Two Ontario occasion leaders laid out their plans to assist younger folks cope with the affordability disaster, promising to cut back pupil debt and youth unemployment.
The pledges outlined by Liberal Chief Bonnie Crombie and NDP Chief Marit Stiles on the marketing campaign path Tuesday got here as Progressive Conservative Chief Doug Ford joined a diplomatic push in Washington, D.C., in his capability as Ontario premier.
Crombie mentioned she would get rid of curiosity on pupil loans, create 40,000 paid internships and apprenticeships via tax credit to corporations and make pupil residences extra reasonably priced.
“Ontario’s Liberals have a plan to smash our unemployment price in half,” Crombie mentioned at a marketing campaign cease in Toronto.
“We’re additionally going to make sure that you’ve gotten a household physician, and we’re additionally going to vow you that you just will not be saddled with pupil loans and pupil debt.”
Crombie would prolong the period of time wanted to repay Ontario Scholar Help Program loans and enhance the earnings threshold when these repayments start to $50,000.
Liberal Chief Bonnie Crombie talks to college students at a marketing campaign occasion at George Brown Faculty in Toronto on Feb. 11, 2025. (Chris Younger/The Canadian Press)
She mentioned she would additionally cap worldwide pupil enrolment at 10 per cent in any respect Ontario schools and universities.
“We have got to open up areas for our personal college students, but in addition we’ve to fund our schools and universities correctly,” Crombie mentioned. “As a result of proper now, what’s taking place is that they’re counting on international college students to pay the bills, and that isn’t sustainable.”
Stiles mentioned her occasion would introduce lease management, flip pupil loans into grants and get rid of curiosity on pupil loans.
“We have to take the stress off of scholars,” Stiles mentioned at a marketing campaign cease in Kitchener, Ont.
She mentioned post-secondary packages are being reduce throughout the province.
“That implies that college students aren’t moving into the packages they want, and naturally we’re dropping vital jobs,” Stiles mentioned.
Ontario NDP Chief Marit Stiles meets with diners at a Tim Hortons in Sault Ste. Marie on Friday Feb. 7, 2025. (Kenneth Armstrong/The Canadian Press)
Each Stiles and Crombie mentioned they’d maintain tuition frozen for home college students and they’d enhance funding to post-secondary establishments.
Ontario’s schools and universities have been struggling financially for a number of years. Ford’s Progressive Conservative authorities launched a ten per cent tuition reduce for home college students in 2019 because it cancelled the earlier Liberal authorities’s free tuition program for low- and middle-income college students, and has frozen charges at that degree.
Publish-secondary establishments, notably schools, elevated their dependence on worldwide college students, which noticed many schools’ enrolments develop considerably within the following years.
A government-commissioned report really useful ending the schooling freeze and rising per-student funding to the establishments.
Final yr, Ford’s authorities responded by rising funding to the sector by $1.2 billion, which was about $1 billion lower than what the report really useful. Ford additionally selected to maintain tuition frozen.
The issue for post-secondary establishments was compounded by the federal authorities’s strikes on immigration, which included a cap on worldwide pupil visas launched in January 2024.
Faculties had been hit notably arduous by the bounds on worldwide college students.
Ford is assembly with American lawmakers and enterprise leaders in Washington, D.C., over two days as a part of a joint mission with different premiers to stave off deliberate U.S. tariffs on Canadian items.
Ford known as a snap election set for Feb. 27, saying he wants a brand new mandate to cope with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Stiles, Crombie and Inexperienced Social gathering Chief Mike Schreiner have all mentioned the election is pointless, a waste of cash and nothing in need of an influence seize by Ford whereas he is forward within the polls.
Elections Ontario has mentioned the funds for the election is $189 million.
