All Posts Tagged With: "McGuinty"

Ontario grapples with deficit

Banking guru Don Drummond will recommend that Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario Liberals scrap the 30 per cent Ontario Tuition Grant that came into effect just last month, reports the Toronto Star. The former TD Bank chief economist will release a 700-page report on Wednesday that will help the Liberals chart a course to paying down Ontario’s $16 billion deficit. The report suggests spending will need to be limited to just $6.3 billion over the next five years or just 0.8 per cent more per year. That’s an enormous task considering that spending has risen from $83.5 billion in 2005-06 to $124 billion last year. The 30 per cent off tuition grant offers roughly 300,000 college and university students a rebate of $730 or $1,600 each. The program costs nearly $500-million per year.

Ontario and Manitoba to vote in October

Photo courtesy of Benson Kua on Flickr

Students will go to the polls a month from now in two provinces: on Oct. 6 in Ontario and on Oct. 4 in Manitoba.

The Ontario Liberal Party made post-secondary students a big part of their plan, which was released today. If reelected, Dalton McGuinty says his Liberals would give 86 per cent of students substantial new tuition grants next year. University students would get $1,600 and college students would get $730. The grants only apply to those who come from households that make less than $160,000 per year. The promise would cost taxpayers $486-million per year. Ontario’s average annual university tuition fees are $6,000, according to Statistics Canada.

The Ontario PC Party, under Tim Hudak, says it would eliminate a $30-million scholarship program that McGuinty created to attract foreign students. They would also change the Ontario Student Assistance Program to allow more students from middle class families to qualify. “A student whose parents earn $39,000 and $46,000 would get about $2,500 in provincial OSAP support,” they said in a press release, adding: ”Dalton McGuinty gives that family no OSAP.”

The Ontario New Democrat platform does not specifically mention post-secondary students.

The Liberals promised earlier to extend the interest-free period on student loans from six months to one year for those working in the non-profit sector and to double the length of teacher’s college.

In Manitoba, New Democrat Premier Greg Selinger says that his government would freeze tuition, give universities a five per cent annual boost and triple annual student award funding to $20-million.

Manitoba Progressive Conservative candidate Hugh McFadyen’s government would boost training for northerners and aboriginals and also help to fund a new stadium at the University of Manitoba.

The races are tight in both provinces are tight.

In Ontario, the PC Party is leading with 35 per cent support while the Liberals have 30 per cent and the New Democrats have 26 per cent, according to a Forum Research poll released Sept. 1.

In Mantioba, the New Democrats and Progressive Conservatives were tied with 44 per cent support, according to the most recent poll, which was released by Probe Research on June 29.

Both polls had a three per cent margin of error.

Only certain programs will get new money

Today, Ontario’s Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities announced the creation of 6,000 new spots for master and doctoral students in “high-demand and emerging fields – such as engineering, health and environmental studies.” The seats would be rolled out between now and 2015.  However, these plans may not come to fruition if the Liberal government loses the election in October, which looks increasingly today as a new Angus-Reid poll shows Premier Dalton McGuinty has an approval rating of just 19 per cent.

Protesters say they blame Premier McGuinty for allowing fees to rise as much as eight per cent annually

Thousands of college and university students chanted slogans and marched through the streets of 14 Ontario cities Wednesday as part of a provincewide campaign calling on the Ontario government to slash tuition fees.
In Toronto, the protesters marched to the provincial legislature for a rally and blamed the government of Premier Dalton McGuinty for cancelling a tuition freeze in 2006 and allowing fees to rise as much as eight per cent annually.
“Dalton McGuinty has betrayed us time and time again,” Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario chairwoman Shelley Melanson told the students gathered at Queen’s Park outside the legislature.
“Students across Ontario are fed up with McGuinty simply paying lip service to accessibility. Today we are demanding concrete action to drop fees.”
Melanson noted that when McGuinty went to law school, tuition cost $700 a year, compared to the $20,000 it now costs at the University of Toronto.
Students also held similar rallies in Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, London, Orillia, Ottawa, Peterborough, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, Thunder Bay and Windsor.
The protesters cited Statistics Canada data released last month that indicated students in Ontario pay an average of more than $5,643 in tuition per year for an undergraduate arts program. That makes Ontario’s average fees the second-highest in Canada, behind Nova Scotia.
Jay Han, a second-year University of Toronto physiology student, said Ontario’s fees are too high and force students to take on part-time jobs to make ends meet.
“I think it’s a little bit too much for someone that wants to study at the same time as well,” Han said.
Crystie Doell, a University of Toronto biology student, said it’s difficult for medical students to find enough time for both studies and work.
“All you want to do is become a doctor and help other people, but we can’t even do that because we don’t have enough money,” Doell said. “It’s not fair.”
Federal NDP Leader Jack Layton and his wife, MP Olivia Chow, addressed the protesters along the march route from atop a flatbed truck.
“Right now, the barriers of tuition fees and student debt are standing in the way of your dreams,” Layton said. “Let’s lower those barriers.”
The march also featured a symbolic stop in front of the building housing the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.
Security officials at the legislature estimated the crowd size at about 3,000, while police estimated it could have been as high as 5,000.
John Milloy, the province’s minister of training, colleges and universities, insisted Ontario’s post-secondary funding approach is reasonable.
“What you’ve got to do is you’ve got to balance issues around fees,” Milloy said. “We have a framework in place, a very thoughtful framework that came about after two years of discussion.
“You’ve got to balance it with student assistance, and we have … a very generous student assistance program.”
Milloy met Wednesday evening with three representatives of the student federation about their concerns.
Melanson said the student group was “disappointed” with the meeting with Milloy.
“Minister Milloy didn’t bring any new information to the table,” Melanson said Wednesday night.
Melanson said the students plan to continue to press the government to listen to their concerns.
“We are quite confident that the only way we are really going to be able to change the minister’s mind is by having continued actions,” she said.
Last month, students submitted more than 50,000 petition signatures calling on the government to drop tuition fees and establish a new framework to increase Ontario’s per-student funding level to the national average.

-The Canadian Press