Education is the foundation of everything else we are fighting for. A renewed national industrial strategy only works if we have the engineers, electricians, welders, and pipefitters to build it. A healthcare system that covers everyone only works if we train enough doctors and nurses to staff it. And a society where working Canadians can provide for themselves and their families requires that every child, regardless of their postal code, their family's income, their cultural background, or their ability, has access to the education they need. Right here in Abbotsford, UFV is facing a $20 million deficit that has already forced the firing of 45 faculty members in 2026.
Over the last thirty-five years, average tuition has increased more than five times over, trades training has been chronically underfunded, and too many young Canadians graduate into debt rather than into the middle-class stability that education was supposed to deliver. Politicians in Ottawa have allowed education to become a debt sentence rather than a public good, transferring the costs of building Canada's workforce onto the working Canadians who need that workforce built: it's time to change that.
Tuition-Free Trades Training And University
A generation of young Canadians is being priced out of the education and training they need to build a future. Average tuition in Canada has increased five times over in real terms in the past three decades, while student debt has become a defining feature of young adulthood, constraining career choices, delaying homeownership, and driving inequality between those whose families can afford to pay and those who cannot. New Democrats will fight for tuition-free post-secondary education, following the lead of countries like Germany, Norway, and Scotland, which treat it as a public good that benefits all of society, not a private investment the individual student alone should pay for. Making post-secondary education free doesn't just benefit students; it benefits the entire country by training and educating our entire population, reducing inequality, and ensuring that talent and ambition rather than family wealth determine who gets to pursue higher education.
Indigenous Language Revitalization And Cultural Education
Canada lost generations of Indigenous languages, cultures, and knowledge through the residential school system, a deliberate act of cultural genocide that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has documented in devastating detail. Reversing that loss requires sustained, serious investment in Indigenous language revitalization, land-based education, and the restoration of Indigenous peoples' control over the education of their own children. New Democrats are fighting for full implementation of the TRC's Calls to Action, including on education. That means adequate and stable funding for Indigenous language programs, Indigenous-controlled schools on and off reserve, and curriculum reform that teaches the true history of colonialism and its ongoing impacts to all Canadian students.
Eliminate Student Debt And Reform Student Aid
The student debt crisis is a policy failure, not a personal failure. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are carrying debt loads that will follow them for decades, constraining their choices, limiting their ability to start families or buy homes, and reproducing the class inequalities that higher education was supposed to break down. New Democrats are fighting to eliminate existing federal student debt, convert federal student loans to non-repayable grants for students from low and middle-income families, and ensure that no student has to choose between eating and studying. Education should open doors, not close them.
Accessible Education For Students With Disabilities
Students with disabilities face systemic barriers at every level of the education system: inadequate accommodations, underfunded support services, inaccessible facilities, and curricula that too often treat disability as an afterthought rather than a dimension of human diversity that education must actively serve. New Democrats are demanding national accessibility standards in post-secondary education, adequate federal funding for disability support services, and the recognition that accessible education is not a special accommodation but a fundamental right. Every student deserves the support they need to learn.