After it was revealed Friday that the Ontario tuition freeze that has been in place for the last two years is being lifted, student groups including SAC and CFS were moved to protest what they saw as coming out of leftfield. (See The Varsity’s coverage in the Oct. 3 issue).
But according to Chris Bentley, the Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, they should have seen it coming.
“We campaigned on a two-year tuition freeze, we implemented a two-year tuition freeze,” he said.
Most students became aware that the freeze, which affected domestic non-professional students, was over when Dalton McGuinty spoke to students at Carleton University last Friday. According to a Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) press release, Carole Saab, president of the Carleton University Students’ Association, asked McGuinty if tuition would rise next year. McGuinty replied, “yes.”
Within hours, the CFS had raised an alarm, saying that throughout the tuition consultations they had been participating in with the government since July 20, they had been under the impression that no decision had been made about whether to end or extend the freeze. In short, they had no clue that this was coming.
“One comment on what people knew or did not know,” explained Bentley. “The premier said last Friday exactly the same thing he’d said last February.” February 8, the day after the Rae Report was released, McGuinty mentioned the increase.
“What’s going to happen when the tuition freeze is lifted? Are students going to see big increases there?” someone asked the premier, according to a transcript provided by the premier’s staff.
“I think we’re going to see some kinds of increases,” he replied, and went on to elaborate, but without specifying when exactly those increases would take place. Bentley insisted he remembered someone asking how long the freeze would be and that McGuinty replied that it would be no more than two years, but the transcript provided was partial and could not confirm this.
The CFS said they believed that the tuition consultations would lead to an announcement in December. Bentley says that they still will.
“We’re now having the discussions about the tuition framework, and I hoped, I still hope, that we can conclude those discussions.” This means that an announcement in December could, among other things, give students some idea of how much their tuition will rise in September. But another tuition freeze is out of the question, according to Bentley.
“We have to have a system that is accessible, of high quality, and that is sustainable.”
Student groups have not been deterred. On Monday, the CFS launched a Fax-the-Premier campaign to demand a new tuition freeze.
“McGuinty seems prepared to push aside students and their parents and follow Mike Harris’s path of market-driven fee increases,” said Jesse Greener, Ontario chairperson of the CFS, in a press release. But Bentley still thinks his government is doing a good job.
“We campaigned on a two-year tuition freeze….We’ve delivered what nobody else has delivered,” he says. “We’ve also invested substantial new moneys in the quality of education, substantial new moneys in improving access.”
