Leonard Preyra - MLA for Halifax Citadel - Sable Island

By AMY SMITH Provincial Reporter

Provinces are stepping up their efforts to attract university and college students and graduates.

As of Jan. 1, Nova Scotians who attend university in the province — more than 23,000 students — will get a $440 break on tuition.

The money, part of the two-year, $28.8-million federal infrastructure trust fund, will only go to students from this province.

Undergraduate tuition fees in Nova Scotia average $6,571, the highest in Canada.

As well, Nova Scotia has a debt-reduction program for graduates, allowing them to reduce the amount they owe by up to 51 per cent.

“We want our grads to stay here and we’ll gladly take any grads from away that come in as well,” Education Department spokesman Kevin Finch said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Manitoba plans to offer up to $25,000 in tuition tax credits to post-secondary graduates who move to that province, starting this spring.

This week, Greg Selinger, Manitoba’s finance minister, said the rebate will apply to students from all provinces, and even other countries.

To be eligible, students must have graduated after Jan. 1, 2007.

“We felt that this program, designed in this way, would be quite attractive to young people when they’re making decisions about where they want to live and work,” Mr. Selinger told the Globe and Mail.

“It will also be a useful tool in recruiting people to come to Manitoba.”

Mr. Finch said the 2006 provincial budget includes a $1,000 credit off of taxes owing and said there is a possibility the upcoming budget will have more reductions for students.

In the fall of 2006, a magazine called Move West, which promoted Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, was inserted in a dozen Atlantic Canada newspapers.

Last month, the province kicked off an advertising drive to lure back Bluenoses working in Calgary, touting Nova Scotia as a more affordable place to live.

In 2005, New Brunswick announced it would provide a tax rebate of up to $10,000 — equal to 50 per cent of total eligible tuition costs against provincial personal income tax payable — for each post-secondary student who works in that province and filed a provincial income tax return.

Danielle Sampson, with the Canadian Federation of Students, said Manitoba has been doing more to address student debt, including a tuition fee rollback, but a tuition tax credit isn’t the best way to help.

“I think we have to be looking at ways to ensure our students aren’t saddled with the high levels of debt that they are now in the first place,” she said.

Liberal education critic Leo Glavine said he thinks his party’s idea of a graduate tax credit, unveiled during the June 2006 election campaign, is a better way.

The Liberal plan would provide a fully refundable $2,000 credit for university students and $1,000 for community college students each year for ten years after they graduate.

It would be available to any graduate who works in Nova Scotia.

“We have to be a competitor and a contender for those graduates,” he said. “We have to find ways of attracting our very well-educated (graduates) to the province and create the workforce of the beginning of the 21st century.”

NDP education critic Leonard Preyra said Nova Scotia needs to address the cost of post-secondary education at the front end through lower tuition fees and needs-based grants.

“Our challenge has been to really keep students here in the province rather than bringing them back,” he said.

“Bringing them back is like dealing with it after the horse has left the barn.

( asmith@herald.ca)