THUNDER BAY – “Don’t defund our education. This is class discrimination.”
That chant could be heard over and over as more than 25 students in grades 11 and 12 marched to MPP Kevin Holland’s office on James Street on Friday morning.
Thunder Bay high school students in the south end, including Westgate CVI and St. Patrick High School, walked out of class and straight to their MPPs’ office in protest against the Ford government’s Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) changes.
Grade 12 student Isabel Nort will graduate from Westgate CVI in the spring, but she says she will no longer be attending college’s education program in September because of cuts to OSAP grants.
“I’m probably going to have to take a couple of gap years to save up if I can even find a job in this market. It’s really unfortunate because a lot of students are not from privileged backgrounds, including me, who can’t just pull the funding out of their back pocket. It’s just the dark truth they’re living with right now,” Nort said.
Until now, students accessing the OSAP could have received up to 85 per cent of their student loans as non-repayable grants.
That number has been significantly reduced. Now, students can get a maximum of 25 per cent of their OSAP funding as grants and no less than 75 per cent as repayable loans.
Westgate grade 11 student Indio Quenneville says he was looking forward to going to university to study political science and economics.
He says he is uncertain he’ll be able to afford post-secondary education now.
“Things have been very tough for a lot of people, including myself, and now with the OSAP cuts, I’m not exactly sure if I’ll be able to make it into that because it’s just going to be so expensive. And I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get a degree in anything. So, it really discourages education for me and many others,” Quenneville said.
St. Patrick High School Grade 11 student Keegan Habel wants to work in mental health, but also said she is now uncertain she’ll be able to afford the post-secondary program.
“I know people need nurses. I know we need people in healthcare, and that’s something that I want to do. I want to be able to help people in the future. But how am I supposed to help people when I don’t have the options for that? I was planning on going into mental health and crisis care, but how am I supposed to do that when I don’t even know if I’ll be able to? I won’t have the grants,” she said.
Grade 11 Westgate student and organizer of the protest, Alexandra Ziegler, said she wants Holland to know how much the Ford cuts to OSAP are going to affect students planning on going into post-secondary studies.
After high school, I plan on going to Confederation College for the Medical Radiation Technology program. That’s something I wanted to do for a long time. But it’s expensive, and it’s hard to get into that program. So, without OSAP, I really don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I’m definitely going to have to save up money or take on more loans, which isn’t ideal,” Ziegler said.
Newswatch also spoke to Holland, who was at an unrelated media event as the protest went on outside his office.
His message to students: look at where jobs are needed.
“Find one that you’re passionate about and go into that field. There’s a period of time where academia was promoted, and now we have such a skilled trade shortage. So there has to be a balance in the system with regards to the programming that students are taking,” he said.
