despite the fact that that goes on generationally -- and, it is a healthy thing -- there is an anxiety level that has not been there before.
Will your statistics hold to a sampling for 1990 to 1997, or will they change? If they change, is it because the jobs are not there for them in increasing numbers?
Mr. Finnie: Maybe "Sounding the Alarm While Dispelling the Myths" would be a good title. There are some myths to dispel, for example, the BA, MA, PhD incremental thing.
Senator Andreychuk: Yes.
Mr. Finnie: I ask people, "What is new?" They say, "Even in 1990, if someone had said to you that only 6 or 7 per cent of all undergraduates who complete their degree actually take out loans and have problems repaying them, most people are surprised. Yes, things have deteriorated, but they have deteriorated from a base and with a structure that is one about which we did not know so much. That is to say, yes, it has become worse since 1990, but it was not as bad in 1990 as we might have thought. That is important.
Also, the general patterns are likely to have remained. For example, borrowing by field of study and by gender has probably remained approximately equal. We do not know this, but certainly for the three cohorts we looked at, that is probably still the case.
When you start to look at where the problems lie, they are where people tend to be in fields which have lower earnings after graduation. We have individuals taking out loans and looking ahead, knowing that they should do so. In some sense, they are choosing to take out these loans. They are entering those fields of study and the problems are still focused on those fields where earnings tend to be lower, and so on.
One perspective of this is to put the onus back on to the students and say, "Be careful when you take out a loan and when you choose your field of study. There is a pattern of indebtedness related to field of study and difficulty with repayment related to field of study", which makes good sense. It is related to what happens in the labour market. The 1990 record is different, perhaps, than we thought it might have been. Even though the trends are from there, they are from a different base than we might have thought. The general structure of borrowing in terms of the details is probably more or less the same.
Finally, I wish to address the last point about the jobs not being out there. Using these same data in another area of research, the lack of jobs is a myth that is greatly over-exaggerated. That is to say, the record, in terms of employment patterns, earning levels, and so on, have not fallen off greatly for post-secondary graduates, despite the sort of ad hoc evidence that one hears. For example, as the graduates from 1990-92 moved into the labour market, things did not seem to be so bad.
There is no strong evidence amongst post-secondary graduates that things have gotten particularly worse since the early nineties. For those who do not continue, for example, the low skilled and the younger students, things have gotten worse. One of the myths that we must be careful of is, "Yes, things are going badly for the young people as a generation, but not so badly for those with post-secondary degrees."
The Deputy Chair: That is not what we hear in the community.
Mr. Schwartz: I am sure you do not.
The Deputy Chair: People who graduate from programs in commerce, law, engineering, and so on, do not have jobs.
Mr. Finnie: I have the 1995 data and I am starting to work with those graduates now. We would have thought things were worse for the 1990 graduates than, say, the 1982 graduates, but that was not true. Unemployment rates and levels of earnings were about the same. Things were better for the 1986 graduates because the mid-eighties were a very strong period of time. The overall story is that things were not particularly worse for 1990 graduates than they were for 1982 graduates. Those are the data.
Mr. Schwartz: Let me give you some historical perspective that might help you as you write your report.
In 1966, there was a lot of debate around the issue of whether students would ever borrow at all and whether we were imposing a tremendous burden on students by making them borrow as these programs were just starting up. The answers were unknown at that time. People said, "Well, 1966 is not the same as 1960; we will have to wait to see the new data." Students continued to borrow and there was a huge upsurge of access to EDUCATION, partly because of that borrowing.
In 1976, a Washington consultant wrote a famous article called, "are we overburdening a generation?" The concern was that students had borrowed, despite fears that they would not. Now that they had borrowed, the question was: Were we overburdening a whole generation by imposing on them the student loan burden, which they would have to repay when they graduated? The consultant's answer was that they had not borrowed enough yet.
I did a study in toward the late eighties because the U.S. Senate was worried that students were borrowing so much that they would not be able to buy cars or houses or, in general, lead the kinds of lives that you would expect people to be leading in their late twenties. Again, our answer was that they had been borrowing more than they had been borrowing in 1976, but at this point there was no evidence, aside from this same small group of 5 or 10 per cent, that they were having any difficulty in borrowing.
In the late eighties, we said, "But things have changed. We will have to wait until the nineties to find out how much they have changed."
In our book, Mr. Finnie and I have said that in 1996, we are looking at 1990 graduates. They are also borrowing more than their predecessors but, overall, they are not having a great deal of difficulty repaying. We are also saying, "Wait a minute. Things have changed dramatically in the 1990s." Having said that, I am worried. However, I am worried in the same way that people were worried in 1966, 1976 and 1986. I do not know what title I would give the book, but we have seen the same pattern over the years. Things are still changing. Students are still borrowing more, but we are in uncharted territory, as we have always been.
Mr. Schwartz: Let us put it in perspective, too.
The Deputy Chair: I am sorry, but I must interrupt you. I apologize, but both Senator Forest and myself must go to the Finance Committee.
Senator Forest: I am sorry but I must leave now.
The Deputy Chair: I want to thank you for your presentation. I will read the transcript very carefully. It was interesting to have things put in such an accurate perspective. We have heard all kinds of things all across the country. This is an important issue and it will help us with our consideration of the inquiry on Post-Secondary education.
Mr. Finnie: We represent no single interests. I think we can safely say that. We care about this system.
The Deputy Chair: Yes.
Mr. Finnie: We tried to do this objectively.
Senator Forest: I move that Senator Andreychuk take the chair now.
The Deputy Chair: Is it agreed?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Deputy Chair: Carried.
We apologize for this interruption. Senator Andreychuk, please take the Chair now.
Senator Raynell Andreychuk (Acting Chair) in the Chair.
The Acting Chair: I also apologize. Usually this kind of frenetic activity occurs at the end of June, but there seems to be this uncharted territory concerning whether or not there will be an election.
Mr. Schwartz: I thought it was to be on June 2.
The Acting Chair: Exactly. We are acting as if we are at the end of June, which means that most of us are obliged to be at four committees, sitting at the same time. Fortunately, however, we have the benefit of transcripts here which are provided to us very quickly. A lot of reading occurs and everyone does catch up. The depleted ranks does not mean that the interest level is not there.
