Students gathered at the University of Ottawa campus on Sept. 10 to begin their march to Parliament, protesting the Ford government’s cuts to OSAP funding and the Student Choice Initiative.
The event was organized by Jaime MacInnis, a second year student at the University of Ottawa, along with six other students.
The protest began with an Instagram rant on MacInnis’ account, after finding out what she was receiving for OSAP, MacInnis said.
“I just remember kind of freaking out because it was half of what I had last year,” she added.
“I was not prepared for that.”
The Instagram rant received many positive responses, so MacInnis was inspired form a team and organize a formal protest.
One of these people was Bryanna Vanderlek. Vanderlek also noticed a 50 per cent reduction in her OSAP funds for the current school year, a difficult situation for her family as her mother is also in school.
“Cutting education is definitely not a step in the right direction,” Vanderlek said. “Educating younger societies is an investment in the future.”
Abiha Sajid is another student who is being greatly affected by the cuts.
Sajid is a first-generation Canadian and a first-generation post-secondary student. She said she comes from a single income household and that her tuition is close to the equivalent of her family’s average annual income right now.
“It’s alarming and reassuring,” Sajid said in reference to the turnout at the protest. “A lot of people are on the same boat as me and it’s comforting to know I’m not alone, but it’s also alarming to see how many people the government is neglecting.”
While students like Sajid are struggling to make payments for school, others like James Casey have had to leave school entirely.
Casey said it bothers him deeply when he is told to just ‘get a job.’
“I didn’t work a full year in a factory [and] go to school for three years to be met with that,” he said.
Members from three of Canada’s four major political parties—the Liberal Party, the NDP, and the Green Party—attended the protest.
“It is fine time to ask the rich for their fair share so you can go to school,” Joel Harden, the current NDP MPP for Ottawa Centre, said at the protest.
The student organizers of the protest said that this will not be where their efforts end. They plan on creating more events to support education.
The goal of the protest was to make people have conversations about what is going on and to debunk some myths about students and funding, said Gulliver.
“The battle is already kind of won in the sense that we are raising awareness,” he said. “Now it’s just how can we get other campuses to continue that same message?”
Feature image by Rachel Morgan.
