Ontario Premier Doug Ford answered a week of student walkouts on Monday by telling the students to “give your head a shake, kids.” He said they were “so naive,” that they should be “thanking the government for just investing,” and that they “all run out like sheep” after reading social media, where he said “half the people” are “a bunch of looney tunes.”
The students had walked out under the banner “Hands Off Our Education!” on campuses including York, Guelph, Trent and Windsor. What they are protesting is concrete. Since Aug. 1, the share of an Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) package that comes as a grant, money that never has to be repaid, has been capped at 25%. It used to reach 85%. On a $20,000 package, that is the gap between as much as $17,000 in free money and $5,000, with the rest owed. The province also lifted its tuition freeze, letting schools raise fees by up to 2% a year for three years.
Ford’s government says the old program was unaffordable: it puts OSAP’s cost at $2.7 billion, heading to $4.1 billion by 2028-29 without changes. The premier’s advice on Monday was to aim for “good paying jobs” in STEM and health care.
Who leans on grants
A grant is worth the most to the student whose family cannot cover the gap. Student groups say that is why the cuts fall hardest on low-income, racialized and Indigenous students, and students with disabilities. Rory Norris of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance has said that over 80% of students said OSAP was their highest form of financial aid.
For Black Ontarians, the degree is the goal. In Statistics Canada’s 2016 data, 94% of Black youth aged 15 to 25 said they wanted a university degree, compared with 82% of other youth. Wanting one and being able to pay for one are different things, and a student who finishes with a loan-heavy package starts adult life behind a classmate whose family could cover the bill. Even before this change, half of Ontario university undergraduates who graduated in 2020 carried more than $25,000 in debt.
Ford’s remarks, as reported Monday, did not address what the shift to loans will mean for Black students or any other group.
Calling people who face a bigger bill “naive” is not a policy. The students who walked out were describing their own budgets. Ontario should restore the grants it cut, and it should publish who is and is not enrolling next fall by race, so that nobody can say they were never asked.
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