Is the issue of universality, which was always tied in the sixties with EDUCATION, to make it more accessible? We wanted to have equalizers for all people who have the skills to go to university and who want to go to university. We have withdrawn a lot of money; there is a lot less money around. Do your statistics come down to the fact that we need to do something more for that target group, whether it is 8 or 10 per cent? In other words, are they people who should be in the university sector but are struggling because of finances to be there? Should we be doing something special for them?
Mr. Finnie: Our statistics actually have no bearing on that, in the sense that as tuition goes up, who is then deterred from going to university?
The Acting Chair: Also, you pointed out that most people enter into loans. The debt level is still of acceptable proportions, although it is escalating. They can repay those loans because they have jobs waiting for them to enable them to do so -- that is, with the exception of the 6 or 8 or 10 per cent who are struggling with the repayment. Perhaps I unfairly implied in that that this was an unjust struggle in some way, because they are valuable resources for our society. Do we need to do more for them to eliminate the difficulties they are experiencing while trying to repay these loans, or are they self-inflicted wounds?
Mr. Schwartz: The discussion in the book is about bachelor's graduates. I do not think they are the people you have to worry about. There is no question that some of them are having difficulty; there is no question that a small percentage of them made a great struggle to get through and do not have jobs. Remember that half the people who are taking out these loans are people who are not going to universities; they are going to community colleges, private trade schools and are taking non-degree programs. That sector is serving neither the children of the middle class nor the children of the rich. That sector is serving the lower middle class. They are the people who are taking, for example, the course on dog grooming or on the World Wide Web. There is very little control over the quality of those institutions. I am not sure there is so much control over the quality of universities, but there is certainly less control over the qualities of private training institutions, and perhaps community colleges. That is where the default rates are found and that is where the people are signing up for a one-year or a two-year course and finding out that there is no employment for them when they graduate. Again, it is not everyone. My guess is most people who go to those schools are getting value for their money. That is where I would be worried, if I were you. I would not worry about bachelor's graduates.
Mr. Finnie: I do not think we disagree with the other point, namely, for those people for whom it does not work out, is there a safety net in place to help them to some degree? That is one of the major advantages of an income-contingent sort of program. We talk about income contingent in this book. One of the advantages is that, in some sense, it is a form of insurance against those people for whom, whether they complete their programs or not, earnings are not very high in the post-graduation years. That is an advantage. In general, is there a system in place? As Mr. Schwartz began his remarks, it is riskier than ever.
Is there something in place to insure against that risk? Recent changes in the Canadian Student Loans Program have gone somewhat in that direction. As I mentioned earlier, they have increased the interest subsidies going not only to the unemployed but also to those with low incomes. That is probably a step in the right direction. In general, this can be a deterrent factor. That is to say, if people are looking ahead, even if they have all the facts they say, "I have a 5- or 10-per cent chance that I will borrow all this money and I will have a hard time repaying it." That will be felt most keenly by those who come from families who do not have the resources to pitch in and help.
Let me give you a specific scenario. You have a family with two identical children in terms of the same ability and the same interests in pursuing Post-Secondary education. One comes from a wealthier family; one from a less-wealthy family. The two might say, "I want to give it a try, but I am not sure it will work out." The one from the wealthier family might then have the assurance, "Well, even if I accumulate a fair amount of debt, there will be someone there to help me out if I have to pay it and I do not have the post-graduation earnings out of which to pay this money."
The person from the lower socio-economic background will not be in that same situation. In many cases, this insurance aspect that we are talking about is a private arrangement within a family because that is how we function. For those where there is not that insurance, is there some sort of other insurance or something in place to help those individuals out? This is why I think we do agree, because, to that degree, the question of access is important.
On average, to be $15,000 or $20,000 in debt is not very much for most graduates. That is the price of a car and people have not stopped aspiring to buy cars. However, for someone who is facing that situation upon graduation and does not feel the assurance that there is something there if it does not work out, that can be a serious problem with respect to access.
The Acting Chair: That is something that we should be concerned about and look at that area?
Mr. Schwartz: As part of the HRD review of the Canada Student Loans Program, I wrote a literature review on the effect of loans and grants on enrollment and persistence. It is pretty clear from that literature, most of which is American -- you should keep that in mind -- that grants have a positive impact on enrollment and persistence. If you give people, money you increase the probability that they enroll.
The evidence on loans is quite ambiguous. If you look at the 10 or 12 studies that have been done, some of them say that giving people more loans increases their possibilities of enrollment and persistence. Other studies show that it decreases it, because of the issues that Mr. Finnie has raised. Other studies show us there is no impact. That is a difficult one. I do not think we know about that.
What we do know, again from American studies, is that it is true that poor people are more reluctant to borrow. It is not that they will not borrow. If you ask people if they think it is all right to borrow for EDUCATION, 95 per cent of upper-class people will say "Yes" -- of course, they do not have to borrow; about 90 per cent of the middle-class people who do have to borrow will say "Yes, it is okay;" but only about 80 per cent of the poorer people will say "Yes". There is some relationship between family income and willingness to borrow.
Mr. Finnie: For example, the notion which we share to a large degree is that, on average, the amount of debt they accumulate is not an excessive burden. In the case I talked about earlier, where that investment in themselves does not work out, that is a problem. Even those for whom the investment would work out might have a different attitude and hesitate to make that investment that would be appropriate.
Sometimes economists take that into account, but perhaps not as much as they should, when championing the cause of higher tuition with the income-contingent plan to allow individuals to pay those higher rates back over a lifetime. First, there are the real issues of the insurance; and, second, the psychological issues about which Mr. Schwartz just spoke.
The Acting Chair: My final question concerns something that you raised and was raised in our hearings in Vancouver, namely, that Post-Secondary education is not only community colleges and universities but also lifelong learning, which is now coming through more private enterprise. In some cases that is regulated provincially and in some places it is not. For example, you can set yourself up as giving out computer courses. What comes through my machine these days is unbelievable.
First, is that an area that we should be concerned about? Second, how does that tie into the loan situation? Are more people looking to alternate ways of Post-Secondary education? Is that the risky factor because counselling services are not built-in and all those things are not built into the system?
