Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ blasted through the loudspeakers inside TMU’s courtyard as students piled in.
The Revolutionary Communist Party’s (RCP) pop-up stand was stationed alongside TMU’s student union, with members handing out pamphlets and "Fight Like The French" posters to incoming protesters. A few students sat atop a large boulder overlooking the growing crowd, hoisting up a flag that read "Hands Off Our Education" as others donned Guy Fawkes masks.
Students from TMU, U of T and York University walked out of class yesterday, joining thousands of post-secondary students in Ontario's province-wide campus walkouts to protest Doug Ford’s cuts to education. Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government brought major changes to OSAP funding this year, cutting grants to 25 per cent from 85 per cent and increasing loans to 75 per cent from 15 per cent.
Thursday’s protests organized by the Canadian Federation of Students and joined by the RCP and Palestinian activists drew the link between cuts to OSAP and austerity policies being felt around the world.
“How many of you are angry? How many of you are sick of death by a thousand cuts from your education system?” Chris Chandler, an executive from the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, said to students gathered at TMU.
“This is a government that made very clear what their priorities are, what communities they want to serve and what they think research, knowledge and the economy should be based on,” Chandler said.
Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) representative Omar Moussa said that students are suffering under a chronically underfunded education system.
“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,” he said.
Isaac Mabondo, an Economics and Finance student at TMU, has not yet received his OSAP funding and will only receive $50 in grants this year. $7,500 of the $10,000 he will receive in loans (at an unknown date in the future) will go towards his tuition.
“I’m having to use all of my savings from last year to basically live,” Mabondo said.
The cuts to OSAP are part of a larger affordability crisis, TMU student Adam Moto said.
“Students are sacrificing the best years of their lives to not have any fun. To not explore their passions. To not be a part of the generation that’s going to build Ontario. It’s not fair. It’s not right,” Moto said.
“At a time when the entire world is rising up against the cost of living,” he said.
Moto referenced the general strikes in France, which were taking place on the same day and were, he said, a massive success.
“It’s all part of a bigger movement, ” he said
Moto echoed a sentiment felt throughout the walkout: the protests against Ford's cuts to OSAP are part of a larger battle being fought by young people across the globe.
“The student movement isn’t just in Ontario. It isn’t just in this country. It is a global movement that will continue to grow until we achieve free and accessible education for all,” CFS representative Moussa said.
Cheers erupted through the crowd as Moussa’s speech connected Ontario’s students' battle for affordable education to the ongoing student protests in France, Spain and Albania.
A representative from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) told students they have a right to a future “that values human intelligence over artificial. Lies over profit. Equity over power.”
Before Oct. 7, Gaza had a literacy rate of 98.2 per cent, one of the highest in the world, she said.
“Like you, the students studied at local cafes, played on varsity teams, crammed in libraries, wrote for their student newspapers and took smoke breaks in the park,” she said.
All that remains now, “after the relentless carpet bombing by the Zionist regime, is rubble," she said
“We can’t afford to pay for our school, and they are sending our tuition to fund a genocide,” she said.
A resounding “shame” spread through the crowd, followed by chants pushing TMU to divest.
Nolan Quinn, the current PC Minister of Ontario Colleges and Universities, refused to meet with CFS to discuss OSAP after making the decision to cut the assistance program, Moussa said.
"Hey hey. Ho ho. Nolan Quinn has got to go," the students chanted.
Meanwhile, at TMU, and at the U of T walkout a few blocks away, local NDP MPPs met with protesting students.
Chris Glover, Spadina-Fort York MPP, said the cuts to OSAP are an assault on students.
“A progressive society is one where the next generation is better off than the last generation. That hasn’t been true in Ontario for the last 40 years,” Glover said.
Kirstyn Wong-Tam, Toronto Centre MPP, stressed the necessity of an educated workforce and placed the onus on the government to provide it.
“If you want your doctors to be educated, if you want teachers to be educated, if you want to make sure you have a next generation of qualified, educated workers, it is our responsibility to invest in post-secondary institutions right now,” Wong-Tam said.
The RCP, which helped to mobilize students for the walkouts and was stationed at TMU, U of T and York on Nov. 5, sees this walkout as a step towards a larger shutdown and strike against Premier Doug Ford.
“Our education is not being cut for no reason. It’s because we’re in the biggest economic crisis of our generation and the ruling class is trying to make students, young people and workers pay for it,” RCP member Azriel Kerbel said.
“The movement addressing the education system in France erupted because all of society resonated with it,” Kerbel said.
