I enjoyed in particular the member for Niagara Falls talking about international students because I’m very concerned about them. I see an incredible amount of international students in Ottawa using food banks and who are very housing-insecure, and I just want to zoom out for a minute because there are other places in the world that treat international students very differently.

I want to cite in particular Germany. Germany is a place with over 300 public post-secondary institutions, and you can study there as a Canadian for free, for minimal tuition; there are nominal fees here and there.

The German economy is one of the most successful economies. I had the occasion to go there for some conferences when I was a student. I learned a lot from people I met over there about how particular industries run in that country, and I’m wondering if we could actually convince this government to financially contribute to colleges and universities. Why couldn’t we treat international students with more respect?