Students

With school season fast approaching, many may be looking into post-secondary education.

The Canadian Federation of Student's main goal is to fight for a system of post-secondary education that is accessible to all, regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds.

National Executive with the CFS, Travis Perry says they do quite a bit of campaign work across the country.

"We're always advocating that he provincial and federal governments step up and invest appropriately in post-secondary education, that they take steps to progressively reduce and eliminate tuition fees, that they improve the student financial aid system that we have on a provincial and federal level, and that they ensure that our post-secondary institutions are adequately funded and are of high quality."

Newfoundland and Labrador recently had a major win of their own, with an entire elimination of provincial student loans in favour of non-repayable grants.

"It's definitely a positive step for our province and ensures that students here will be graduating with less debt, and will be able to sooner than other students across the country start a family, purchase a home, start a small business, and contribute to the economy in ways such as that,
Perry adds this is a policy that they will be looking to the federal government in this election to model their student aid system afterwards.

"With a federal election in our midst, students from coast to coast will be looking to all federal parties to make commitments to invest in post-secondary education and step up to the plate to ensure that our future generation is able to get their foot in the door and get a quality education, but not be burdened down by mountains of student debt," he said.

As for Saskatchewan, the government recently announced changes to their Graduate Retention Program that will no longer see the distribution of cheques, but implements a tax credit system instead - saving the government $33.5 million in the process.

The graduate retention program used to be a fixed rebate applied to your income taxes. Tax credits are now spread out over ten years instead of seven, meaning a small number of graduates won't be able to take full advantage of the credit.

According to Statistics Canada, last year tuition fees rose by 4 per cent in Saskatchewan, making it the second highest average tuition fee in the country after Ontario.