A report released by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) Carleton on Feb. 22 found that the majority of ancillary fees currently paid by Carleton students will remain mandatory with the Student Choice Initiative proposed by the Ontario government.
The initiative allows students to decide whether they want to pay certain ancillary fees previously included within tuition payments. The change was proposed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Conservative administration and will take effect in September.
The report said $978.47 of the $1,105.04 in ancillary fees will still remain.
Under the new guidelines, the average full-time Carleton undergraduate student will be saving only $126.54 from the opt-out options proposed by the government.
Of the $126.54, OPIRG-Carleton received a levy of $7.38 from students in the 2018-19 year.
The OPIRG report was based on information from documents, such as a PowerPoint outlining ancillary fee breakdowns, obtained by the University of Toronto’s student newspaper the Varsity and fee breakdowns found on Carleton’s website.
According to Josie Kao, the Varsity’s news editor, the documents were obtained from an anonymous source close to the government.
Kao said the leaked documents outline what is expected from universities.
“Up until this point, nobody really had an indication about what the Ontario government was thinking about when they mandated certain changes to be made to non-essential fees,” she said.
She added that the documents give “a rough outline of what they expect universities to decide in response to this mandate.”
“If you look through the report, it says that certain fees—such as athletics, career services and [identification] cards and stuff like that—would certainly be made essential; everything else would have to be non-essential,” she added. “From what I’ve seen, this is the most detailed report so far coming out of the government.”
Brad Evoy, the volunteer, outreach and programming coordinator at OPIRG-Carleton, said the documents classify all services provided by student-run groups as non-essential.
“Ancillary fees run by the university will be considered essential,” he said. “The other two fees that are student-run and would be mostly considered mandatory are transit passes and health plans.”
The leaked documents also reveal that the opt-out option must be provided at the time of billing.
Evoy said this creates financial uncertainty for many student organizations who begin budget planning in the summer.
“If it’s at the time of billing, you’re going to have to make the choice when you register if you’re going to pay for something or not,” he said. “If you look at the way this is structured, that’s going to start in June, which is really early if you look at the budgeting cycles for most student organizations on this campus and many others across the province.”
“Additionally, because this is going to start in June, it won’t be able to end until all the possible fee processing is dealt with, which could be as late as mid-September, which will push back the actual remittance of fees from the university even later to these organizations,” Evoy added. “That’s going to create a huge amount of budgeting chaos.”
David Oladejo, president of the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA), said budgets are usually based on student enrolment from the previous year.
“It puts us in a really tight situation,” he said. “Traditionally, how we go is that the vice-president (finance) will plan the budget based on enrolment from the last semester or the last school year. So, typically you’re not seeing large increases or large decreases in enrolment and you can kind of estimate what the number will be.”
Students paid a levy of $44.60 specifically to CUSA in the 2018-19 year. However, they also collect money for the service centres they operate and other campus groups.
Oladejo said the incoming executives plan to prepare multiple budgets in light of changes in the number of students who will continue to pay for CUSA’s services.
“In July and August, we’re given the final numbers in terms of what to expect for enrolment, and then we’re able to finalize the budget,” he said. “Because this period is a little bit longer but there’s also more tendency for change between who’s enrolling and who’s not—we’re starting with the plan of budgeting now and making a bunch of different budgets.”
“When we finally get the number and we see where it falls between those contingency plans, we’re able to present the final budget to council,” he added.
OPIRG-Carleton has also shared telephone conversations between Evoy and Maria Mellas, acting director of the Student Financial Assistance Branch at the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU), on social media.
In one call, Mellas told OPIRG-Carleton that the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) will not be covering ancillary fees deemed non-essential within the new framework.
“Now, students who are already under increased economic pressure with the changes to OSAP will be even more incentivized to opt out,” Evoy said. “It’s going to be coming directly out of folks’ pockets in the immediate instead of through OSAP grants.”
“Essentially what we’re seeing here is a situation where the Ontario government is not just making these fees optional, but actively disincentivizing folks from engaging in the kinds of inherently political organizing that you find not just in places like OPIRG, but in your student unions—like being able to have a voice in a campus paper or a campus radio station, or engaging in a whole bunch of other services,” he added.
Oladejo said CUSA provides many important services that students should know about.
“One hundred and twenty dollars is not a lot to be paying for the different services that you get through your student association,” he said.
According to Ashley Courchene, the Graduate Students’ Association’s (GSA) vice-president (finance), the Student Choice Initiative seems unnecessary as student voices have already been heard regarding ancillary fees because they fund student-run groups.
“A lot of the services that students are paying for have already been decided upon by the students,” he said. “So, for the Ford government to come in and say, ‘No, this is how you’re going to spend your money,’ is really an assault on democracy.”
However, Courchene said despite the confusion, he hopes students can realize what is at stake.
“I think every actor in the university is playing with partial information,” he said. “It’s very concerning for all students and I hope that they realize how much this will affect them.”
— With files from Jillian Piper
Infographics by Gurjap Grewal
