ONTARIO PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES UNION OPSEU
College faculty and support staff union calls for $1.4 billion emergency infusion to put the brakes on growing crisis

OPSEU/SEFPO, the union representing over 45,000 college faculty and support staff at Ontario's 24 public colleges, is taking aim at the Ford government following more sweeping program and staffing cuts. The union says that an emergency infusion of $1.4 billion - the government's own 2024-2025 revenue loss projections for the sector - is needed to stabilize the college system.

Ontario presently ranks dead last amongst the provinces for per-student postsecondary funding the provinces, by a wide margin. An additional $1.34 billion to the colleges, and $2.78 billion to universities, would be needed to bring Ontario's per-student funding up to the national average.

"Ford is hiding behind a 'protect Ontario' tagline and photo ops with construction crews while our college system is being dismantled brick by brick," said JP Hornick, President of OPSEU/SEFPO and faculty at George Brown College. "Workers are telling the same story across every sector: we build it, Ford breaks it."

Since 2010, provincial grants and revenues from private sources have remained relatively stable in other provinces. Meanwhile, in Ontario, tuition fee revenues have tripled, eclipsing provincial funding as the primary source of revenue - while provincial funding has shrunk by 28 percent.

"Not only has Ford walked away from post-secondary education, he's shifted the responsibility of financing our colleges, a public good, onto students and institutions," added Hornick. "It's negligent, and a failed formula sinking the system."

Staffing cuts and program suspensions have been announced at nearly every college, with anticipated lay-offs in the hundreds, and climbing in the coming weeks and months. On Tuesday, the suspension of 55 programs, 40 per cent of overall programming, was announced at St. Lawrence College - which Hornick points out is the alma mater of Nolan Quinn, Ontario's Minister of Colleges and Universities.

Also announced in the last couple weeks, Loyalist College will suspend intake for 24 programs, 30 per cent of overall programming; Centennial College will suspend 49 programs, or 28 per cent of overall programing; and Mohawk College will eliminate 127 positions, 20 per cent of its full- and part-time support staff.

Seneca College's Markham site and Algonquin College's Perth site are the first campuses to shutter entirely, effective January 2025 and August 2026, respectively.

"It will affect each of us - and for smaller towns and northern communities, where college campuses are often the sole opportunity to locally access post-secondary education, cuts and closures will carry a heavier weight."

In November 2024, the Ford government awarded $10 million to Agnico Eagle Mines - a multinational mining company worth $46.87 billion - to develop their own privatized "comprehensive skills development program in Northern Ontario."

Meanwhile, earlier this month Northern College cut its entire Northern Training Division, which for decades has worked directly with local employers and First Nations communities in northern Ontario to provide industry-required training and deliver public - and often free - specialized upskilling opportunities, such as diamond drilling and millwright programs.

"Colleges are the backbone of Ontario's economy, where we train nurses, electricians, crane operators, all the workers that power this province," added Hornick. "But in Doug Ford's Ontario, they're collateral damage, turned into symbol of everything wrong with his agenda for our public goods: underfund, deregulate, privatize, and kiss it goodbye." 

In response to years of provincial underfunding, Ontario colleges have turned to unregulated international tuition to sustain operations - with international students representing a larger share of institutional revenue than government funding.

Now, Ontario's future is fair game as colleges cut from the frontlines to offset the impacts of reductions to international student allotments - a dilemma Ford had the foresight to avoid if he had heeded the Auditor General's warning in 2021.

"Seven years, Ford's been in power - seven years performing so disastrously that if he was in any other workplace, he'd be out of a job," said Hornick. "And with his track record of shortchanging the people Ontario, he might be soon."