By Jessi Gilligan
(Niagara At Large thanks The Brock Press for permission to re-post this article.)
Debt: it is one small word, but has a large effect on the economy. From the very beginning of adulthood in Canada, credit is offered – and even encouraged – to young adults.
Brock University student Jessi Gilligan.
According to a report on Canadian debt and income by the Vanier Institute of the Family (VIF), over half of students getting a post-secondary education are paying for it with student loans and will be at an average of $18,000 in debt when they graduate. The students don’t usually worry about it, however. Many of them simply plan to “pay off” their student loans with the professional jobs that will be offered after graduation.
Unfortunately, a pattern that began in mid-2009 warns Canadians that only five per cent of new jobs created will be given to young people, especially 15 to 24-year-olds. Therefore, despite the recent increase of jobs in Canada, there is still a prospect of rising unemployment rates.
Furthermore, around 900,000 either part-time or former workers in the labour market are still searching for full time hours. This rising unemployment rate is already making it difficult for people fresh out of a trade, apprenticeship, university, or college to find well-paying jobs and pay off their debts.
Even students who did not use government loans to pay for their tuition are having similar experiences.
“My tuition was paid by my parents, but my line of credit paid for a lot of my living expenses […] and I’m still paying it off. I have $10,000 in total and I haven’t even really made a dent in it,” said Gillian Aitken, a recent graduate of the University of Western Ontario. Aitken works two jobs, but it barely covers rent, groceries and interest payments.
“I’m moving home in a few weeks though, for the sole purpose of saving money and paying off debt,” she said.
Paying off student loans and finding steady jobs is a long process for young adults in Canada, and it’s not long before they begin to see the shadow from the wave of more credit, bills, mortgages and more once they have taken care of their career and student loans. According to the annual report done by the VIF, the average Canadian family carries $100,000 in debt.
Despite the recession being technically over, Katherine Scott, the Institute’s Director of Programs, said in the Associate Press, “the confidence Canadian families have in their economic and financial situation is shaky”.
“At the individual level, you’re getting more people that are highly indebted; and therefore, [they] are just trying to pay it off, or even make minimum payments on certain things,” stated Robert Sauvé, Report Author and President of People Patterns Consulting.
Sauvé said that it’s getting more and more stressful for individuals and families to manage their budgets.
“A few years ago, the debt was only about 93 per cent, and now it’s 150 per cent at the individual level […] to go from 93 per cent to 150 is the best indicator to show how many bankruptcies we [might] have,” Sauvé stated.
Sauvé also said that this pattern will be
very difficult to reverse.
“Again, it comes down to the individual level,” he stated. “People just have to say there is too much debt.”
It’s up to us to cut back, according to Sauvé. We have to make the commitment to cut back on spending money that we don’t have. Otherwise, we might be forever in debt.
Jessi Gilligan is attending Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario and is now residing in that same community in our greater Niagara region.
Visit The Brock Press online at www.brockpress.com .
(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater Niagara region and beyond.)
Niagara At Large 
Post-secondary education, which is vital to our country, is becoming less and less affordable. Lowering taxes and increasing user fees (tuition etc.) will ultimately be more costly to Canadians in the long term. Instead of creating “fortress Canada” with new attack planes etc., we should be offering more subsidies to universities, colleges etc: it’s far more cost-efficient.
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I agree very definitely.
When we were considering enrolling our children in the CST (Canadian Scholarship Trust) post-secondary savings plan (for children born 1959, 1960 and 1963 – I argued against it as I was sure that by the time they went to university or college post-secondary education in Canada would be free.
Fortunately I was overruled and our children have graduated and are pursuing careers, thanks to the CST and the fact that we saw small steps in the direction of increased accessibility for all, with the introduction of student grants plus some student loans; but gradually the grants disappeared and only the loans are left now – with the result that education is increasingly returning to an elite privilege only.
It is sad that in a country as rich as Canada we are wasting money in actually harmful – deadly harmful – ‘defense’ spending, increased jailing – and failing one of the most important areas, education.
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