Michael Coteau’s long journey to being a candidate for premier of Ontario started with just $60 and some encouragement.
The Carleton alumnus looked back on his years at the university fondly and reflected on the important role the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) played in his studies.
“I just felt free,” said Coteau, who’s the Liberal Party nominee for premier and the current member of provincial parliament (MPP) for the Don Valley East riding, of his first year studying at the university.
Coteau said this freedom came at a cost, which he was only able to pay because of the OSAP grants and loans he received.
“It covered my tuition, it covered my accommodations, and it covered my books, and that was like $10,000 did all of that,” Coteau said. “Right at the end I owed 50-something thousand and I paid it back.”
Coteau added it was his own experience with OSAP funding that caused him to write to ministers of the current conservative provincial administration who made changes to OSAP as of January 2019.
The OSAP changes included lowering the financial threshold which reduced the number of students eligible, ending a six-month grace period for students to pay back their student loans at the end of their studies, and reduced grant options for students.
“So I sent the letter because I was given the opportunity to go to school,” Coteau said. “I could actually have choices to go to school, and now you’re getting people who are saying ‘I don’t even have the ability to go to school.’”
If elected premier, Couteau said he would reverse the current provincial government’s changes to the OSAP system and the grant system in order to give students more academic freedom.
“I just want people to have those choices to find success and have nothing stop them,” he said.
OSAP changes may have larger effects on Indigenous, black female, and single mother students who could see a decline in enrolment due to reduced OSAP funding, he added.
This is important because diversity now plays a bigger role in campus culture at Carleton.
“When I went there, there was hardly any diversity,” he said. “There was maybe 50 black, Caribbean, African Canadians that I can remember on campus, it was a small little club.”
“The diversity has completely changed.”
Coteau said he understands the impacts OSAP can have on students from low-income families given his own humble beginnings.
He grew up in a two-bedroom apartment with his parents and two brothers in the Flemingdon Park neighbourhood of Toronto, “a tough neighbourhood, [where] there was a lot of violence in the community.”
Because of his family’s tight finances, Coteau had not originally thought of pursuing post-secondary education, but said he was encouraged to go by another tenant in the building, and got into the university “almost by accident.”
“A guy in my building encouraged me to apply for university [and] gave me the $60 to apply,” he said.
“I didn’t have very good marks, I got into the university with a 62 and a half per cent,” Coteau added. “It was the last year they had an open-door policy, so they basically let people in and if they didn’t do well, they didn’t keep them going, and the threshold was so low.”
Reflecting on his university experience reminds Coteau of how post-secondary education can provide opportunities for students, especially those from low-income upbringings, and motivates him to advocate for students at the provincial level, he said.
“Everything about what I’m about today, I attribute a lot of it to Carleton,” he said. “It’s where I met my wife, it’s where I got my first job in politics working for John Manley, it’s where I got involved in Liberal politics [when] I ended up being the president of the Young Liberals on campus.”
“At the end of the day, I owe a lot to Carleton because it took a chance with me.”
—With files from Temur Durrani
Featured image provided.
