Rebates for students, and other leadership campaign news

Greg Selinger advocates making tax rebates for students available when they're still students:

NDP leadership candidate Greg Selinger vowed Wednesday to help lighten the financial burden for post-secondary students by fast-tracking income tax refunds on school tuition.

Selinger said, if elected party leader, he would let students collect rebates on tuition fees while they were still attending classes. Now, those rebates are paid after graduation to students who remain in the province.

He told reporters Wednesday the revisions would give students intending to live and work in Manitoba more money in their pockets when they need it most.

"The bottom line is you get it (the refund) when you need it," he told reporters Wednesday, using the student cafeteria at College universitaire de Saint Boniface as a backdrop.

Sid Rashid, president of the University of Manitoba Students' Union, welcomed the announcement.

"It's effectively turning a back-end tax credit into a front-end grant," he said of the Selinger proposal.

From the Winnipeg Free Press. Meanwhile, Steve Ashton takes a different approach, namely restoring the tuition freeze.

Andrew Swan has picked up a big endorsement from Local 832 of the United Food and Commercial Workers. While some union leaders have made endorsements as individuals (notably United Firefighters of Winnipeg leader Alex Forrest, who's backing Ashton, and MFL president Darlene Dziewit, who backs Swan) I believe this is the first big union to endorse a candidate as an organization.