Mr. Schwartz: Yes. Actually, I have a fairly strong opinion on that. Those private training schools provide a very real alternative for those people that I worry about the most, namely, the lower-income people. However, they are dramatically under-regulated. It is a provincial responsibility to ascertain the quality of these schools but they do not do it. They do not look at how good those schools are. No one goes into those schools to see what is being learned. They claim that 90 per cent of our graduates get jobs, but no one checks to see how many do get jobs or how many do get jobs in the field for which they have been trained.
Having said that they are valuable because they serve the people I worry about, the default rate in British Columbia is roughly 50 per cent of loans given to students in those schools. I do not think it is because the students are deadbeats. I think those students are coming out with no jobs and big loans. They need to be much more heavily regulated, but we cannot rely on the market to do that. In principle, you could rely on the market to say, "If there is a school that is not providing quality EDUCATION, eventually it will vanish." However, that does not seem to happen.
The Acting Chair: Is this a growing phenomenon in Canada? It was always what we thought was an American phenomenon.
Mr. Schwartz: I do not have those numbers in front of me, but everything I have seen suggests that more and more students are going to those kinds of schools. It is not necessarily people who would have gone to universities or community colleges; it is people who have worked for a few years and they are now 22, 23 or 24 years old. They realize that whatever they have is not enough. They do not want to learn about Shakespeare, even though I might want them to do so. They want to learn Java. They say, "Give me a course on Java and how it fits into the World Wide Web so that I can go to school for one year --or six months, if necessary -- and then go to a company and say, `I know Java. Give me a job'." I do not think they are competing for the traditional market. They are competing for the person in their twenties who is either unemployed or worried about the security of their employment.
The Acting Chair: You said that you did not have those statistics with you now?
Mr. Schwartz: I do not have those numbers, no.
The Acting Chair: Are they available?
Mr. Schwartz: It is such an underregulated sector, I do not think we know how many students are involved. I do have the proportion of Canada student loans that are given to students in that kind of institutions, but it is not in front of me.
The Acting Chair: We would appreciate receiving that information.
Mr. Schwartz: I think that is published by the CSLP each year in the Part III estimates.
The Acting Chair: If you could pull it out and give us one copy, it would be helpful.
Mr. Schwartz: I will look for it, but I think it is an under-regulated and understudied area -- especially on the quality level, where the numbers will not help you very much.
The Acting Chair: Do you have any questions?
Mr. Finnie: I should just like to add a comment on that. There is an information element to the degree that it is a problem. For example, people at HRDC talk about graduating students who say, "You mean I have to repay my loan?" This is just at the basic level. One often hears about this type of thing. Beyond that, there are great differences by field of study.
Are individuals aware of this? They are adults and we treat them as adults who are making rational investments in themselves. On the other hand, there seems to be information problems of the type Mr. Schwartz just spoke about as well as the other type involving getting the information out there. For example, an information packet attached to the CSLP which states, "Here are what your repayment terms will look like," might be useful. For example, instead of someone who is 18 years old borrowing up to the limit for university, he or she will be reminded, "If you borrow this amount, you will have to pay it back. These are the terms." They will have that sort of rational attitude towards it. If that information is provided about the differences by field of study so that students are aware of it, that may help students make the plans that are best for them.
The Acting Chair: I think that is a good note to end on. Thank you very much for having put us on a more reflective note in this area. We have received a lot of emotionalism and personal situations. Thank you for your academic approach to it, the statistics, and your own reflections.
You have underscored a point that was made almost at the start of our hearings, namely, that some information and counseling on how to get yourself into an appropriate loan base, as opposed to simply taking out a loan, would be important. In other words, there is a lot of consumerism about not overloading yourself on your Visa, but we are not saying, "Do not overload yourself on loans when you go to university unless you know what you will face when you graduate." It is as much consumerism as it is EDUCATION.
Mr. Finnie: In the much better social framework, the individual is investing. It is a social investment as well, which makes it a very tough problem.
We cover the notion of what student loan levels and tuition levels should be in one of the appendices to our book, which was meant to provide this private versus social context and the notions of equity. To the degree you want to follow up on those issues, we refer you to the appendix.
The Acting Chair: Thank you for putting that in and for making the book a bestseller amongst us.
Senator Bonnell has just returned from his meeting, so I will now have him take his place at the table.
Senator M. Lorne Bonnell (Chairman) in the Chair.
The Chairman: Perhaps I could thank you as well. I am sorry I did not hear all you had to say, but I was able to get a budget for this committee to carry on its work. That is important, too, because with no finances you cannot get a student loan; you cannot do anything.
Thank you for coming here today. All the things you have said are on the record now. We will be able to keep copies of it.
We appreciate Senator Andreychuk continuing this meeting as Acting Chair. Everyone is so busy these days, they seem to be getting ready for something. I am not too sure yet what it is, but we will probably find out before the end of next weekend.
Once again, thank you very much.
Mr. Schwartz: Thank you.
The Chairman: We have with us now representatives from the National EDUCATION Association of Disabled Students. First, I will ask Mr. Asuncion to introduce his colleague. You will then have half an hour to give us your presentation and then we will have some questions for you.
Please proceed.
Mr. Jennison Asuncion, Vice-President, Internal, National EDUCATIONal Association of disable Students: I am a student at Concordia University in Montreal. I am here with the national coordinator of needs.
On behalf of our president, Kent Hare, the entire executive and our board, which I sit on as well as the open representative, I should like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to your subcommittee for allowing us the opportunity to speak to you today.
Our organization looks upon our submission to your subcommittee and my presence here today as particularly noteworthy, as it gives us a unique opportunity to both heighten your awareness of and explicitly state for the record the dominant issues and the critical concerns that are facing Canada's students with disabilities, which in 1991 represented 7.4 per cent of the entire student population. We can well extrapolate that this has increased a great deal.
I should like to open my presentation by stating what is obvious for us and what we should like to bring forth to all of you, namely, that the access to a barrier-free and fully accessible Post-Secondary education is instrumental for us, in that it allows us to gain the benefits of obtaining the necessary skills and knowledge necessary to integrate successfully in the labour market.
The way I would like to proceed with the presentation is as follows: I will tell you a little bit about our organization, our work in that respect, and then I will talk about some specific Canadian issues that are of concern. I will conclude with some of the initiatives that we are looking to you and to other sectors in Canada for your support. We will then be more than happy to answer any questions that you might have.
