Letter: Post Secondary Education and The Spin Doctors
Resident David McLeish takes aim at the Ford government’s OSAP changes, illustrating how reduced grants and years of underfunding are making post-secondary education harder to afford.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dear Editor,
The Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) changes announced recently by the Ford Government belie either an ignorance of the challenges faced by aspiring post-secondary education students, or downright vexatiousness.
This piece focuses on both the policy decision and the manner in which it was communicated.
According to the last census, 48% of Owen Sounders 15 years and older had some form of post-secondary certificate, diploma, or degree. We can reasonably assume that many graduating high school in our community will go on to college or university.
On February 12, 2026, the Ontario Government used a plethora of superlatives to announce funding related to Ontario colleges & universities and grants & loans available to post-secondary students.
To read the media release one, could not help but be impressed by the “decisive action to protect postsecondary students” that would “build long-term sustainability,” “support the world-class research being conducted at Ontario universities and colleges,” and ensure that “education remains accessible for future generations.”
This almost sounds too good to be true. Sadly, it is.
Is post-secondary education important? Of course it is. We need tradespeople who possess the necessary knowledge and skills to fix our houses and vehicles, and to build new houses and apartment buildings.
We also need well-trained doctors to fix us when we’re ill; personal support workers to take care of us or our parents; librarians to help us find information or thought provoking books to read; scientists to help us better understand the world around us, develop vaccines, and invent new technologies; and artists to stimulate our brains.
It benefits all of society to ensure that we have a well-educated populace.
The province’s media release noted that the province is investing “$6.4 billion in new funding (my bold) for the postsecondary sector.” This could only but impress even the most devoted skeptic, because a billion is a really, really, big number.
BUT, and here is where we need to use our critical thinking skills, is this straight up information, or is it propaganda?
The first clue that this is the latter is buried down in the sixth paragraph, where we learn that this funding is actually “over four years.”
$6.4 billion ÷ 4 = $1.6 billion per year
And, there are 47 publicly funded colleges and universities in Ontario. Assuming that these funds will be distributed equally, using Western University and Humber Polytechnic as examples, this funding will increase annual operating and capital expenditures for our universities and colleges by 3% to 5% per year.
Nothing to sneeze at, but given that these increases pale in comparison to the 7% to 39% increases of the early 2000s, they are hardly earthshattering.
The media release also notes that this funding will “raise annual operating funding to $7 billion, a 30 per cent increase and the highest level in the province’s history.”
Sounds impressive, BUT funding for the post-secondary sector was routinely above $7 billion annually from 2011 to 2018 when the Conservatives took power.
A more honest statement would be that this funding “returns annual operating funding to where it was over a decade ago.”
It is also worth noting that on average, from 2019 to 2025, the Conservatives increased funding for colleges and universities by a mere 0.4% per year whilst increasing overall government spending by an average of 5.3% per year.
There was money, and it was going somewhere. Just not to post-secondary education.
Let’s take a look at the published Operating Expenditures for the Ministry responsible for colleges and universities from 1999 to 2025. For those who are politically inclined, I have coloured the bars to represent the party in power for each year.
As you can see, the Liberals increased funding from 2004 to 2017. In their final budget in March 2018, the Liberals proposed an allocation of $8,677,878,614 for colleges and universities, a 5% increase over 2017. The election, which the Liberals lost, was called on May 9, 2018, meaning that any variance from the proposed budget can safely be attributed to the Conservatives.
The Actual expenditure on colleges and universities for that year was $7,630,435,588, a $1,047,443,026 or 12% reduction from what was originally budgeted.
The Conservatives then reduced the expenditures of the Ministry of Colleges and Universities again in 2019 and 2020, for a total spending reduction of $2,356,322,346 or 23%.
Funding was held at 0.3% in 2021, then increased by 2% to 8% until 2025. The fact that their media release then goes on to implicate the federal government in “the unprecedented pressures on Ontario’s postsecondary sector” would seem spurious at best.
To put the effects of the Conservatives spending levels on Ontario’s colleges and universities further into perspective, a 2025 report by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario noted that in 2022-23, Ontario had the lowest provincial funding for colleges and universities among all provinces.
Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan all spent over twice as much per student than Ontario.
If the Conservatives had simply tied the 2018 proposed budget to inflation, post-secondary institutions would have received an additional $20,583,504,529 over the 7 years.
In the end, it doesn’t seem reasonable to market the $1.6 billion/year as “new funding” when in fact it’s money they removed over 8 years and are now only slowly returning.
