Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Wednesday is the deadline for getting feedback to the GNWT on the student financial assistance regulations. The regulations call for an increase to unlimited semesters for Indigenous students, and this is great news. But why stop there? The draft regulations maintain the six year or 12 semester basic grant cap for nonIndigenous students. Mr. Speaker, this does not keep pace with postsecondary or labour market trends or make sense given how SFA is used today.
Today, the average time to complete a bachelor's degree is almost five years, and the NWT labour market needs predict the most indemand jobs as management positions. The GNWT's own recruitment calls for master's degrees for these positions. The NWT also needs lawyers, specialized health care workers and veterinarians, among other professions, all of which require education past a bachelor's degree. In addition to limiting semesters, the regulations also set a $60,000 cap on the total student loans.
Mr. Speaker, SFA needs the ability to respond to labour market demands and allow funding beyond the current cap on a discretionary basis. Graduate studies, aviation and medical school are all in demand, cost more, and have demanding workloads which limits student ability to selffund their education. This policy limitation also doesn't make sense when held against SFA's own usage trends. The program is not fully subscribed. Over the last decade, the number of SFA students has declined while funding for students has remained constant. Less than 10 percent of students access more than four years of funding, and only 4 percent of SFA recipients are graduate students. So increasing the cap for all students schooled in the NWT does not stand to drastically change the cost of SFA. While the SFA regulations will continue to limit semesters for some NWT students, the regulations now remove one of the NWT's strongest population retention tools for the remissible loans in one sentence, quote, "eligibility will no longer be based on whether the student was schooled in the NWT," end quote.
Mr. Speaker, every week I hear from families that SFA is what keeps them here in the face of a high cost of living. The NWT has too much to lose by changing the eligibility requirement without a postgraduation residency requirement. But the NWT does, however, absolutely stand to benefit from increased education levels of NWT students and increased incentives to return north for loan forgiveness from extending remissible loan limits. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Members' statements. Member for Nahendeh.