The National EDUCATIONal Association of Disabled Students, NEADS, is a consumer-driven organization. Last year, at our convention in Toronto, we celebrated 10 years of distinguished work in this field. Along with our affiliates in Quebec and British Columbia, our direct participation with our members and our communication, our mandate is to encourage the self-empowerment of students with disabilities so that they may gain access to a successful and fulfilling Post-Secondary education and beyond.
The structure of our organization is as follows. We have a board of directors which is elected and which represents each province and the territories. It is cross-disability in scope. From there, we have an executive made up of the president, vice presidents and secretary/treasurer. In Ottawa, we are well served by a team which is headed by Mr. Smith. We also have some other members of our support team that help us with the day-to-day operations of our organization.
We strive to provide to our members, to the disability community at large, and to other interested parties, the most comprehensive and up-to-date information on services offered at the post-secondary level to students with disabilities; avenues of funding that are available, whether it be scholarships or regular funding through the government; and initiatives in school-to-work.
In 1996, we participated in a task force that was set up to look into the national government's role vis-à-vis disabled persons in general. The title of the report was "Equal Citizenship for Canadians with Disabilities: A Will to Act."
I would encourage all of you to take a look at that study in order to find out the global scope of disability issues in Canada.
For our part, we were well equipped to represent the needs of our students with disabilities. In fact, we submitted as part of our contribution a 1996 employment opportunities study, which had some important statistical information on the state of affairs with disabled students. I will touch upon that briefly, and during questions I would be more than happy to deal with that a little more in detail.
Above and beyond that, over the past years we have advised HRDC on the Canada Student Loans Program, most especially for persons with permanent disabilities. We work in collaboration with AUCC, the CFS, and all other organizations in other project work. This past year we have been taking great effort to take advantage of the World Wide Web. I just heard about that in your other speech. We are taking full advantage of the World Wide Web in terms of making our information available. We have also taken the liberty of collaborating with our friends, our colleagues, in the United States and internationally. In fact, this summer NEADS will be representing Canada, and I will be representing NEADS at an international gathering of student leaders. We will be discussing all forms of advocacy and Post-Secondary education and careers. We are really excited about where our organization is headed.
Thanks to funding through the HRDC and through other channels, we are currently working on the National Approaches to Services Project which I would be more than happy to discuss later. We also have a mentorship program which will see students with disabilities placed in situations of employment next year, for one or two days, or a week, so that they get an idea of what is awaiting them in that field. That is a little bit about our organization.
I will turn now more to the nitty-gritty of the problems and the issues. I do not see them necessarily as problems; they are issues that are coming to the forefront. In 1991, 7.4 per cent of disabled students made up the population. There is now a growing demand for Post-Secondary education, both by students with visible disabilities and those with invisible disabilities, who we represent as well. I include in that respect students with learning disabilities most especially. In the United States and in Canada, students with learning disabilities are growing in number in terms of their overall recognition, and we must represent all disabilities as best we can in our organization and in general.
The new funding arrangement under the Canada Health and Social Transfer will have a noticeable impact on Post-Secondary education in the country. Prior to the current changes, money was set aside specifically for post-secondary EDUCATION. Currently under CHST, the provinces are now responsible for delegating how much money is allotted to Post-Secondary education. You can well imagine that, in that respect, we have a real concern for people with disabilities, and other equity groups. We want to ensure that there is no loss to current levels of funding, which would negatively impact upon accessibility to college and university EDUCATION. Therefore, we are asking the federal government to ensure that people with disabilities can participate in a level playing field in higher EDUCATION, no matter where they decide to study and where they live.
Now, on to funding to go to school. It has long been recognized within the disability community and with the community at large that there are extra costs due to the unique needs of students with learning disabilities. I will take myself as an example. I use a computer with a Braille display to go into school and to take notes effectively. Obviously, I cannot afford $20,000 worth of equipment. I do not think very many people in here have that kind of money sitting around to do that kind of thing. This kind of equipment is obviously important.
It may take longer for certain students with disabilities to attend school. More than likely, students often elect to take a rposted course load and attend part-time study. One of the negative impacts upon a student with a disability having to take a rposted course load is that scholarships that are available for students with disability are usually premised on being full-time. For a student with a disability who is going part-time to school, there is private funding that is not available. In terms of funding at the level for Post-Secondary education, the money that is being given by provincial governments, even at the part-time level, might not be sufficient enough to cover tuition and books. Books, supplies and technical aides are the areas where students with disabilities are hit most.
The Canada Student Loans Program provides assistance in the form of a loan or special opportunity grant to students with disabilities. The services that are covered under special opportunity grants cover the gamut from notetakers to readers; both sign and oral interpreters; attendant care; technical aides and research assistance, of which I take advantage. Being a student in political science, you can well imagine that there are copious amounts of papers and things that I must get done. I depend on a research assistant to help me in the library to get access to all the necessary microfilms and photocopies and that kind of thing.
Also, in that bundle of special opportunity grants comes alternative format materials which are materials in Braille, cassette tape, et cetera. There must be an augmentation in the amount of money offered through special opportunities grants. From one student to another, the actual needs that a student will need are different. For example, if a student who is blind needs a book put in Braille, the cost for a book to be put in Braille can run a gamut. I have heard from my colleagues in different provinces that it can cost upwards of $2,000 or $3,000 to have a book printed in Braille. If a student with disability who is blind wants to use that special opportunity grants for such things as a notetaker, they are in a bind at that point. What is more important: to have a book put in Braille or to have a note-taker? We feel that there must be an augmentation in terms of that area.
In accordance with the recommendations of the federal task force, which I spoke of earlier on disabilities, we at NEADS must argue unequivocally and in the strongest terms possible against the current practice of considering the special opportunity grants as being taxable income. Given the nature, the scope and the purpose of these special opportunity grants, we contend that they must be seen as a necessary requirement for students to continue and to be available to use for Post-Secondary education.