Let’s talk about OSAP
The second aspect of the government announcement relates to changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). By way of background, Ontario has had one form of student loan/grant program or another since 1966.
The first program was introduced in 1966 by Progressive Conservative William “Bill” G. Davis, the Minister at the time. It was called the Province of Ontario Student Award Program (POSAP). It was not a 100% bursary program but rather a combination of 60% federal loans and 40% provincial bursaries.
It has changed countless times since then. The term “dog’s breakfast” is an apt idiom for the “tangled web” (how’s that for mixed metaphors?!?) of funding that has been available to Ontario students over the years.
The various combinations and permutations have included federal funding managed by the province, provincial grants and/or loans, the freezing of tuition increases, loans that have been forgiven, loan repayments that have been deferred, loans/grants that have been based on family income, policies related to students who are dependents or student who have dependents, etc., etc..
If one had a suspicious nature, you’d think this was intended to obfuscate what was actually happening.
The recent media release promised that “a stronger, more sustainable OSAP system will ensure financial assistance remains available for future generations while supporting students’ appropriate investment in their education and success.”
Translating this into plain English, we discover that students with a family income below $50,000, who used to receive 82% of OSAP as a grant, will now receive only 25% as a grant. The other 75% of their funding will be loans.
This is on top of changes made in 2019, which removed free tuition for low-income students and imposed interest fees previously deferred during the first six-months after graduation.
Exactly how students will benefit from graduating with a larger debt is not addressed in the media release.
I was a university student in 1975. My tuition cost about $610/year, and since I commuted, I did not have to pay residence costs. If I was in residence, I could have expected to pay an additional $372/year, bringing the total to almost $1000/yr.
Back then, it was considered a right of passage for university and college students to work for the summer to cover their university costs. It was doable. Tuition and residence costs could actually be earned in about 15 weeks.
Today, as can be seen in the chart below, a university student needs to work about 70 weeks at the student minimum wage to cover their education costs for one year.
Unless their parents have deep pockets, this means that a typical student has little choice but to incur debt to attend university.
According to the Canadian University Survey Consortium’s 2024 survey, “forty-five percent of graduating students report having debt, most commonly government student loans.” The average debt among students reporting debt is almost $29,000.
A closer look at the student minimum wage
In case you’re wondering about that student minimum wage, back in the early 1970s, someone convinced the government that they should be able to pay summer students less. The Bill Davis Conservatives rose to the occasion and created the student minimum wage in 1975.
I thought that the Ontario’s Human Rights Code protected workers from age discrimination, but the government has circumvented the Code by passing separate legislation to permit this form of discrimination.
It started out at $0.40 less than the general minimum wage, but that gap quickly grew to $0.85 by 1979. There it remained through the following Liberal Government and part of the term of the NDP Government, until 1994 when the NDP reduced the gap to $0.45/hour.
The gap didn’t change for over a decade, right through the Mike Harris Conservatives, until the Dalton McGuinty Liberals increased it to $0.50 in 2006.
It then fluctuated between $0.50 and $0.95 settling at $0.90/hour when Kathleen Wynne lost power to Doug Ford in 2018.
Ford reduced the gap to $0.85/hour for several years, but then increased it by $0.05/hour every year until the gap widened to its highest level of $1.00/hour in 2024, where it remains today.
In summary:
Universities have been grossly underfunded for the past 7 years;
Free tuition for low-income families has been removed;
Student wages are currently the farthest below the general minimum wage ever;
And now, students can receive only 25% of their OSAP as a grant.
As if to add insult to injury, the Conservatives have renamed the Ministry responsible for post-secondary education to the Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security.
The cost to change the name of a government Ministry is not available, but estimates range in the millions. A name change necessitates that legislation be amended or updated to ensure that legal authority, duties, and references remain valid. Government forms must be changed, employees need new business cards, websites must be up-dated, signs changed, contracts up-dated, and so on.
Just in case you were counting, the name of the organization responsible for post-secondary education started out under the Conservatives as the Department of University Affairs in 1964. Since then it has been known as:
the Department of Colleges and Universities (1971),
the Ministry of Colleges and Universities (1972),
the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (1990),
the Ministry of Education and Training (1993),
the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (1999),
the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development (2016),
the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (2018),
the Ministry of Colleges and Universities (2019),
and the Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security (2025).
Conservatives were responsible for 5 of these 7 name changes.
I suppose, to be fair, the Conservatives did reuse the same name 3 times, but everything still had to be changed because they were replacing another name previously used by the Liberals or NDP (1 name change each).
David McLeish
Owen Sound
Letters to the Editor do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of The Owen Sound Current and its editor or publisher.
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