On June 7, Ontarians took to the polls and elected Doug Ford, leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, as the new Premier of Ontario, ending 15 years of Liberal rule in the province.
Here is what a PC government might mean for students:
Student loans and tuition
In the 2017-2018 academic year, the Ontario Liberal government increased the number of the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) grants and decreased the amount middle-income parents and guardians are expected to contribute.
While the NDP ran on the promise to replace loans with non-repayable grants for new post-secondary students eligible for OSAP, Ford and the PC Party have not revealed their plans for student loans or rising tuition fees. This has left some students questioning the future of student loans in the province.
Baraa Arar, a fourth-year humanities student at Carleton University, said the lack of transparency from the PCs throughout the campaign is an “extremely undemocratic thing for them to have done.”
“It’s extremely disrespectful to citizens, it’s extremely disrespectful to voters,” she said.
Arar said post-secondary education was chronically under-funded by the provincial government, even under the Ontario Liberals.
“Every year, universities got less and less public funds, which means more impurred costs on the students,” she said.
This allows universities to increase tuition fees to cover expenses, according to Arar.
While the Liberals made changes to OSAP to support students from low-income families, Arar said she suspects those measures will be threatened under the PCs as they cut spending.
Dhilal Alhaboob, a fourth-year international development and globalization student at the University of Ottawa, said in an email that she relies on student loans and grants to get through school.
“I am a student living with a chronic illness and physical disability. The current provincial government was in the process of creating a centre for people with my condition, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, but I don’t know how feasible that is with Doug Ford’s government,” she said.
Mandated free speech
One of Ford’s platform points is to mandate universities to uphold free speech on campuses and in classrooms and tie funding to it, according to the Ontario PC website.
Recently, debates have sparked on Canadian campuses around what constitutes free speech versus hate speech.
The most recent case is that of Lindsay Shepherd, a graduate student and teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University, who was reprimanded for showing a video of a debate on gender-neutral pronouns.
Earlier this month, the TA launched a lawsuit against the university, two professors and a former employee of its diversity and equity office, according to the Toronto Star.
Arar said exercising free speech is having an opinion about an issue—that is valid and is supported by facts and evidence—without being harmed.
“We have people such as Lindsay Shepherd and others who would like to invite speakers or pundits who spew hatred . . . who are being funded by private agents in order to do so and bringing them into a public space does harm people,” she said.
Minimum wage and tax cuts
The expected minimum wage hike to $15 an hour under the Ontario Liberals by January 2019 under the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act (Bill 148), will be replaced by an $850 tax credit for low-income earners.
Alhaboob said while she’s not currently an minimum wage earner, it’s possible for her to become one in the future.
“I believe that while the economy has had to adjust to the sudden hike of the minimum income in Ontario, this [increase] dignified low-income earners,” she said.
Alhaboob said she’s opposed to economic conservatism, such as cutting taxes because “investments made by taxes earned from low-income earners to especially high-income earners are what result in transformative developments led by government.”
Marijuana regulation
On June 19, the Senate passed Bill C-45, the federal government bill to legalize recreational marijuana, but Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said Canadians won’t be able to legally consume it until Oct. 17.
However, the bill puts the sale and distribution of it in the hands of the provincial government.
The outgoing Liberal government had plans to control the market, but Ford said he’s open to a free market, according to the CBC.
“I don’t like the government controlling anything no matter what it is,” Ford told CBC’s Ottawa Morning.
Andrew Hathaway, a criminal justice professor at the University of Guelph, said privatization of the market will increase overall access of the drug.
“It does potentially introduce more competition, bringing prices down in terms of greater availability in the marketplace. So, these are number of factors under consideration going forward,” he said. “If the government wants to maintain a tight grip on the supply at the federal level, then the Ford suggestion would present a challenge to that.”
Hathaway said if the provincial government decides to privatize marijuana sales, it increases the risk of criminalization of those under the legal age of consumption.
“Anyone who’s outside of that (legal age) is still participating in the illicit market,” he said.
According to Hathaway, the black market will continue to exist unless the government is able to reduce the price of marijuana to a competitive level.
Ford and the Ontario PCs will take office on June 29.