I wish to address again this whole idea of the new funding arrangements under the Canada Health and Social Transfer. As money decreases, or as provinces decrease their amount of funding, we are all cognizant of how the universities are handling this in terms of increasing tuitions, cut-backs and all sorts of things. What this means to students with disabilities is that they have to increase the amount of money that they might need in order to pay for tuition and books. As I heard in the other presentation, this leads to a debt-load area. With respect to students with disabilities who might not necessarily have access to a career immediately upon completion of their EDUCATION, having a debt load is a problem for students with disabilities, for obvious reasons, if they are in a position of not having work available to them right away.
The program Vocational Rehabilitation for Disabled Persons is currently going under review and our Ontario representative is the key person who is handling that area. This program has served students with disabilities well over the years. The important thing to keep in mind is that students with disabilities -- and, all students in general -- are realizing that an undergraduate degree is not necessarily enough to get meaningful employment. For example, I fall into that category. My BA is a stepping-stone to graduate work which, hopefully, I will be pursuing in the fall.
Students with disabilities understand that employers these days are looking for the top people in any number of fields, technical or otherwise. Post-graduate studies is an area where students with disabilities, like all students, are moving towards. The VRDP, the CSLP and the provincial student aid programs must be more flexible and supportive to allow students to acquire such post-graduate studies. That completes the financial area of our concerns.
Next is my area of specialization. I will be more than happy to go into it in greater detail later.
In addition to the financing of EDUCATION to go to school and the extra costs associated in terms of the special opportunity grants or the general technologies and technical aides, the next major area for students with disabilities is the unfortunate lack of consistent standards and the delivery of services, programs and accommodations from one academic institution to another and from one province to another. This leads not only to fundamental inequities among disabled student populations throughout Canada but also places limitations upon our very freedom to select from the full range of EDUCATIONal opportunities which are in fact offered to our non-disabled counterparts.
We trust that you will all agree that this situation is quite unacceptable, especially in this day and age. We should like to work as fast as we can to remedy this situation without delay. For any number of reasons, a student in any city will have at their disposal university "X" and university "Y". For one reason or another, the student might choose university "X" because the services at that university, due in some part to the amount of money that they have available, will choose that university over university "Y", which might have the academic program that they might necessarily want. This will vary from city to city. I must footnote this by saying that there are definitely excellent examples of universities that have had the appropriate funding made available to them so that they have made strides in providing the academic services, accommodations and technology available. Those are out there; however, those are the exceptions, not the rule.
We have listed in our deposition to you a list of about four or five comprehensive initiatives on which we are seeking broad-based cooperation and endorsement from yourselves and from other sectors of society in order to ensure that Canadians -- all Canadians -- have equal access to post-secondary EDUCATION. I touched on some of them briefly, but I will now go over these commitments, which speak to some of the other major issues.
First, the commitment by every post-secondary community. When I mention "community", I mean from faculty members to administration, the whole gamut, to meet the challenge of providing the highest standards of excellence with regard to providing a barrier-free and fully-accessible learning environment for students with disabilities. When I say "barrier-free", I am talking about not only availability of courses, programs and openness for students with disabilities to attend whichever program they might want to attend but also physical accommodations for students in wheelchairs, for example, accessible residences, on-campus residences, curbs, and those kinds of issues.
Second, the commitment by the federal government to guarantee levels of funding to the provinces for Post-Secondary education do not result in any cut-backs to much needed programs for students with disabilities. I touched upon that when I was talking about these new funding arrangements.
Third, the commitment by those in a position of decision-making at the level in Post-Secondary educational institutions to recognize the relevance of guaranteeing an ongoing and consistent source of funding for campus-based services. Earlier, I mentioned the situation we are having with certain academic institutions with lack of consistency. Unfortunately, this is where a lot of the problems lie. We are not placing the blame on the service providers or on anyone in particular, but in order to have the necessary technologies, staffs and professionals, there must be ongoing funding. With all the cut-backs occurring in Post-Secondary educational institutions -- and, with decision-makers having to decide what is important, for example, funding the athletics program or the computer science program or infrastructures, and so on -- we need a guarantee that the decision-makers see the importance of funding campus-based services for students with disabilities, whether that is the disabilities students services offices or ramps or any of those kind of issues.
Fourth, the commitment by each provincial and territorial government and their respective departments and agencies to apply a much more equitable and well-reasoned approach in calculating for and administering programs charged with supporting post-secondary studies in such a way that they recognize and fully account for all the unique needs of every category of students with disabilities. In our deposition, I have put in parenthesis or quoted every category. I will take as an example what is happening in some provinces to students with learning disabilities, but this is not limited to this group in particular.
As much more research is being done, there is a move to recognize the needs of students with learning disabilities. However, we need to move a lot faster. For example, I heard from our New Brunswick representative that their government is recognizing the allocation of computers as a medical expense. I am not sure what the actual setup was before, but I believe they had to pay for those computers on their own. This speaks to the progressive nature of New Brunswick. We need to see a lot more harmonizing of such issues for learning disabilities, for disabled students, and for all other students with disabilities.
Fifth -- and this is an extremely important area -- a commitment by the federal government to take a decisive leadership position and a commitment by Canadian publishing companies to begin assuming their responsibilities in immediately correcting what can only be described as a serious situation regarding the scarcity of Canadian academic textbooks and professional textbooks available in alternate formats. Unfortunately, we failed to mention professional texts in our brief, but I will elaborate on that a bit. I will take myself as an example.
I have always tried to steer away from courses that involved Canadian content, because over the three years that I have been in university -- and, I am graduating this semester, so I think I am well positioned to make this kind of a statement -- it has been difficult to find a Canadian-based textbook on cassette. For one reason or another, there is no national library. Consequently, a lot of us turn to U.S.-based private libraries. I should like to mention in particular Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, which is a non-profit organization in the United States, which has over 80,000 professional and academic titles on cassette. I am member, so I take courses particularly that have American textbooks, so that I am almost guaranteed that a book or an edition or a companion textbook will be available so that I can follow along. Otherwise, I must purchase the textbook. In my case, I am fortunate in that I have my own set of volunteers, but in general the student must go to the office for students with disabilities and ask them to please put the book on tape.
If you have a multiple amount of students with disabilities needing books on tape and they rely on volunteers, you can well imagine that there might be a backlog in making textbooks available on tape. I do not think I have to tell you, that if you receive a textbook or a chapter in the fourth or fifth week of school, it is no one's fault but that is the nature of the beast. Sometimes, it is a little late to catch up.
