VARSITY EDITORIAL
U OF T BUILDING BEYOND ITS MEANS
Vol. CXXXIV, No. 10
University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880
PG 11
18 November, 2013
Showdown in Toronto Centre Major parties jockey for students’ votes as byelection enters final week
One week away from the election that will decide the campaign seat, candidates discuss student concerns Theodore Yan ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
The race for Toronto Centre is heating up. As the campaign for the seat previously held by Bob Rae enters its final week, the candidates are redoubling their efforts to get their messages out to voters. This has included voicing their opinions on issues that matter to students. “Rising tuition fees are a big, big concern for students, and they just keep going up and up, and Ontario in fact is one of the worst in terms of support universities get in order to keep tuition fees low, so that’s something we need to work on,” said Linda McQuaig, candidate for the NDP. “The NDP has a very specific proposal on this,” she went on. “We think that the federal government should be involved; we think that federal money going to the provinces for post-secondary education should include a special package earmarked for reducing tuition fees. Universi-
ties, colleges, post-secondary education, that is a public good.” “It’s absolutely important that universities and colleges be accessible, and they can’t be accessible if fees are unaffordable.” Chrystia Freeland, the Liberal candidate, gave some context to the problem of rising tuition: “I think it’s an issue in a few ways,” she said. “It’s an issue for how do students afford it to be able to get access to university; it’s an issue in terms of the impact it has on the lives of students afterwards, and it’s not just that tuition costs are high, but that often translates into graduating with a lot of student debt, which then has to be paid off at really high interest rates.” She added as a caveat that while rising tuition costs are a serious concern, universities need adequate funding in order to provide a high quality of education, which is also a major concern for students: “If we’re going to say ‘Okay, tuition costs can’t rise anymore,’ we need to realize universities are going to have to get their money from somewhere,” she stated.
McQuaig and Freeland are both career journalists. Both have written extensively about class differences and social welfare. McQuaig has authored almost a dozen books on the topic. She has often criticized conservative economic policies such as corporate tax breaks and the social inequality she contends that they create. John Deverell, the Green Party candidate, also began as a journalist. He argued throughout his career against Canada’s “winner-takes-all” elections, which he considers undemocratic, and instead advocates for a system of proportional representation for parliament. This would entail giving each party a percentage of seats equal to the percentage of total votes it receives. Deverell resigned from the party when it proved unreceptive to his proposals to change Canada’s electoral system. Deverell was originally a Liberal but resigned from the party, and offers a different take on the matter of tuition. “We’ve got a whole cohort of young people, all of whom
are having difficulty in the labour market; it’s not just students or young graduates. So the broader question is the shorter of money in the pockets of people who need it,” he said. “We put on a carbon tax to try to redirect the consumption patterns and the production patterns in our economy, but to avoid the charges of ‘tax grab’ and so on and so on, we turn around and say carbon tax money will be redistributed to all Canadians in a Canada income supplement, to all Canadians over the age of 18.” Deverell argues that the Green proposal will allow more flexibility to students because the cash payment from redistribution of the carbon tax revenues can be used to help with any expense, including tuition, cost of living, and others. He contends that this is a more effective method of dealing with students’ financial difficulties because it directly addresses the broader problem of lack of income rather than trying to solve the problem through manipulation of the minimum wage or tuition levels.
CONTINUED PG 6
WAR OF WORDS STUDENT SOCIETIES SUMMIT HEATS UP
PG 5