The Canadian Federation of Students presented the Ontario government with a petition containing 50,000 signatures at Queen’s Park on Oct. 22, demanding an immediate decrease in post-secondary tuition fees.
CFS contends that Ontario’s 2005 plan for post-secondary education has failed to curtail tuition fee increases. CFS chair Shelly Melanson claims that the plan, titled Reaching Higher, has propelled Ontario’s undergraduate fees to the second-highest in the country.
On the same day Ontario announced a revised budget to address the economic crisis ensuing from the U.S. stock market collapse. Melanson said that postsecondary education was a “wise investment during an economic downturn.” She went on to cite the major investment that Ireland made towards education during a recession and how it transformed the country into its current knowledge-based economy.
The education budget will remain unchanged, and continue along the Reaching Higher framework in the revised budget.
Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities John Malloy said Reaching Higher had been developed to facilitate an increase in student assistance. “The government’s primary objective is to ensure that postsecondary education is as accessible as possible,” he said.
Malloy stated that current fee-hike restrictions on post-secondary institutions will remain in place. The minister also emphasized that the government was most interested in aiding students who had the greatest financial need to ensure that postsecondary education would continue to be accessible to those from the lower income strata.