We need publishers in Canada to understand that more Canadian textbooks must be made available in alternative formats -- that is, electronic or on diskette. The federal government must think about making the National Library, or the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, whichever agency -- even if something new must be put in place -- ensure that more Canadian academic texts and professional texts are put on tape. I have heard many stories of lawyers across Canada who have no access to case books on tape or on diskette or up-to-date law texts on cassette or on Braille.
I must return once again to students with learning disabilities who might need cassettes as well. It is not only for students who are blind or visually impaired; it is for students with specific learning disabilities who need or use cassette tape books. It is for students with other physical disabilities who need access to books on tapes for any number of reasons. Given my own experience, this must be made available.
Sixth, the commitment by all levels of government, by industry and by post-secondary institutions, to each take concrete steps to guarantee universal access to the extensive amount of academic resources and opportunities currently being offered by the electronic superhighway and all other forms of newly emerging learning technologies.
Again, this is one of my areas of specialty. Hopefully, I will be studying in this area, namely, in learning technologies. A lot of universities are turning to distance EDUCATION, for example, using the Internet, multimedia, videos, and so on. A lot of material is being made available on the Internet, whether it is Canadian material or other materials.
We need laws similar to those in the United States, which provide universal access. We need the government to tell software publishers that they agree that students or anyone in particular needs full access built into the softwares that are being currently made available to the Internet and to post-secondary EDUCATIONal institutions. They need funding so that they can provide Internet stations that are made accessible. Some universities have that, but that is mainly because they have the budgets. Again, that goes back to the money that is being made available from the provincial governments to the post-secondary EDUCATIONal institutions, how it is funneled down and what priorities they make.
Seventh, a commitment for a nationally supported program that recognizes the need for interpretation for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Not being a person who is deaf or hard of hearing myself, unfortunately I must be honest and say that I cannot speak necessarily to those needs in particular, but I believe that we can furnish you, at some point, if you need more information on that. That commitment is somewhat self-explanatory and Mr. Smith may want to speak on that after.
Finally, we want a commitment by all parties to actively consult with and involve students in every stage of services, whether it is in the initial stages of formulating or implementing policies or evaluating these services, policies, projects and programs, or at the provincial level or the federal level, et cetera; because we are ultimately the actual end users of such endeavours. We need to be involved at every level. This is not a criticism to anyone, but we have bureaucrats or decision-makers making decisions in terms of funding, and those types of things, based on what they feel is appropriate, without necessarily seeking input form the actual students with the disability to see if the amount of funding is sufficient or what kind of equipment is being used. Sometimes equipment is placed and technical aides are placed on lists that are not necessarily helpful for all students with disabilities. We need more interaction between us and all policy-makers to say that you might want to consider putting this piece of equipment on the list or making this rule a little more flexible so that all students with disabilities can have access to it.
What I have presented to you may seem like a tall order; however, we are confident that a lot of these areas can be addressed meaningfully if we have the necessary cooperation, the funding, and the endorsement by everyone here. Canada does not live in a vacuum. Due to our international recognition as a country that has always had some of the best medicare and some of the best in terms of standard of living, we feel that by moving ahead with these initiatives, Canada can serve as a role model to the international community at large by saying, "This is what we are doing successfully. Country "X" or "Y", you can follow in our footsteps." Canada has always been known for doing those kind of activities, guiding other countries, and soon. In particular, we could give the United States a run for their money in terms of their type of landmark legislation and those kind of things. I think we can learn from them, but I think we can even better them in some respects.
In closing, I should like to thank you once again for providing a voice to the National EDUCATIONal Association of Disabled Students and, by our representation, to disabled students in general. We should also like to thank you for acknowledging the fact that students with disabilities do play a meaningful role in Canadian EDUCATION and therefore must be heard.
I should like to thank you and wish you the best of luck on your important deliberations and let you know that the board and the executive are ready to continue to keep an open dialogue and to answer questions, because we realize that these issues are complicated in some respects, and some of them are fairly new in terms of learning technologies and the Internet and access and funding. We are available to answer any questions at any time, as you formulate your reports and projects.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Asuncion, for an excellent paper. We are very impressed with your comments, especially the fact that you have a visual disability, yet you never stopped even for a stutter. You got every comma and period. You did an excellent job and we are impressed.
Does Mr. Smith have anything to say?
Mr. Frank Smith, Coordinator, National EDUCATIONal Association of Disabled Students: Mr. Asuncion's presentation was quite comprehensive. I might add a few points on the current work of the organization, and also a little bit more about our involvement with student organizations and disability organizations.
In terms of our network, as Mr. Asuncion mentioned, we have two provincial affiliates. We also work with some 40 disabled students organizations on campuses across Canada, at both the college and university level. We are a member of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, which is the largest consumer organization of disabled people in Canada. We also work very closely with the Canadian Federation of Students. When it comes to the communities that we work with, we work on the disability side with the Council of Canadians with Disabilities and its membership, and on the student side with the Canadian Federation of Students and its membership.
As Mr. Asuncion mentioned, we believe very strongly in a student aid system that is primarily a system of grants. This is very important to students with disabilities, who must bear a lot of the extra costs that students who do not have disabilities do not incur. When it comes to participation in Post-Secondary education, I should like to add that in terms of our current work, we are very much involved in discussions around the recommendations that are of the Task Force on Equal Citizenship for Canadians with Disabilities: the Will to Act.
Next week, there will be some discussions here in Ottawa with members of the task force and with representatives from Human Resources Development Canada around the development and the formulation of this opportunities fund that was announced in the last federal budget. It is a $30 million announcement which will have impact for our membership in terms of making the transition from school to work.
We are very involved in the discussions around the VRDP redesign. It probably will not be called the VRDP program within the next few months. We wish to ensure that, no matter which new funding program results, there will be a strong program of that nature which covers the vocational rehabilitation costs of people with disabilities in attending Post-Secondary education and that there be a strong national student aid program and a strong provincial student aid program in place.
With respect to that, we are a member of the National Advisory on Student Financial Assistant of Human Resources Development Canada, an advisory group, along with the Canadian Federation of Students, AUCC, Association of Canadian Community Colleges, and other organizations. The national advisory group had a meeting in Ottawa two or three weeks ago which our president attended to talk about the Canada Student Loans Program and the Special Opportunity Grants Program. Our representation at that meeting was important, because this past year was the first full year of implementation of the special opportunities grant component of the Canada Student Loans Program.
