Are you a pupil in New Brunswick or elsewhere in Canada? Contact the Worldwide Youth and College students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at iysseincanada@gmail.com to affix the wrestle in opposition to assaults on monetary help for college students and the gutting of funding for post-secondary training.
***
To the dismay of college college students throughout New Brunswick, the right-wing Conservative authorities led by Premier Blain Higgs determined to scrap a program permitting them to obtain employment insurance coverage throughout their research in late June with out a lot as a public announcement.
Université de Moncton [Photo by Hussein Abdallahh / CC BY 4.0]
The Higgs authorities, which imposed wage and profit concessions on over 22,000 public sector staff final November after a bitter two-week strike, has now turned on college students with its abolition of the EI Join program. Underneath this system, college students who labored sufficient hours throughout the summer season may obtain employment insurance coverage throughout the faculty 12 months. In response to the Scholar Federation on the Université de Moncton (FÉÉCUM), roughly 7,000 college students have been benefiting from this system, not together with those that meant to make use of it within the fall.
Launched in 2008, this system, then known as the Coaching and Skilled Improvement program, was aimed toward encouraging post-secondary training. On the time, common pupil debt in New Brunswick was the best of any Canadian province. Initially designed for a two-year interval, this system was largely restricted to group school college students. In 2016, the provincial authorities, after discussions with Ottawa, modified the qualifying help interval to 4 years, permitting college college students to turn out to be eligible for this system now often known as EI Connection.
Highlighting the Higgs authorities’s disregard for staff and the scholar group on the whole, college students discovered that this system had been scrapped from their classmates or pupil associations on social media. The Division of Submit-Secondary Training, Coaching and Labour made no public announcement, limiting itself to sending a memorandum by e-mail to some members of workers at universities and pupil associations.
College students responded to the information with a combination of anger, nervousness and panic, with the bulk questioning how they may proceed and even start their post-secondary training. Sharing these emotions, Eve Chamberlain, a mechanical engineering pupil on the Université de Moncton, launched an internet petition demanding the restoration of this system that acquired practically 14,000 signatures in lower than a day.
The federal government’s choice to abolish this system jeopardized the way forward for 1000’s of scholars. Requested by CBC’s Radio-Canada, Jean-Sebastien Leger, President of the FÉÉCUM and one of many recipients of the e-mail, emphasised the affect the ending of EI Join would have on entry to post-secondary training: “We’re very involved in regards to the affect on the accessibility and talent of scholars, particularly these from rural New Brunswick, to know if they may be capable to pursue post-secondary training.” In response to Leger, the present common debt for a pupil within the province is $40,000, a determine that can definitely climb with out entry to EI.
The slashing of economic help for college students by Higgs, a former Irving Oil company government, comes as college students throughout Canada and internationally are struggling to manage on low incomes below situations of rampant inflation. Many college students misplaced their jobs throughout the pandemic because the service and hospitality sectors reduce on employment throughout lockdowns and intervals of public well being restrictions. Experiences are rising from varied elements of the nation of the usage of meals banks on campuses by college students struggling to make ends meet.
Nicely earlier than the newest surge in costs for fundamental requirements, many Canadian college students have been unable to proceed their training as a result of monetary burden. In response to a survey commissioned by the Canadian Affiliation of College Lecturers (CAPPU) and the Canadian Federation of College students (CFS), performed amongst 1,100 respondents throughout the first wave of the pandemic, three in four Canadian college students mentioned they have been frightened in regards to the future due to the financial penalties of the pandemic and 1 in 2 acknowledged that the pandemic made it harder to pay tuition charges and the price of dwelling much less reasonably priced. In response to the survey, 30 p.c of respondents mentioned that they had given up enrolling in a post-secondary program for the autumn of 2020 due to monetary pressures.
The abolition of EI Join would be the final nail within the coffin for a lot of younger individuals’s college careers. As Hélène Albert, a professor on the Université de Moncton’s Faculty of Social Work, and an inner vice-president of the Affiliation of Librarians and Professors of the Université de Moncton (ABPPUM), identified in a press release: “With the rise in housing costs, that are unaffordable for individuals who make an excellent dwelling, it has turn out to be inconceivable for college students…” In response to ABPPUM, the affect of the top of economic help for college students on recruitment and retention on campuses may threaten the survival of the Université de Moncton.
Confronted with widespread indignation, the Higgs authorities tried to justify its choice by arguing that EI Join didn’t meet the eligibility standards for federal employment insurance coverage and that the choice was made following Ottawa’s requests to “adjust to the federal program.”
This excuse is absurd. Whereas it’s true that the federal authorities has been lobbying for the reason that inception of this system to pressure Fredericton to alter its phrases, they weren’t obliged to scrap it altogether. As Serge Cormier, Liberal MP for Acadie-Bathurst, admitted, “If the New Brunswick authorities desires to proceed this system, they simply need to reverse their choice, and say they need to proceed this system, it’s so simple as that.”
The actual motive for the abolition of this system was offered by a spokesperson for the Division of Submit-Secondary Training, Coaching and Labour. In an e mail despatched to Radio-Canada, the official mentioned that the choice was precipitated by requests from the enterprise group: “Given the present challenges within the province’s labour market, NB-EI Connection can also be in battle with the province’s efforts to assist employers fill vacancies.” In different phrases, this system was abolished so as to use college students already overwhelmed with unpaid research and internships as low cost labor to fulfill the calls for of massive enterprise.
Regardless of Cormier’s try to absolve the federal authorities of duty for the plight of scholars, the Trudeau Liberal authorities is equally answerable for the precariousness and stress going through post-secondary college students throughout Canada. After handing lots of of billions of {dollars} to the banks and huge companies on the outset of the pandemic, the Trudeau authorities spearheaded a reckless back-to-work marketing campaign with the help of the unions. COVID-19 was allowed to unfold by way of workplaces, faculties, and college and school campuses in order to safeguard the move of earnings to Canada’s company elite.
Because the extremely infectious Omicron variant unfold quickly final winter, college directors pressured a harmful return to in-person courses that led to a surge of infections. They have been taking their cue from the Trudeau authorities, which did nothing to cease the unfold of Omicron and oversaw the dismantling of all remaining public well being measures following the promotion of the far-right Freedom Convoy by the Conservative opposition.
Many college students throughout Canada organized protests in opposition to the reckless reopening technique, together with at McGill College in Montreal and Simon Fraser College in British Columbia. The scholars’ appeals for a return to on-line studying and higher safety met with the overall indifference of the provincial governments, no matter their political stripe.
Higgs’ choice to abolish the scholar employment insurance coverage program is a part of the ruling class’s decided drive to chop public spending throughout the board so as to finance Canadian imperialism’s help for the US-NATO struggle with Russia.
The broad help for the petition opposing the abolition of EI Join underscores that capitalist austerity is deeply unpopular. However appeals to politicians to alter their methods and supply college students with satisfactory monetary help to allow them to deal with their research will fall on deaf ears. What’s required is the constructing of a mass motion of scholars and younger individuals, in alliance with training staff and different sections of the working class, to wage a political wrestle for a well-funded, high-quality public training system from pre-elementary to the post-secondary stage.
Be a part of the struggle to defend public training!
Subscribe to our pupil and youth publication