JASON SETNYK
Ontario NDP education critic and Deputy House Leader Chandra Pasma visited Cornwall for an SDG NDP Riding Association fundraiser at Carrots N’ Dates. Speaking with Seaway News, the Ottawa West-Nepean MPP did not mince words when asked to grade local MPP Nolan Quinn’s performance as Minister of Colleges and Universities. “I would completely give him an F,” she said, arguing the Ford government has underfunded colleges and universities for years.
Pasma said operating grants were frozen in 2018 while tuition was capped, pushing institutions to rely on international students. With new federal limits now cutting into that revenue, she said the result is cancelled programs, campus closures, layoffs, and “tens of thousands of students in Ontario who will not have a place in a couple of years.” Despite that, she added, “Nolan Quinn… is taking $1.2 billion out of his ministry this year in cuts.”
According to the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, “In the 2025 Ontario Budget, the Province projects that MCURES (Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security) spending will decrease at an average annual rate of -3.3 percent, from $14.1 billion in 2024-25 to $12.8 billion in 2027-28.”
On K-12 education, Pasma said delayed publication of EQAO literacy scores likely reflects “more than $6 billion taken out of our education system over the past seven years,” an ETFO figure, she says is contributing to larger classes and fewer staff. She linked local board deficits to those same pressures and rejected the idea of appointing costly provincial supervisors. “The answer is… replacing that funding that they cut and properly investing in our kids,” she said.
The Ford government says it is spending record amounts on education; however, budget analyses from the FAO and CCPA show real per-student funding has declined once inflation and enrolment growth are factored in.
Pasma also weighed in on housing, arguing that recent provincial legislation “absolutely protects landlords” rather than tenants. She said the real crisis is a “broken” Landlord and Tenant Board, where both tenants facing bad-faith evictions and responsible landlords dealing with problem tenants can wait “an incredibly long time” for a hearing. In her view, the solution is to restore meaningful rent control, crack down on bad-faith evictions and “renovictions,” and build deeply affordable housing, instead of making it easier to remove tenants from their homes.
On environmental oversight, Pasma voiced concern about the government’s plan to merge multiple conservation authorities into larger regional bodies. She said the proposal would combine very different watersheds under a single authority, weakening the local knowledge that is crucial for protecting ecosystems and nearby communities. Pointing to the example of Ottawa’s Rideau Valley Conservation Authority being folded into a larger St. Lawrence-to-Lake Ontario structure, she argued that effective flood prevention and environmental protection require decision-makers who understand the specific conditions and risks in each respective watershed.
Pasma also criticized how major provincial grant programs, such as the Skills Development Fund, are administered. She said decisions about “hundreds of millions of dollars” in public money should be made by non-partisan civil servants using transparent, publicly available criteria, not by ministers overriding recommendations for political reasons. Funding awards, she argued, need to follow a clear, equitable framework so that organizations are evaluated on merit and community impact rather than on who has connections at Queen’s Park.
Pasma said NDP priorities on housing, health care, and local schools can connect with voters in rural SDG and Cornwall, but only by having “conversation after conversation” with residents about their lives and concerns.
Quinn has responded by saying Pasma’s comments are inaccurate.
His office cites a section claiming the province is taking $1.2 billion out of his ministry this year in cuts. According to the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, “In the 2025 Ontario Budget, the Province projects that MCURES (Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security) spending will decrease at an average annual rate of -3.3 percent, from $14.1 billion in 2024-25 to $12.8 billion in 2027-28.”
Quinn’s office says funding from the government into the sector is the highest it’s ever been, and FAO projections do not depict the complete picture of what the government plans to spend yearly, as announced each Spring in the budget cycle.
Operating funding is set to increase to $5.8 billion in 2025 and 2026, reflecting an eight percent rise from last year and a 12 percent increase compared to 2023-24.
The following statement was issued by Quinn’s Press Secretary, Bianca Giacoboni.
“Our government will continue to support the delivery of a world-class postsecondary education in Ontario. The outlook numbers in the FAO report should not be taken as a certainty, as multi-year planning allocations are reviewed annually through the Budget process and the spending plan in 2027-28 will shift due to new initiatives or changes in policies.
While the federal government’s repeated changes to the international student permit system continue to destabilize Canada’s postsecondary system, we will continue to be there for Ontario colleges and universities – investing nearly a billion dollars in the last year alone. That is on top of the historic $1.3B we invested in 2024 and the $5.8B in operating funding we are investing into the sector in 25-26.
We are also currently working with our postsecondary partners on how to modernize the funding model into a more responsive, sustainable, and future-ready framework.”
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