Those are a number of things that we are working on. We work both at the organizational level within our own organization, with our member groups, and with other organizations of persons with disabilities and organizations of students in the post-secondary community. In terms of the project work that we are doing, the national approach to services project that we are working on over the next year will see us working together with some very important partners and players who have a real stake in this, including service providers through the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services and the Canadian Federation of Students. We also hope to involve the Council of Ministers of EDUCATION to ensure that any national approach to services we recommend through our project has the endorsement of that body and provincial ministers of EDUCATION.
Those are a few things that I wanted to touch on in addition to what Mr. Asuncion said. At this point, you may address us with any questions that you might have.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Smith. I will begin with Senator Andreychuk, who was a chancellor at the University of Regina at one time.
Senator Andreychuk: I am actually very impressed with all of the work you have done. On the one hand, I am overwhelmed with the number of meetings you must have to attend. I do not think I will ever complain again about all the conflicting agendas that I have.
You are obviously well plugged in. Despite having admitted to nerves at the start, I wish I were as competent in addressing a Senate committee at your age as you have been. We are running out of time, so I will go over the areas that you covered. Nevertheless, I can assure you that they were important issues and they are in the report.
I wanted to touch on two things that you might clarify for us. You said that the special opportunity grants are taxable. First, are these the new grants that you referred to from last year? Did you make representations to have them exempt as a taxable item?
Second, we have heard a lot informally that there is a new copyright act. The Senate is actually reviewing it at this time. The question of use of texts has risen and the fact that they will be subject to the new copyright laws, which will have an impact on universities and students. Have you addressed that issue or are aware of that issue at all?
Mr. Smith: On the first question, I brought with me the pamphlet on the Canada Student Loans Program, Assistance for Students with Permanent Disabilities, which explains the special opportunity grants and how they work, who is eligible for them, and what sort of funding is permitted for technical aides and equipment and services, and so on.
We have been working with the department and have been discussing with them, for quite a while, the issue of the taxable nature of the special opportunity grants. In fact, Recommendation No. 50 in "The Will to Act" document is that special opportunity grants not be considered taxable income. It is a recommendation of the Task Force on Disability; it is a recommendation of our organization. We are still working on this issue with the department and the National Advisory Group on Student Financial Assistance. We raised it at the last meeting that we attended, and I believe that there will be an opportunity very shortly to change that situation. It is also a finance issue, so we need talk to the Department of Finance about it in more detail.
Concerning your second question on the issue of copyright and changes to the copyright act, I must admit that I am personally not an expert on that area. The Council of Canadians with Disabilities has been very involved in discussions around the changes to the rules of copyright in this country, and they have been pushing sort of on our behalf a lot of the issues that Jennison was talking about around copyright. As the largest national organization representing people with disabilities, the Council of Canadians with Disabilities has taken the lead on that issue.
Mr. Asuncion: Our new administration was voted in very recently. In fact, the new board has only been in office since November and I have only been vice-president since March.
Senator Andreychuk: You should not have told us that, because I presumed you had been there an awful long time, for all the knowledge that you have.
Mr. Asuncion: In terms of these issues of copyright, I have started internally in our NEADS organization, an EDUCATION and technology working group. I can assure you that we will be looking at the copyright agreement. In fact, I will be looking at that in the coming weeks. We appreciate the work that CCD has been doing on our behalf and we will continue to depend upon their support but, as we move ahead, we will also be making our own statements and our own views -- that is, once we finally finish looking through the legislation.
This is a rather complicated issue, as Mr. Smith mentioned. We want to have the appropriate amount of time amongst our board and our membership to look over the copyright agreement and then make an postated and a well-reasoned statement on that issue. We will be doing that in the coming weeks and months.
Senator Andreychuk: I will now ask you a very complex question and, in view of the time, I would appreciate a shorter answer.
With my work in this area some years ago, those with disabilities entering Post-Secondary education felt that they were entering a hostile environment or at best an environment that did not understand them or was not attuned to them. Do you think that the impediments are more financially driven now, or do you think there is still a lack of awareness and receptivity to the needs of students with disabilities?
Mr. Asuncion: As someone who is going through the university system right now and who has gone through the CEGEP system, through my contacts, I am pleased to report that things have definitely changed. There is a widespread growing awareness of the needs of students with disabilities, from the professors to the faculty, and every level. Yes, things have definitely improved. That is more of a nature of society's evolution in terms of acceptance in that respect.
The biggest barriers that come to bear are financial and technological. As students with disabilities, we have access to a wide array of adaptive technologies and things that make programs that were not available a couple of years ago available to all of us now. We need to have access to all of that equipment. Personal attitudes and attitudes of particular administrations or faculties will always occur at some time or another, but we would like to think that things have definitely changed. Our national approaches to services project is significant of that change. Service providers are saying, "Yes, we want to cooperate. We want to do what is best." The universities are cooperating. That says a lot. I hope that answers your question.
Senator Andreychuk: Thanks a lot.
Mr. Smith: While we work with some forty campus-based disabled students groups or organizations of students with disabilities across Canada, we also include within our network approximately 150 or 155 colleges, universities and CEGEPs, which have at least some level of service for students with disabilities. We have quite a comprehensive network of schools across the country that are at least making some effort to provide services and supports for students with disabilities.
Senator Andreychuk: Thank you.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: I apologize for not having been here before, but I was caught up in another committee.
I know the effort that is needed to get through Post-Secondary education. You brought up the question of technology and everything that would make it easier for you. Do you have any recommendations in terms of making it easier for you to enter the work force?
This area was probably not contained in your brief, but it is an important question.
Mr. Asuncion: Yes. If you are asking for recommendations on the part of the government, one is to ensure, first, that the funding is available so that we can enter those programs to enter into the work force. In my case, I am happy with it, but some people are not that fortunate.A lot of employers now are looking for highly technically skilled people. In terms of recommendations, we want funding to be made available for students to pursue, if necessary, post-graduate work to make sure they have that technical background.
