Hundreds of students converged on Queen’s Park last Wednesday to protest the cost and quality of education in Ontario, reserving their harshest criticism for premier Dalton McGuinty.
“Education is a right, we will not give up the fight!” chanted the crowd, as they made their way across campus and into Queen’s Park.
For many students, their chief concern was being excluded from provincial government’s recently announced 30 per cent tuition grant. The grant is only available to students whose parental income is below $160,000 and who have been out of high school for four years or less. Part-time, international, and out-of-province students are ineligible for the grant.
These terms of eligibility have become the object of a province-wide controversy. The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) said that during the election, McGuinty campaigned on a 30 per cent tuition cut for all students, and that the narrow eligibility requirements amount to a broken promise.
Liberal supporters countered that the grant was intended for low and middle-class Ontario families, and that was what McGuinty delivered.
“Students are obviously really frustrated that they were promised something during the election that has not come to fruition,” said Sandy Hudson, CFS-Ontario chairperson and prominent student rights activist.
“That’s why they’ve come out here today in force,” she added.
Iain Park, a fourth year student at Laurentian who traveled to Toronto to attend the protest, said he felt access to affordable education was “evaporating right in front of us.”
Though out of high school for more then four years, Park still qualified for the grant as students with disabilities — such as himself — can be out high school up to six years.
“This is honestly the only time of my life that I’ve been lucky to have a disability. If you ask me, I think that’s backwards,” Park said.
Elsewhere on campus, the grant has been met with mixed opinion.
“It’s not that I feel cheated,” explained Jenny Holobow, a fourth-year student who didn’t qualify since she took two years off before figuring out what she wanted to study. “When I went into university, I expected to pay a lot. But just because I took some time to make up my mind, I’m not sure it’s fair to exclude me and people like me.”
Still, she wasn’t inspired to join the protest. Neither was John Allaster, a fourth-year student who was also ineligible.
“I took four years between high school and university so that I could afford to pay for it. And now I’m told that I don’t qualify for financial support? How is that fair?” he questioned.
Allaster, however, added that Ontario’s current situation under McGuinty isn’t as bad as the one former premier Mike Harris dug the province into.
“I remember Mike Harris and how he ruined our secondary education system,” he said. “We’re still trying to climb out of the hole he dug us into, so, I’ll give McGuinty a pass on this one,”
Students also protested other familiar demands of years’ past: free post-secondary education for all, student debt relief, and increased public funding for universities.
UTSU President and lead event organizer Danielle Sandhu said that students need a government that will support them.
“The students are tired of our government not prioritizing education. Our tuition fees are too high and the quality of education is too low,” she said.
