FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
9 October 2026

OTTAWA, ON — Ontario Liberal Interim Leader John Fraser and Tyler Watt, MPP for Nepean and Ontario Liberal Critic for Colleges and Universities, held a press conference at Algonquin Careers Academy today with students and staff affected by the Ford government’s decision to pause OSAP across Ontario’s career college sector.

Students shared devastating stories of what the OSAP pause has done to their lives, just one month into the school year. One student is living out of their car with their child. Others can’t make rent or afford food, and many are considering dropping out. These are people training to become personal support workers, early childhood educators, and paralegals, and many are women over 35 who returned to school to upskill. This drastic measure will inevitably force many colleges to shut down.

“These stories were heartbreaking,” said Fraser. “Some students were moved to tears as they spoke. These are people doing their very best and working incredibly hard to build a better life, and this government has left them on their own.”

“These students are sacrificing so much to be here. Some drive two hours a day to get to class, while others are precariously housed,” said Watt. “The government broke OSAP, blamed students for it, and now those same students are the ones suffering.”

“The government turned a blind eye to exorbitant OSAP increases at just a handful of colleges,” said Watt. “Now they’re taking a sledgehammer to an issue that required a scalpel, penalizing the whole career college sector when the problem was localized to a few bad actors they ignored.

The government was warned in January 2023. Career Colleges Ontario met with civil servants four times that year and, in 2024, recommended the matter be referred to police. The government finally alerted the Auditor General and referred the matter to the OPP late last week.

“All of this could have been avoided,” said Fraser. “The government screwed up, the minister tried to hide it, and when they got caught, they wanted it to look like they were taking decisive action. In fact, this is a problem nearly four years and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in the making. Now they’ve thrown every career college student in Ontario under the bus.”

“The question is why,” said Fraser. “Was it political donations? Was it lobbyists? This reaction makes no sense.”

“The minister gets to keep his job, but thousands of enrolled career college students lose their chance at a better job,” said Fraser. “That isn’t fair, and it isn’t right.”