About five dozen high school students in Windsor walked out of class Wednesday to protest changes to Ontario’s student aid program — and it led to some bringing their concerns directly to Windsor-Tecumseh MPP Andrew Dowie inside his constituency office. Students from Kennedy Collegiate Institute and F. J. Brennan Catholic High School gathered outside Dowie’s constituency office before some entered to debate the Progressive Conservative MPP about the province’s changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). The province is restructuring the grant-to-loan balance in OSAP. Currently, students can receive up to 85 per cent of their aid as grants, which do not need to be repaid. Under the new framework, that maximum will drop to 25 per cent — meaning a larger share of assistance will come as loans which need to be repaid. OSAP is funded jointly by the federal and provincial governments, but the grant changes apply to the provincial portion of funding, which typically makes up about 40 per cent of a student’s total aid package. “As a community and a school, we find that very unhelpful, especially with low-income families in our school,” said Boston LeClaire, a 16-year-old Grade 11 student at Kennedy. “We need to stand up to that.” Another student, Gavin Luelo, a Grade 12 student at Brennan, said many young people depend on OSAP to pursue higher education. “These are people who are going to be our doctors, our educators — very important stuff,” said Luelo. “We’re doing this in the hopes that by the time younger students get there, they’ll have a better future,” Luelo said. After gathering outside, some students entered Dowie’s office to discuss the changes directly with the Progressive Conservative MPP. The conversation quickly turned into a debate about the affordability of post-secondary education and student debt. At one point, Dowie said he had student debt himself but paid it off quickly. “I had student debt. It took me a couple months because I went to work,” he said. Students pushed back, arguing many graduates take decades to repay their loans. “My uncle’s an engineering student and he just got done paying his debt, and he’s in his 40s,” one student said. Dowie responded that repayment timelines can vary depending on individual circumstances. “If you don’t get into the workforce, then yeah, you’re delaying your repayments,” he said. “It depends on your life choices. If you want to go to school again, you can — you have that ability.” Dowie also argued the changes are necessary to keep the student aid program financially sustainable. He said the federal government recently stopped funding student aid for private career colleges, meaning Ontario would otherwise have to cover the full cost of that assistance. “If we were to keep the ratio out of sync with the rest of the country, we would run out of money,” Dowie told students. “We’d have to cut off eligibility for more students because we would run out of money in the pot.” In a statement to CTV News, the province said the changes are intended to ensure OSAP remains available to future students. “To restore sustainability to OSAP and ensure its availability for future generations, our government is aligning Ontario’s student financial support framework with other jurisdictions across Canada,” said Bianca Giacoboni, press secretary for Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn. Under the new model, Ontario will provide 25 per cent of aid as grants and 75 per cent as loans — a ratio the government says is more consistent with other provinces. Some of the students who participated in the protest said the changes could increase financial pressure on future graduates. “Student loans are very expensive,” Luelo told Dowie, before his peers argued the changes could discourage people from pursuing certain careers or educational paths. Despite the disagreement, students said they wanted their voices heard before the policy takes effect next school year. “We’re just trying to make sure everyone has the best future they can get,” Luelo said.
