“Electing an NDP government means students in 2015 will pay the same tuition at our universities and SIAST campuses as they do today,” said NDP Candidate in Regina South, Yens Pedersen “If we’re going to have a new generation of trained and educated people, we need to make sure they can afford that education. This is particularly important in my riding of Regina South as there are many students living in and around campus. I have talked with many of them at different campus events and on the doorsteps, and the same refrain comes up time and time again – it is way too hard for students to make ends meet”

Pedersen went on to discuss how a fully funded tuition freeze will help students who have had tuition increases in the last three years.  At the same time, the province will fully fund the difference so that Saskatchewan’s institutions continue to offer high quality education. The province will also regulate the fees institutions can charge.

Along with the fully funded tuition freeze, the NDP’s post-secondary education platform includes:

• Raising the maximum allowable family income level for student loans.
• Establishing a relocation subsidy for students moving for their studies.
• Increasing training opportunities at all post-secondary institutions by 10,000 in four years
• Enhancing distance-learning infrastructure.
• Investing in on-reserve and remote location course offerings.
• Expanding regional college opportunities for certificates, diplomas and degree credit courses.
• Extending the income tax tuition rebates to Masters and PhD students.
• Funding 100 new graduate student bursaries.

With the NDP’s commitment to next-generation rent control and the building of 1,000 new spaces of student accommodation, students will have greater access to more affordable places to live while they are studying.

“Our plan supports students across the province—whether or not they live near the universities or a SIAST campus,” said Pedersen “Our plan in this campaign is about positive change for Saskatchewan. Freezing tuition and expanding our post-secondary education system do just that.”

The NDP outlined its multi-faceted plan to stop skyrocketing rent increases through next-generation rent control; build affordable housing via incentives for developers, co-operatives and community organizations; and target homelessness through a Housing First strategy in its first four years of government.

“The NDP will end these out-of-control rent increases as soon as we are elected government,” said Yens Pedersen, “Housing needs to be affordable for everyone, and our next-generation rent control plan is fair for renters and for landlords. I know that here in my constituency of Regina South, this is a top issue on the doorstep that I am hearing over and over again.”

The NDP plan for stopping out-of-control rent increases and building affordable housing includes:

• Introducing next-generation rent control.  By introducing legislation that uses a “fair rents” model, the rent control plan includes allowances for new construction and non-corporate landlords.
• Building affordable homes using incentives for private developers such as PST rebates on material input costs for new homes priced under $280,000 and giving first-time home buyers a $2,000 grant to cover closing and related costs.
• Building 2,500 new affordable rental units by investing $216 million more in community-based organizations and co-operatives, including 1,000 units dedicated to student accommodation. Included in this investment is a $20 million commitment to the Housing First approach to fight homelessness.
• Help community-based organizations and co-operatives purchase land with $20 million commitment, as well as offer no-interest loans for construction of new affordable units.

The total cost of the NDP’s commitments to affordable rent and housing is $320.8 million over four years.

“Regina South residents need and deserve a government that will address the issue of housing head-on,” said Pedersen. “We hear from people who are facing skyrocketing rents and too few affordable housing options all the time.  It’s time for next-generation rent control because it’s the responsible thing to do.”

At one time, teachers, nurses and police officers had roughly comparable salaries. I met a teacher a few nights ago on the doorstep who related a personal account of how far behind teachers’ salaries have fallen. He has taught for 25 years and told me that his aunt retired as a teacher about the same time as he started. When she retired, she began collecting her pension which was 66% of her teaching income. She got monthly pension cheques and over the years (because she was fortunate enough to have an indexed pension), her pension has for the most part kept pace with inflation. Twenty five years later, the teacher told me that his aunt’s net take home pay is more than his, and she gets 12 monthly cheques to his 10! In other words, his salary today is less than 2/3 of a teacher’s salary twenty five years ago.

Unfortunately, the Saskatchewan Party government has been so blinded by its anti-union, anti-public sector ideology, that it has disregarded the impacts of its cuts to education. Cutting teaching assistants is a particularly short-sighted move that threatens the education of everyone in those affected classrooms. Over the years, classroom sizes have grown, and students with special and higher needs have been moved into regular classrooms with ‘normal’ students. Lately, with more immigration to our province, many teachers are also dealing with students for whom English is not their primary language. Teaching assistants help the teachers in those instances. It doesn’t take an expert to realize that providing instruction and maintaining order in a room of 30 kids is a challenge that most adults simply aren’t up to. On top of that, consider that three of those students likely don’t have a grasp of English and at least one child has behavioral challenges or an intellectual disability. One can easily see that taking away the teaching assistant penalizes not just the child with the intellectual disability, for example, but the entire class.

