In North America, we face a crisis. It is getting worse by the year and is generally marginalized in the mainstream media. It is the crisis of student debt. As of September 2010, the amount that Canadian students owed the federal government for student loanssurpassed $15 billion. And that number doesn’t even include the amount that students owe on private loans, provincial government loans, credit cards, and lines of credit.
As we recently detailed in our articles on mandatory voting and the Ontario election that occurred this past June, voter apathy is increasing in Canada, and young people continue to be far less likely to vote than our older counterparts. For example, a mere 37 percent of eligible voters aged 18 to 24 participated in the last federal election.
There is a growing, often overlooked, trend that is finally starting to reach the forefront of people’s attention: more and more college and university students are beginning to seek help for mental illness. In many ways this is an unsurprising development – post-secondary students face enormous stress and daily pressures, from maintaining good grades, to dealing with rising tuition fees and debt, to navigating an unfriendly job market both during school and after graduation.
For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a writer. I started at Carleton University undeclared and later decided to do a combined honours bachelor degree in Journalism and Greek and Roman Studies. As my journalistic skills began to develop, I looked for opportunities outside of the classroom to practice and hone my writing abilities. I sent samples of my work to various publications, and as if a dream came true, a national music magazine called "The Scene" contacted me to cover events in Ottawa.
University can be an extremely stressful experience for students, but it's also a time of growth. Learning how to balance school, extracurriculars, a social life, and living on your own is useful training for dealing with the challenges that come with adulthood. While graduation should be a celebration of conquering the intense demands of a post secondary education, for many students it's more nerve-racking than university itself. That's because youth unemployment is a major problem in Canada.
As a university student living on my own, I have a number of responsibilities such as paying for my living expenses and tuition fees. The Ontario Student Assistant Program (OSAP) estimates that the average student living away from home pays approximately $11,000 per year for school and living costs. In order to cover these expenses, my summer months away from school are spent working two jobs for 60 hours a week.
The Ontario Election is right around the corner, and if everything goes as planned, young voters will turn out to the polls in much lower numbers than our older counterparts. And that's a shame, because our generation can have a major impact on the election if we choose to get out and vote.
A panel tasked with advising the Province of Ontario on how it should determine future changes to the minimum wage will be submitting its recommendations to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne this month. The panel heard calls for a $14 an hour minimum wage from various social justice organizations and civil society groups – including Health Providers Against Poverty and the Canadian Federation of Students – that were well-publicized in the media.
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