An interview with NDP’s Advanced Education Critic Michelle Mungall

By Alison Roach

On her way to our on-campus interview, Michelle Mungall got a little lost. While she has spent the past two years on post-secondary campuses throughout the province and has visited SFU Burnaby four times by her count, the distinction between different Renaissance Cafes is still a tricky one.

When she did breeze into the Cornerstone Renaissance, I was a bit taken-aback. When I had arranged the meet-up with the NDP Advanced Education Critic and MLA for Nelson Creston, I was expecting someone who looked a lot more — well, like a politician. However, Mungall sat down in a whirl of long, dark hair, a brightly coloured handbag, and a tiny gem peeking out from the side of her nose. And then we started talking about the upcoming election, and NDP politics.

Here are the highlights of our conversation.

On BC’s looming worker deficit:
“The fact [is] that 80 per cent of jobs are going to require some level of post-secondary education in the next few years, and we’re just not going to have the population in BC as it is to fill that, even if we educated everybody. But the bigger problem is not everybody is getting the training they need for the jobs of the future, and there’s a variety of reasons for that. Affordability being top of mind.”

On the Liberals’ $50 million cut to post-secondary education:
“In talking about the cuts I’ve used this word and the current advanced education minister really didn’t like it; and I said “dismal.” I think it is dismal to make these type of decision at a time that’s not good for BC’s economy. We need to be training young people at all levels of post-secondary education, and that’s what the data clearly shows.”

On the pushback from universities:
“All [university] presidents responded with a letter to the provincial government which insisted that these cuts will impact students. This letter was unprecedented. Never before have all 25 post-secondary institution presidents gotten together and done this. So they’re pushing back . . . they’re not pushing back out of self-interest, they’re pushing back because there is clear data coming from the provincial government about why we need to invest in post-secondary education.”

The NDP solution:
“Right off the bat we need to be ensuring that we’re reducing barriers for young people to start postsecondary education. One of the best ways we can do that, we all know, is affordability, and for those who are struggling the most, and getting into the biggest debt-loads, there’s something we can do. We did it up to 2004, everyone else does it, and its financial needs-based grants. We’re going to put $100 million back into that grant program.”

Where they’re going to get that money:
“Back in 2008 the Liberals cut a corporate capital gains tax from a very nominal rate, about two per cent, to zero per cent. So that means the big banks are not paying any of that tax. The reason they’re not paying any of that tax is they said “get rid of this tax for us and we’ll create more jobs.” They cut jobs . . . so we’re going to bring back that corporate capital gains tax to that 2008 level, a very competitive level still in North America, and we’re going to take the money from that, which is about $150–$200 million revenue, and we’re going to put $100 million into financial needs-based grants.”

On dealing with the loans you already have:
“We’ve been talking about interest rates for student loans, BC having the highest. Can we reduce that interest rate? And how much would we be able to reduce it by? There’s definitely a desire for us to be looking at that and that’s what I’ve been doing; crunching the numbers. It’s looking pretty good. It’s also a matter of fairness. BC students are paying the highest interest rate across Canada, on the highest debt-loads.”

And why this is all important:
“I think it’s really important to have these conversations over the years, before heading into an election, to get a really good understanding of what’s been going on in our system; where it’s at, and what we can do to improve it. We do have an amazing system here in BC. We have tremendous schools that have very high international ranking, so a lot to be proud of. We want to keep it that way, and to keep it that way we have to make these investments.”