Action To Promote Economic Growth

Investing In Skills

Mr. Speaker, we are promoting economic opportunities not only through investments in our business climate, infrastructure, natural resources and innovation, but also through our investments in the skills of our people so they are equipped to seize the opportunities before them.

We are making significant investments to ensure we have an educated, highly-qualified, skilled workforce to meet the labour market demands associated with increased economic activity from major projects, new construction and investments in infrastructure. In this year’s Budget, we are investing $3.9 million to enhance career and employment services; and among other things, this will enable us to expand these services in rural areas through five new Career Information Resource Centres; implement employment and business development projects in rural areas; expand the Graduate Retention Program to help an additional 100 graduates a year; and hire ten Career Information Officers to work with teachers, guidance counselors and students in the K-12 system.

We are also taking steps to ensure education, skills training and work experience opportunities are increasingly accessible. Our government last year commissioned a Skills Task Force which brought together business, labour, government, education and other community leaders to identify the skill sets we are lacking, and determine the best ways to ensure our graduates and workers are ready to seize opportunities. The task force report will be released shortly and action to implement its recommendations will begin immediately.

While this work progresses and in support of its objectives, we are investing $2.8 million in this year’s Budget to improve the responsiveness of the skills training and apprenticeship system in the province. These measures will expand skilled trades and technology offerings at the College of the North Atlantic, support national apprenticeship standards, strengthen the participation of women, Aboriginal persons and youth in the apprenticeship system, hire more apprentices in the public sector, enhance our power engineering program, establish an Industrial Coordinating Committee to identify industry skill set needs, help improve the recruitment of women in the forestry sector, and establish scholarships to promote further education.

At all ages, education is the key to unlocking doors to opportunity and self-reliance. This year, for the first time in our province’s history, our investment in education will exceed one billion dollars.

Since 2003, we have eliminated school fees, established commissions to examine teacher allocations and the Individual Support Services Plan / Pathways, and invested strongly in infrastructure, equipment, busing and curriculum. Last year alone, our new investments in K-12 education surpassed $40 million.

This year, we are raising our investment in the K-12 system by a further $41 million. This investment will include $14.8 million for new school construction, maintenance, repairs and innovations to ensure our children benefit from proper, safe and healthy learning environments. With an investment of $583,500, we will enhance computer technology support; and with an investment of $1 million, we will finance improved software. Laboratory safety will be enhanced with an investment of $1.65 million, and the public libraries that support young people and their families in the community will benefit from an investment of $385,000.

Last year, we eliminated school fees. This year, with an investment of $12.8 million, we will extend the provision of free textbooks in core courses to include all students from Kindergarten to Grade 12. While this is a substantial part of our Poverty Reduction Strategy, this initiative will apply to all students, regardless of their family income.

At the post-secondary level, we are making an additional $20.4 million investment in Memorial University. Some $15.3 million of Memorial’s total funding will allow work to proceed on a new academic building for the university’s Sir Wilfred Grenfell Campus in Corner Brook and the construction of two new student residences, one at Corner Brook and one at St. John’s. Among this funding, $400,000 will finance a new Safety and Emergency Response Training Centre at the university, $500,000 will advance distance education in which the university has long been a leader, $200,000 will better support the international students we attract to our province, and $800,000 will enable the university to better promote itself nationally and internationally in campaigning for new students, faculty, and research funding as it works with our government to help Newfoundland and Labrador achieve leadership in R&D. An investment of $1.3 million will also enable the university to demonstrate environmental leadership by reducing emissions.

Sir Wilfred Grenfell College is a tremendous asset to the province’s western region and has the potential to make an even greater contribution to the economic and social growth of the province. Based on the information and recommendation of a recent feasibility study into the governance structure of Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, our government will work with the Memorial University Board of Regents to implement the recommendations of the study, including granting the College full university status and a separate executive, senate and budget while maintaining a common Board of Regents.

The College of the North Atlantic will benefit from an additional investment of $8.3 million, which will enhance equipment and facilities for key program areas, create new programming in the area of Early Childhood Education and improve accessibility at the Burin Campus.

We are proud that, since 2003, we have maintained a tuition freeze for students of Memorial and the College of the North Atlantic. Our tuition rates are the lowest in Canada for Canadian students. In keeping with the policies we announced in our White Paper on Public Post-secondary Education, we are again this year extending the tuition freeze.

Even with this freeze, however, students continue to amass significant debt, and many graduates are deeply indebted just as they are attempting to establish careers, homes and families. It is clearly in our province’s best interests to help our students avoid falling deeply in debt and assist our graduates to escape indebtedness so they can achieve a greater measure of self-reliance. Our government worked closely with students and graduates to find out what initiatives they believe will be most effective in addressing this debt problem. Their advice made eminently good sense; we have listened; and this year, we are delighted to announce the allocation of $14.4 million for a two-component Student Loan Debt Relief program. Under one component, beginning in the fall of this year, students will receive up -front needs-based grants to offset their borrowing costs. Some 8,000 students are expected to benefit under this component. Under the second component, we will reduce the interest on provincial student loan debts to prime making ours the lowest rate on student loans in the country, a measure that will benefit some 46,000 students and graduates in repayment. We are excited about these initiatives because they represent real investments in the young women and men who are taking the initiative to advance themselves and develop the skills they need to make enormous contributions to their province.