Here in Canada it costs about CAN $22-$24,000 per year to do a year of university (for a full time student). This is all in (includes tuition, books, rent, food, entertainment/beer, cell, transit etc). If you live at home cost for tuition and books is about $8,000 per year. If you go to a local college (most areas have a local college close to their home) the cost drops to about $7,000 per year (tuition and books). Bottom line, post secondary education here in Canada is more accessible than it has ever been with lots of great options that are reasonable priced (for what you get).
There is a pretty good national student loan program in place where you can receive up to $14,000 per year; the amount you can get is dependent on how much the students earns in the prior year, the parents earnings the prior year and the parents assets (not including real estate, RRSP, RESP). The application process is pretty simple (takes a couple of hours). If you are from a low income home you can receive a $3,000 per year grant which you do not have to pay back. You pay no interest on your student loan until 6 months after you graduate (Federal government may extend this to 2 years).
My daughter attends University of BC (Vancouver); on her floor in residence last year was lots of international students, including a few from the US who had one Canadian parent. They chose to do their education in Canada because of the much lower cost and good overall quality.
The big problem we have is international students pay much higher tuition fees. So over the years the universities have been taking growing numbers of international students because of the much higher revenue stream. When they started down this road the grade point required was similar. My understanding is that over time, as they take more international and fewer Canadian kids (percentage wise), the grade point requirement for Canadian kids to get into a big University like UBC is now higher than what an international student requires to get in. This would be ok if universities here were private; but they are considered public institutions. If people better understood this issue here in BC we would likely have lots of very angry voters :-)