Students protest rising tuition at Queen’s Park rally
Posted February 1, 2012 6:09 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Hundreds of college and university students protested at Queen’s Park Wednesday to demand lower tuition fees.
“Education is a right. Education should not be treated as a business, a mortgage or a debt sentence,” Gilbert Cassar, president of the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union, told CityNews at the rally.
“Education should be up there with health care for this country. They should be a federal priority.”
Students have been camping at York University for the past 10 days protesting what they say is the high cost of post-secondary education. Similar camp-outs have been held at Ryerson University as well.
The Canadian Federation of Students organized a series of rallies at university and college campuses around the city Wednesday before the Queen’s Park rally as part of its National Day of Action.
Members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) also attended the rally. Ontario has the lowest per-student funding in the country, CUPE said Wednesday.
Before the rally on Wednesday, Ontario finance minister Dwight Duncan said, “If you simply look at the amount of money we transfer to institutions, Ontario is at the lower end.”
“However, when you factor in that we have the most generous grants and loan provisions, we’re at the top,” he countered.
The province’s money is “progressive,” Duncan argued, because it “focuses on students.”
The Canadian Federation of Students said the Ontario Liberals have failed to deliver on its promise of a 30-per-cent tuition fee reduction.
National student debt is above $15 billion, according to the students’ association, and Ontario’s rate is the highest in the country.
“Governments should not be lured by the false solutions of ‘austerity’ that will hike tuition fees up even more and slash access,” CUPE president Fred Hahan said in a statement.
