The Ontario government tabled its budget on May 15. The document, which has not yet passed at Queen’s Park, sees a staggering 8.8 per cent decrease in spending on universities and colleges. The cuts to post-secondary education, when the province is trying to pivot the economy and possibly deal with extensive job losses due to American tariffs, is baffling to say the least.
For many years, Ontario’s universities and colleges have struggled financially. The province has the lowest per-student funding for post-secondary out of the entire country. To stave off program and job cuts, most of the province’s post-secondary education sector grew its offerings to international students. Those students were not subject to the tuition caps placed by the province on domestic students. It worked, and international students made up much of the shortfall for these institutions – but it was a band-aid on a bleeding system.
Extensive reductions in international student visas by the federal government ripped the band-aid off. Since then, most of Ontario’s publicly funded schools have reported financial losses, hundreds of programs have been cut, and more than 5,000 jobs have been lost in the sector. In its budget, the government is cutting base funding to these schools by another 7.2 per cent.
Another cut is to Ontario Student Assistance Program support. OSAP provides grants and loans to low-to-middle income students to attend a post-secondary program. About one-third of all students have used OSAP to go to school since it was reformed in 1999. This year, provincial funding for OSAP has been cut by 19.4 per cent. This will reduce funding to those who need it and cut the number of people who qualify – all while the costs of education continue to increase.
These cuts have not been justified by the province, and come at the same time that Premier Doug Ford has said we need to train more skilled workers in the trades and other jobs as our economy changes. If funding is cut to post-secondary schools where most of that training occurs, and funding to help those most in need to access that education is also cut – how can Ford accomplish this? Simply, he cannot.
As stated before, if Ontario doubled its 2024-25 per-student funding for post-secondary schools, it would only come up to the current national average compared to the rest of Canada. Considering Ontario is the most populous province, this is cheapening out on education.
Job creation, including trades, is receiving an approximately $500 million boost, but most of that is through tax credits to businesses to hire workers. It is not for training or the trades. Those tax credits are for only hiring, and not to provide incentives for a business to take on more apprentices. This is an essential gap to bridge college programs to real-world trades that is missing. The lack of these incentives, combined with cuts to post-secondary funding, and cuts to OSAP funding all point to the fact that Premier Ford, and his Universities and Colleges minister Nolan Quinn are not taking this file seriously – especially in relation to the economic threats that have been bandied about.
Education and training are the key to building a stronger Ontario workforce and economy. Actions and spending should match the rhetoric of the Premier and his government.
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