This petition is entitled “Stop Bill 166” and it is signed by scholars from my riding of Parkdale–High Park and across Ontario.

Mental health and anti-racism work have been massively underfunded in Ontario’s post-secondary institutions. And under this Conservative government, the mental health budget has been cut and the Anti-Racism Directorate has been gutted.

Bill 166 gives the Minister of Colleges and Universities unprecedented power to dictate post-secondary policy in these areas and threatens unspecified consequences if institutions do not follow ministry directives. It also threatens the democratic principles of academic freedom and university autonomy that all parties in Ontario have historically respected.

This petition is calling on the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to:

—stop Bill 166;

—uphold academic freedom and university autonomy;

—fund post-secondary mental health supports and equity offices; and

—use the powers of the Anti-Racism Act, 2017, to re-establish subcommittees that undertake equity and anti-racism work in Ontario.

As always, it is an honour to rise in this House to speak on behalf of the residents of Parkdale–High Park, today to Bill 166, Strengthening Accountability and Student Supports Act.

Our post-secondary institutions are at a breaking point, and this is because of decades of Liberal and Conservative underfunding. That didn’t happen overnight. This has been years in the making. Action on this file is long overdue, and we need serious and sustainable solutions to address this crisis. This bill that the government has brought forward just doesn’t meet the moment.

We value our world-class post-secondary institutions, and we know the positive impact they have on staff, students and surrounding communities. The Ontario NDP is committed to ensuring that everyone who lives, works and studies at a post-secondary institution has the support they need. That is why we’re calling on this Conservative government to immediately commit to serious and reliable funding for colleges and universities and strengthen oversight to end the exploitation of international students.

I’m going to talk a little bit about what’s in this bill. The bill requires public colleges and universities to have a student mental health policy that describes the programs, policies, services and supports available at the college or university. The minister may issue directives specifying the elements to be included in this policy and the steps the minister intends to take if the institution fails to comply. The policy would have to be posted on its website, reviewed at least once every five years and reported annually to the board of governors on the implementation and effectiveness.

I agree, we need to have student mental health policies, and I think many or most universities and colleges have a student mental health policy. What they don’t have is the funding to provide the support and services to the students. We know from data we see year after year that the demand for mental health supports is increasing.

Speaker, in my first term in office, when I got elected in 2018, the first bill I tabled in this House was to ensure that every child and young person had the right to receive access to timely mental health care. The bill proposed that, for any young person, basically 24 and under, if a mental health support was identified as being needed, they would get access to it within 30 days. This was an ask from Children’s Mental Health Ontario. It was part of the Kids Can’t Wait campaign. It was a fully costed plan. And, Speaker, when that bill was brought before this House and debated and voted on at second reading, it actually received unanimous support. But then, after that, the bill languished at committee. The government refused to take any action on it.

Already it was too late to be taking action because the wait-lists were growing and wait times were getting longer. But even if we had taken action then, we are talking about four or five years of work that would have already gone into ensuring that everyone, especially young people, have access to timely mental health care.

This bill also requires public colleges and universities “to have policies and rules to address and combat racism and hate, including but not limited to anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.” Again, the minister may issue directives specifying the elements of the policy and the steps the minister intends to take if an institution fails to comply. This policy, again, would have to be posted on the website, reviewed at least once every five years, and reported annually to the board of governors on the implementation and effectiveness.

Speaker, again, it’s very important to have policies, and we support that. We want to ensure, and we must actually ensure, that every student, staff—anybody—in post-secondary education feels welcome and that it’s a safe learning and working environment. But we need to make sure that our action as government, and particularly with this Conservative government, is not limited to just policies on paper, that there is proper funding in place to ensure that action can be taken.

Finally, it enables the minister to issue directives to colleges and universities specifying information to be provided to the public about costs associated with attending the institution, such as the ancillary fees, cost of textbooks and other learning materials.

It’s very, very important that this bill was tabled as part of a package of announcements that the government made following a report that came out in November, the blue-ribbon panel report—and, of course, the federal announcement of the cap on international study permits.

So, that package that this government announced in March—just last week—includes extending the tuition freeze for Ontario students for at least three or more years while allowing institutions to increase tuition by 5% for out-of-province domestic students, funding totalling just under $1.3 billion over three years. There is regulation to allow the minister to grant applied master’s degrees and the commitment to engage with colleges and universities to create tuition fee transparency.

Now, all of this is important, but I think that, again, it goes back to how for years students—important stakeholders within post-secondary education—have been ringing the alarm bells when it comes to the crisis. And the actions that I just outlined really are very, very small steps when it comes to addressing the scale of the crisis, which is why, as I said earlier, this bill does not meet the moment. The response to a crisis has to be able to solve the crisis or at least, at minimum, make a significant dent in the problem. But this does little— very, very little.

Speaker, let’s not forget that the post-secondary institutions are in a financial crisis for a number of reasons, starting with chronic underfunding. Ontario’s per student operating funding, which is really the bulk of the funding from the government, is well below the national average. This has been the case for decades. The Liberals underfunded post-secondary institutions and under the Conservative government, this current government, that funding has decreased even further. Of course, the government has talked about freezing tuition, but has not actually provided the funding to replace the revenue lost from tuition. I agree: We need to reduce tuition. Tuition should not be a barrier to attending a college or a university. But we need to provide the supports to offset that, and that has to be done through increased investments—increased public investments, I should add, because what we do not want is privatization in our public institutions, in our post-secondary institutions.

