Debt and the Canadian family
August 7, 2009
I tacked the following onto a Globe article on student unemployment this summer and how the missing jobs will mean Dad and Mom will be hitting the bank up for more money.
Feel free to add comments about student loan programs and taxes, both pro and con. If I get some useful material I’d like to turn it into a column in the Review Mirror.
Thanks,
Rod
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For a major source of the growing indebtedness of Canadian families, you need look no further than the hypocritical attitude of government toward student finances. Remember Chretien’s huge Millenium Scholarship Fund? For all the hype, does anybody know anyone who actually got any money from it?
When I was a kid at Queen’s, my summer jobs as a construction labourer paid the whole shot for the following year at university, and virtually the whole thing was tax deductible at the top category.
Today’s dirty secret is that university education in Canada is much, much more expensive than it was for the previous generation, and almost all of the cost is paid with after-tax dollars. What’s more, the bit a parent can claim comes off the bottom of the tax schedule, not the top.
During my years as a teacher of OAC students my heart went out to the parents of the kids I sent off to post-secondary. There was no way they would let their kids down, but they suffered through a raw deal financially and nobody would acknowledge it.
the Walnut Diary 