Another recommendation is to ensure that students have the technical assistance and for the government to make sure that employers are aware that in order for them to hire a student with a disability, it is fundamental that they need the equipment. Companies must become more aware that equipment must be made available. Companies these days do have certain amounts of funds; perhaps the government can play a role in terms of offering some matching grants to ensure that students who enter into the work force have access to whatever kind of adaptive equipment necessary to compete effectively in whatever job and, if necessary, to compete for whatever promoted positions that are being made available. Yes, that is a definite area.
When industry is developing training materials to upgrade employers, we are asking them to make it clear that this training is available in adaptable and accessible formats. So that an employee with a disability can have access to these training materials and, if he or she wants to do so, can upgrade to the higher level that he or she deserves to compete for whatever positions at that level.
I hope that answers your question.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Thank you. I know it is a big problem. That is why I asked that question.
Mr. Asuncion: Yes; it is.
Mr. Smith: We completed a study in July of 1996 on the employment opportunities for post-secondary students and graduates with disabilities, in which 424 students and graduates from across Canada told us about transition from school to work issues. We can make a copy of that report available to the subcommittee.
An important finding of that report, which is in our written brief, is that 45 per cent of the respondents to that study indicated that they believed that their Post-Secondary education had not prepared them for the employment market. This study included a significant number of participants from across the country with all types of disabilities and with different EDUCATIONal profiles and experiences. It presents a very detailed and comprehensive analysis of everything with respect to transition from school to work, to the value of EDUCATION, to looking for a job and the difficulties inherent in that, to barriers in the employment market, to qualifications that people with disabilities believe they must have in order to enter into the employment market. Some of that is EDUCATION-specific and some of it relates to other kinds of skill sets that can be acquired through other endeavours such as working in the community, or whatever.
In addition to that, our organization has an employer advisory council that we work with, which includes some 25 members, including about 20 large national employers from different sectors of the economy. We are working very closely with our Employer Advisory Council to try to address some of the issues that we have mentioned with respect to transition from school to work and the difficulties that persons with disabilities face in making that transition.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Did you say that you would send us a copy of the study to which you were referring, or we could get one somewhere?
Mr. Smith: I can make a copy of that study available to you. In fact, we can leave a copy today with the subcommittee. We brought one with us. We also have copies of the most recent issue of our newsletter. We have published the executive summary of the findings of that study in that newsletter. We can make both of those things available to the subcommittee before we leave today.
Mr. Asuncion: In terms of making materials available, both Mr. Smith and I spoke about the National Approaches to Services Project. The National EDUCATIONal Association of Disabled Students are extremely proud of this endeavour. We are working on this project in partnership with different sectors and would be more than happy to leave a copy of that project as well, to show you what is being done in EDUCATIONal issues recently. We can make that available to you as well.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Thank you. Everything that can help us see the most facets of the problem is useful.
Mr. Asuncion: Hopefully, we will be receiving some more funding for some new projects. In that respect, there will be definitely new projects that, if accepted by our entire board, will deal with some of the other issues that we have raised. We are very pleased that NEADS is attacking a lot of these issues head-on. We are pleased to see the cooperation and the interest that we are receiving from you and from other sectors as well.
The Chairman: Thank you. If you could table those documents with the Clerk of the Committee, it would be appreciated.
Our next questioner, Senator Forest, from Alberta, was the chancellor at another university at one time.
Senator Forest: I was probably a chancellor about the time you were born.
I am delighted to hear your enthusiasm and your optimism and to learn that you are organized on a national basis. That is great.
You spoke about universities making things available for you. On some of the older campuses, we had a great deal of trouble just with physical facilities. Is that getting any better?
Mr. Asuncion: Unfortunately, the study that we are about to conduct, the National Approaches to Services Project, will constitute the most-comprehensive-to-date study and will look into the issue in particular that you asked about, namely, physical accessibility. I can give you a concrete example of a university. I must stress that this is only one example, but I cannot say that this is the only one.
For example, McGill University in Montreal is an old and venerable university which has a lot of older buildings. They have made extremely great strides to make a lot of those buildings accessible. It is being done at that level. Hopefully, we will find out from our study what other universities are making those concrete steps available.
You are correct, making ramps or installing elevators in older buildings is kind of difficult. Nevertheless, a lot of remedies are being done. In fact, a lot of universities are able to have classes moved to newer buildings, if that is what is required. There is definitely a lot of cooperation and understanding in that respect.
Senator Forest: That is great. Thank you.
You were talking about support for Post-Secondary education and your concern that, as there is only one envelope going to the provinces for EDUCATION, you might be the losers in that game? Have you any examples of that yet, or is this just a concern? I know it is a new program.
Mr. Smith: Have we any examples of what in particular?
Senator Forest: Regarding not receiving your fair share of funding.
Mr. Smith: The Canada Health and Social Transfer replaces the EPF and CAP arrangement that has been in place for many years. The exact impact of the new funding arrangement will be determined over time.
Senator Forest: Yes, I understand that.
Mr. Smith: We are already seeing signs, in the provinces and at the individual institutions, of programs being cut back and significant tuition fee increases that students must bear. Your previous speakers spoke about issues of student debt. Certainly, students with disabilities who are leaving post-secondary studies with high levels of debt have an extremely difficult time repaying it, particularly with the climate in the employment market right now where, if you have a disability, it is twice as difficult to get a job.
Senator Forest: We will have to wait and see there.
Mr. Asuncion: The cost of technology and technical assistance must be taken into account, for example, Braille printers and computers, and those kinds of things, which are being made available on the market. A computer package for a student who is blind might cost upwards of $15,000 per student. If multiple students who are blind or visually impaired need access to it -- and, if there are the continued funding cut-backs -- there will most probably be new rules and restrictions placed on which equipment will be made available. That is a real concern regarding technology and those kinds of things.
Senator Forest: Thank you very much. Congratulations on the wonderful the strides you have made in 25 years.
The Chairman: I wish to thank both Mr. Asuncion and Mr. Smith for their excellent briefs. As young people, you deserve a lot of credit. When I was your age, I would have been shaking and nervous to talk to a bunch of old senators. You did very well.
Mr. Smith: Thank you very much.
The Chairman: Thank you for coming here today.
Mr. Smith: Thank you for your time.
The Chairman: We have other business to continue in camera.
The committee continued in camera.