Of course, as for everyone else and in all sectors, inflation has been an issue. Higher Education Strategy Associates estimates that, accounting for inflation, the stagnant government funding and the tuition freeze have meant that Ontario’s public colleges and universities have lost about 31% of the funding, of the government-controlled revenue or the funding that the government provides, since 2010. That’s a huge figure: 31%.

Of course, as a result, what has been happening is colleges and universities unfortunately have developed an overreliance on international students. Post-secondary institutions have become dependent on international students. This actually started and ramped up under the Liberals and, under the Conservatives, it has skyrocketed. The Auditor General reviews both colleges and universities. I think multiple reviews have included warnings about this, again, over many years, but the government has failed to act on the AG’s recommendations.

I do want to acknowledge here that this growth in international students is happening across the sector. Of course, it’s not limited to private career colleges or public-private partnerships, but it is disproportionate in the private career colleges and public-private partnerships. In fact, international students at private career colleges that are partnered with the private colleges have seen skyrocketing increases in enrolment. I think some of the graphs that show the percentage of the increased enrolment have been shared around on social media, and it’s just unbelievable. There’s one—I don’t want to name any institution right now—but it’s an increase of 600% when it comes to international students.

Speaker, as you can see, the underfunding of our post-secondary institutions has led to a lot of other new problems as a consequence of the underfunding. What the government has announced in terms of this “historic funding” really is a drop in the bucket. It’s far from solving the crisis, but it does not even make a significant dent in the problem.

Don’t take it from me, Speaker. Let’s listen to what stakeholders had to say about this legislation. I’ll start with OCUFA. I’m going to quote directly from OCUFA’s statement: “The Minister of Colleges and Universities recognizes that we are facing a funding crisis, but the gap between what has been provided and what is needed is massive.” That’s from Nigmendra Narain, who is the president of OCUFA. They go on to say, “This is a one-time drop in the bucket.” As well, “The solution to the chronic underfunding of Ontario’s universities is simple: political will to make a true investment in per-student funding to get us up to the Canadian average.”

The request from important stakeholders like OCUFA is simply to have enough funding to be at the Canadian average, because right now, Ontario is dead last, and we have been dead last for many, many years.

I will add to that and say we should make it a goal to be the best. We want to be leaders. Investing in post-secondary institutions, investing in our students, in the supports and services—and in providing that funding—has huge economic benefits. It pays for itself and more in the long term, so it is extremely important. As OCUFA has said, at the very least we need to be at the Canadian average.

Another stakeholder, Council of Ontario Universities, goes on to say, “The sector will continue to adapt and evolve to better serve students and find even more innovative ways to drive greater efficiencies, as outlined in the sector’s efficiency update. However, the funding gap is just far too large to close through efficiencies alone. Ontario’s universities remain committed to working with the government on a longer-term solution to fix a broken funding model that is impacting all universities, so that they can continue to support student success and create the highly skilled talent and innovation our economy needs.”

Speaker, they go on to say, “We are calling on the Ontario 2024 budget to provide the additional multi-year base funding as recommended by the panel.” They’re of course referring to the blue-ribbon panel.

I don’t have too much time, but I do want to include the voices of students. First maybe I’ll share reaction from the workers, particularly CUPE.

Actually, before I go on to that, Speaker, I do want to state in the House that since the government tabled this bill, the past number of days, CUPE 3903, representing contract faculty, teaching assistants, graduate assistants, research assistants and part-time librarians and archivists at York University, has been on strike, and we all know why, really. In fact, it’s not a surprise. The low wages that CUPE 3903 workers experience do not come near to protecting workers from the skyrocketing inflation, the cost-of-living crisis. It is really heartbreaking when you hear that university workers—the workers who are really carrying a big percentage of the burden of teaching and the day-to-day operation of our classrooms and of the universities and colleges—have to rely on food banks to survive, and also have to work multiple jobs to survive. What kind of message are we sending to Ontarians? But also, what kind of message are we sending when it comes to what we value as Ontarians?

Speaker, I was quite surprised to learn that, in fact, it’s been a trend. A lot of the teaching assistants, the graduate assistants, they not only are now making up a larger percentage of the faculty, they’re now actually doing more than 50%—they teach more than 50% of the courses, and they are the precarious workers of our post-secondary education system.

I only have two minutes left. I did want to make sure I included voices from the students, so I will share a quote from the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, who were here just recently as part of their lobby day. They say that—they go on to add some of the things that they welcome, but they really want to make sure that a lot of the funding need that exists on campuses when it comes to mental health services is focused. They’re appreciative that there’s some action on this, but of course, a lot more needs to be done.

Speaker, I’ll just end by saying that there are aspects of the bill that we support, but to truly address the crisis, what is needed is funding. So I urge the government to make the investments to have a world-class post-secondary education system in our province, to not only show that we value that and that we want to support students and faculty and everybody as part of the sector, but that this is something that is going to benefit us all.