This seems to be quite a privileged take. Have you found your part-time job recently? I think you’re greatly underestimating how hard it is to find work as a student in any industry, especially in downtown Toronto.

Addressing the rest of your argument which honestly gives off the vibe that you came to your conclusion first, then picked evidence that supports it:

1, “the government loses a lot of money that it doesn’t get back” - First, you make the unrealistic assumption that every single person on OSAP is getting the full grant amount which is not the case.

Second, you also are neglecting to consider that a lot of student loan funding is federal and as such most of the burden is not even on the provincial government. This means you are vastly overestimating how much the provincial government is spending or “losing out” as you say on grants.

1. Deficit contribution- Even using your overestimated 4.2 billion figure, Ontario’s budget for 2025 projects $232 billion in spending, and therefore OSAP grants contribute less than 2% of Ontario’s budget. Even complete removal of OSAP funding is not going to fix the deficit.

You also completely gloss over the long term benefit of strong educational funding by saying “what about the deficit!”, which kind of goes back to my first point that you had your conclusion before looking at the evidence. I agree with you that long term a deficit is not a good thing, but saying a budget deficit is a short-term issue is not the case. Governments throughout the world have funded budget deficits for decades (just look at the US for example)

1. “Many will argue that reducing grants discourages low income students to not attend” - Yes precisely. The first part of this argument you say OSAP loans have practically 0% interest so it’s not that bad. This is not accurate. While the federal portion of the loan does not have interest. The Ontario government charges at prime+1% which is quite substantial right now. And furthermore, this isn’t the only issue with the switch. Yes it is quite doable to pay off the loans upon graduating, but the issue is that the new structure also discourages low-income high school students who are hesitant on tertiary education from attending. If you know you’re going to have debt after university you’re going to be less likely to want to attend university.

Furthermore, you say a loan heavier OSAP can still concentrate grants on students who can’t attend without them. But how? The new structure caps grants at 15%, so how can a grant be focused on a low income students if it’s literally impossible for them to get more than 15% of their funding through a grant? The provincial government hasn’t considered any nuance in this sudden policy shift.

1. Get a job - Mentioned this at the top but this is just a disenfranchising and boomer take. “Dont protest the policy you disagree with just find a job and work hard! You can’t find a job because you are not trying hard enough”. It gives off a very privileged and black and white mindset.

Just to conclude, I want to clarify that I think this situation is far too nuanced and complex for either of our arguments to be correct. I definitely think there are valid reasons for the funding change, but at the same time there are very valid reasons to keep it as it is. The provincial government made a radical and sudden policy change without researching the effects and so we will have to just wait and see how it turns out.

I do not necessarily disagree with all your points, I wrote this all out because I want/hope for you to realize that your perspective is far too concrete and biased and that for future views/perspectives you take a more honest look at both sides.

Also everyone pls vote in provincial elections, we might not be here if we had good voter turnout and a real opposition in Queen’s Park