What about the Debt and Deficit?
Education and democracy are linked. Once united, students can catalyze democratic change. We possess the skills - literacy, knowledge and energy - which are the resources necessary to achieve this goal. On January 25, we rally to politicize, educate and empower people.
French students and youth are our example. They have actively fought government proposals to lower minimum wage and shift funding from public to private schools - a move which would undermine public education.
They succesfully organized rallies with hundreds of thousands of people coming to support them. The French government backed down on both issues.
Like these students, it is important for Albertans and Canadians to build up numbers and sustain momentum. Students can wield enough power to mobilize other groups. They can improve present circumstances and work for future resistance. Every historical change was the result of organized, collective action.
These movements turned oppression into action. They demonstrated against the hypocricies of our society's liberal ideology.
Society expects students to use our education to get jobs and become productive cogs in the economic machine. No one encourages us to employ our education to criticize and improve society.
We must counter this mentality by using our skills to uphold the universality and quality of social programs in Canada. Education is a social program and it is everyone's right!
The Green Paper proposes devastating cutbacks to Canada's social safety net. In the area of post-secondary education, the government wants to cut $2.6 billion in transfer payments to the provinces.
Alone, the U of A faces a $50 million cut. To cope, the university plans to increase tuition by five per cent each year until they reach the tuition cap in 1999. We will pay $4,500 per year in no time.
But the tuition cap is not fixed. It can be raised. Meanwhile, inflation and increasing interest rates eat up education funding. Less money will go to funding schools.Instead, the federal government will create a private loan system they promise to regulate. The government wants to implement an income-contingent repayment plan like the ones existing in New Zealand and Australia. This seems fair, but it actually increases the financial burden on each student. The longer it takes to pay off the loan, the more money each student will owe due to accumulating interest.
Interest rates are already too high at 9.25%. In Alberta's private student loan system, students have a choice: a fixed rate (prime interest + 2.5%) or a floating rate (prime interest +5%). If students choose the floating rate, they will pay more than they bargained for, about 14.25%. Neither the students union nor the banks are telling student to choose the cheaper, fixed rate.
Students don't need high interest rates to add to our huge debts. Add $250 more per year for tuition and the combination diminishes access to higher education. Students cannot afford to learn. For poor students, education becomes an investment, like buying a car or taking out a mortage. For some, the risk of a huge debt is too much.
This mentality makes universities direct funding to faculties that guarantee high job placement. Post-secondary education will become centred around a wealthy elite. In turn, liberal and fine arts programs which communicate ideas about culture and how our society functions are eroded. This is sure to continue.
Already departments combined to save money. Religious Studies, Comparative Literature and Film Studies are now an incoherent Comparative Studies department. Zoology, Botany, Microbiology, Entomology and Genetics were mashed into the department of Biological Sciences.
This amalgamania means larger classes and fewer options, not to mention the worsening professor-to-student ratio. How can you learn if your professors cannot know you?
Blaming the deficit and debt on ordinary people is demoralizing and extremely unfair. It is a government tactic to keep people feeling helpless while facing this frightening economic problem.
What people should realize is that only two per cent of the debt was spent on social programs. Since that's the case, why are social programs threatened first? Fifty per cent of the debt is the result of tax breaks, concessions and loan guarantees for corporations. The true target is not hiding.
It's a crisis in the profit system - not unskilled workers or lack of resources - that is the reason why Canada cannot afford to universally provide for the basic needs of Canadians. As markets become saturated with diverse companies who have access to technological resources, competition rises to an overwhelming extent.
This competition translates into an internationalization of capital. Corporations are forced to leave industrialized nations in search of a cheaper labor force which has lower wages, fewer benefits and minimal environmental restrictions.
Corporations invest their foreign capital in developing nations who sustain incredible rates of growth. However, this wealth remains in the hands of those who own the means of production (usually foreign-based, transnational-national investors).
For example, in Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the welathy private sector is highly consumptive while the working and lower classes are devastated. It is ridiculous for an industrialized nationa with protective economic measures to compete with a newly industrialized nation which has none.
Developing nations are the only ones in the world who do not regulate their market economies against huge discrepancies in distributuion.
The working class is constantly at risk of either losing their jobs or losing their benefits. Technological advances make it possible to hire fewer workers and maintain or increase profit. Most people work more that 40 hours per week to meet the living wage, the amount of money necessary to survive.
People ought to be able to work part-time hours with full-time pay with full health insurance benefits because of the savings provided by new technology. But this is not happening because these corporations are keeping the profits for themselves and for their shareholders.
Meanwhile, governments are doing everything possible to protect private companies, labeling their economic policies "trickle down economics." This is why they have no money to fund social programs, which are so important when the market fails.
Becoming educated is the most important first step. Alternative solutions do exist. When the media and government dictate apathy, we must not let them demoralize us.
When labor and health care groups organized rallies last March, thousands of people came. Many of our current members were among them. But organizers let the incredible popular momentum created by these marches deteriorate. A potentially strong movement did not have the chance to solidify.
But we are not alone on January 25th. Serious plans are in the making, nation-wide.
We are encouraging only university students, college and high school students, the women's and labor movements and minority rights activists to get involved, too. Let's unite on January 25th from Quad at noon to the Legislature at 1 pm.