By Zanoah Plummer and Edward Lander

Backlash to provincial cuts to post-secondary grants reached a boiling point Thursday with a campus walkout that saw hundreds of student attendees.

The Toronto Metropolitan Students’ Union (TMSU) backed the protest alongside other student organizations, including the Toronto Metropolitan Association of Part-time Students and the graduate students’ union.

The walkout saw students leave class at 1 p.m. and gather at Lake Devo. In total, the protest lasted for nearly two hours.

The protest was just one of 15 planned at universities across the province on a day of action organized by the Canadian Federation of Students–Ontario (CFS–O).

The walkout was largely in response to sweeping changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) announced in February. Now in effect, these changes saw the amount of grants the program provides lowered from 85 per cent to 25 per cent.

CFS–O, TMSU call on Ford government to reverse cuts

Omar Mousa, national executive representative of CFS–O, attended the walkout. In a speech, he said students have had enough when it comes to education cuts.  

“Students have been paying the price of a post-secondary education system that has been chronically underfunded,” he said. “Students are going into debt to access education, they’re being forced to pick up multiple jobs, struggling to afford rent, groceries and other basic necessities.”

TMSU vice-president education Teresa Baricevic stressed the importance of students coming together in a speech.

“Showing up is really the most important thing, showing the government that we will not just sit back and blindly accept these changes and these cuts that impact all students,” she said.

“An attack on one student is an attack on all students and we need to continue to organize to show the government we will not take this anymore.”

NDP politicians attend in support of students

Toronto Centre MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam and provincial NDP leader, Marit Stiles—who is also leader of Ontario’s official opposition—attended the walkout.

In an interview with The Eyeopener, Stiles applauded students for attending. 

“My message to students today is thank you. Sometimes you got to take the fight to the streets, you got to take the fight to the doorsteps,” she said. “And we can make this change happen.” 

Secondary school teacher brings comparisons to past movements

Chris Chandler, a secondary school teacher and an executive officer in the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, also spoke at the walkout.

“I bring the greetings and solidarity of 60,000 teachers and education workers from across the province who support your cause,” he said.

Chandler asked attendees to look back on the history of the student movement in Canada. This included a mention of the 2012 Quebec student strike, which saw post-secondary students launch an indefinite strike in protest of a hike in tuition fees.

During the strike, then-premier Jean Charest called a provincial election, largely related to the issue of the tuition hike, which resulted in his party’s loss and his own resignation.

“2012 in Quebec started just like this,” he said. “Students fought back one group at a time, and at the end of their fight, they brought down a provincial government.”

Chandler also connected the walkout to the other student movements globally, such as in France, Indonesia and Brazil. 

SJP calls out TMU administration

A representative from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at TMU also spoke at the walkout, calling out the university administration.

“We can’t afford to pay for our school and they are sending our tuition to fund a genocide,” said the spokesperson.

“Our governments strip away our OSAP while they withhold visas from Palestinian students who have been admitted to Canadian universities.”

According to the Palestinian Students and Scholars at Risk Network, over 130 Palestinian students have been accepted into Canadian universities but have been unable to start their studies. The network cites issues with obtaining study permits as a reason for their inability to attend classes.

Students attend in protest of changes

Attendee and first-year arts and contemporary studies student Thomas Egan said this isn’t the first time he’s protested the Ford government’s education policies. He said he attended a similar protest when he was in Grade 10.

“I work as an educator, I worked as an [early childhood educator] for a very long time. And I’ve seen firsthand what the cuts to education in general, not just post-secondary education, can do. And I think that students and youth are our future and we should really prioritize that.”

Egan explained when he first attended post-secondary, grants made up a larger portion of his OSAP. Now that loans make up the majority of his OSAP, he said the need to work while attending school will impact his studies.

“I feel like it also makes it so that people that don’t have access to money in their family or don’t come from money have limited access to education,” he said.

Fourth-year film student Julia Harris echoed this sentiment.

“Kids are working [while] going to school and they’re not able to actually indulge in their education and learn things. They’re balancing just doing assignments rather than being an active participant in their own learning,” she said.

Harris said her professors concluded class early to accommodate students attending the walkout.

Ahead of the protest, the student unions provided a template to send to professors requesting academic amnesty. Amnesty is not a university-wide policy and it was up to the decision of individual professors whether to accommodate participants.

Nathaniel Baptiste, a first-year master of molecular science student, said his professor accommodated students attending the walkout. He said he knows many people who rely on OSAP to attend school.

“If you can’t go to university to get your education, it’s even harder to get a job. Even though it already is [hard] even after getting a university degree,” he said.

Egan said students should advocate for their education.

“Unfortunately, we live in a world where we’re having to do a lot of advocating for ourselves, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t make change,” he said.

“I think there’s a lot of hopelessness out there. And I think we can fight that hopelessness by celebrating each other, uplifting each other and really prioritizing community.”

The walkout concluded with a speech from Trudy Kuropatwa, a fourth-year performance design and production student who is chair of the Student Mobilization Committee.

“We don’t want to just survive, we don’t want to go back to business as usual. The only way to eliminate student debt, military and corporate influence from our education is to ensure that all post-secondary is free,” she said.

Kuropatwa stressed that the walkout will not be the only action.

“The next time we’re here we want to have double the numbers, the next time, quadruple—an exponential growth,” she said.

“We know that when we lay the foundation, students and workers united, we can and will win.”