When we invest in education we gain future economic productivity. We also save on costs in the justice system, in health care and in social services. Investing in education is not only a smart economic approach, it’s also the compassionate approach that gives children (and adults) the means to help themselves and better their standard of living. Children have no control of their race, the family they’re born into, and the community they’re raised in. Investing in a person’s education is one of the best ways to give that person the means to clear whatever hurdles life may have placed in his/her path.

When she was four years old, she asked me why we had an orange election sign on our front lawn. “Hmm,” I thought, “How does one put this in terms that a four year old can understand?” I explained that people were choosing which ‘team’ gets to be the government and that we were on the orange team. I explained that there were other teams like the blue team, the red team and the green team. That answer temporarily satisfied her quest for knowledge but a few days later she wanted to know the difference between the teams. Another difficult explanation! The explanation of the green team must have been quite compelling for her because a few years later during the last provincial election, she asked “Daddy, why are we on the orange team instead of the green team?”

“Why does she ask such difficult questions?” I thought. I explained that the orange team was concerned about protecting the environment where we live, and that the orange team had been working to protect the environment for a long time before there ever was a green team. I explained that the green team had some very good ideas about how to protect the environment and that the orange team shared many of those ideas, but understood that there were other important things too — like making sure everyone is able to feed their family, find a house to live in and be able to go to the hospital if they need to. I also explained that the green team didn’t have much chance of getting elected and that the orange team did and that it was better to focus our efforts on helping the orange team to win.

That was four years ago. Today not much has changed. The orange team continues to demonstrate a commitment to a greener economy, such as the commitments to fund renewable energy and recycling when elected. With candidates like myself and Peter Prebble, the orange team has some very credible advocates for a green economy. The green team has done some admirable work to draw attention to some of the environmental issues facing us, but has little chance of getting anyone elected, let alone forming government.

What I didn’t discuss with my daughter was what I believe is a fundamental flaw in the approach of the Green Party. This was illustrated by the Green Party’s policy document in the last federal election. While it was an important contribution, it lacked a basic understanding of the need to address economic inequalities. People who are struggling to feed their family or find a decent home are generally more concerned about the price of gas than they are about the carbon coming out the exhaust pipe. They’re more concerned with the price of their food than whether it was grown in a sustainable method. Coincidentally, those who have great wealth also have the least to be concerned about if the environment is not protected – they will always be able to find a safe place to live and be able to buy healthy food and clean water. They also have the most to lose from a green economy because the transition threatens their wealth and power. And make no mistake, those who have great wealth never part with their wealth or their power easily. And so, while protecting the environment remains one of my principal objectives, I chose the orange team because I understand that the status quo of the carbon economy and the economic inequalities that exist in it are inherently linked.

Statistics Canada has released information that reveals the Wall Government is forcing Saskatchewan students to pay more for post-secondary education.

NDP Candidate Yens Pedersen thinks this is wrong , “Under the Wall Government, life is less and less affordable for Saskatchewan students,” said Pedersen. “Students not only have to deal with high increases in the cost of living, especially for housing and utilities, but they also have to pay a lot more for tuition. These increases are not only unsustainable, but they make it harder for both students and their families to afford post-secondary education.”

According to Statistics Canada, tuition fees for undergraduate students in Saskatchewan saw a significant increase on average of 5.0 per cent; while graduate students are paying 4.6 per cent more for their tuition. Pedersen noted that both undergraduate and graduate tuition fee increases far exceeded the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index, which was only 1.8 per cent between July 2009 and July 2010.

“Post-secondary students demanded that tuition increases not exceed the rate of inflation,” Pedersen said. “But the Wall Government ignored those requests and drove up the cost of tuition at a rate that far exceeds inflation. Post-secondary students and their families have been let down by this government.”

“For years the Minister of Advanced Education has talked about a Tuition Management System but has provided no detail whatsoever as to what this means or how it will affect students,” said Pedersen “With a second consecutive year in tuition increases, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Wall Government’s so called Tuition Management System simply means ever-rising tuition rates.”

Pedersen pointed out that under the previous NDP government, there was a tuition freeze that helped keep the cost of post-secondary education low. “Our party has always cared about affordability, not just for students but for everyone, with programs such as the tuition freeze and lowest-cost utility bundle for ratepayers we focused on making sure everyone in Saskatchewan could live, work and go to school without facing severe financial burden”.