|

Ontario Budget Requests: 1) Ontario Adds $1.3B In Post-Secondary Funding, Freezes Tuition For Three More Years, 2) Canadian Cancer Society Urges Ontario To Cover Cost Of Take-Home Medication

ByPatricia Dent

1) Ontario Adds $1.3B In Post-Secondary Funding, Freezes Tuition For Three More Years,

Courtesy of Barrie360.com and Canadian PressPublished: Feb 26th, 2024

By Allison Jones and Liam Casey in Toronto

Ontario is putting an additional $1.3 billion over three years toward post-secondary institutions increasingly struggling with finances in the face of low provincial funding and frozen tuition fees, but colleges and universities said it does not come close to sustaining the sector.

The funding announced Monday by Colleges and Universities Minister Jill Dunlop is less than half of what was recommended by an expert panel she tapped to examine post-secondary finances. She also announced a continuation of a tuition fee freeze will continue until at least 2026-27, except for allowing institutions to boost tuition by five per cent for students from other provinces.

“This is a broad range of measures that will offer much needed stability to the post-secondary sector and help keep costs down for students and their families,” Dunlop said at a news conference. 

“Ultimately our goal is to put students and their needs first.”

The expert panel recommended a one-time, 10-per-cent increase in per-student funding to colleges and universities followed by inflationary increases in subsequent years, as well as a five-per-cent increase in tuition along with an “equally generous” increase to student aid.

Full implementation of the expert recommendations would have meant $2.5 billion in ongoing base funding over the next three years, said Council of Ontario Universities president Steve Orsini.

“Today’s announcement, while providing short-term relief, falls far short of what the government’s own expert panel found was urgently required,” he said in a statement.

Dunlop said the $1.3 billion stands as the government’s response to the recommendations, and that includes $15 million for third-party reviews to identify “structural issues” and find “long-term cost savings.”

“This is a shared responsibility,” she said.

But the gap between what’s needed and what has been offered is “far too large to close through efficiencies alone,” Orsini wrote.

Both Orsini and the president and CEO of Colleges Ontario said the money is welcome, but more needs to be done.

“While the investment announced today is a welcome first step, we expect further action from the province,” Marketa Evans said in a statement. “The future of the high-quality programs offered to students remains at risk.” 

Dunlop pivoted often in her press conference to heaping blame on the federal government for causing “disruption” in the post-secondary sector with its announcement that the number of visas for international undergraduate students will be slashed. Ontario will see its allotment cut in half.

But the government-commissioned expert panel and Ontario’s auditor general have noted that low levels of provincial support over several years combined with a 2019 tuition fee cut and freeze are a large part of the reason institutions have turned increasingly to international student tuition fees – which are much higher than what domestic students pay – to stay afloat.

Ontario ranks 10th out of 10 in every comparison of interprovincial post-secondary financing, according to a report last year by Higher Education Strategy Associates. International students now give more money to Ontario’s institutions than the government does, the report said.

Raising Ontario’s level of per-student funding to the average of the other nine provinces would require $7.1 billion per year in additional spending — much higher than the current level of operating funding at around $5 billion, author Alex Usher reported.

“Altogether, between inflation and the loss of international students, the sector was in for a hit of over $2 billion this year,” Usher said Monday in response to Dunlop’s announcement. 

“This package maybe covers 20 per cent of that. It is not a serious attempt to put Ontario’s colleges and universities on solid footing. It is, rather, the act of a government that prefers the appearance of solving problems to actually solving them.” 

The bulk of the new money will be in a three-year, $903-million Postsecondary Education Sustainability Fund, including $203 million for schools with the greatest need.

Other initiatives include more than $167 million going to capital repairs and equipment, $100 million this year put toward STEM programs at colleges and universities with more students than they are currently funded for, $65 million for research and innovation, $23 million for mental-health supports and $15 million for audits to identify “long-term cost savings.”

As well, Dunlop said the province will allow colleges to offer applied masters degrees “in areas of study that will help students graduate with in-demand skills, expertise and credentials” such as in advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence and animation.

Dunlop also introduced legislation that would require colleges and universities to give students information about ancillary fees and other costs such as textbooks, and the bill would require institutions to have mental-health and wellness supports policies in place.

NDP critic Peggy Sattler said her party supports a continued tuition fee freeze, but it needs to come with greater government support.

“We know that in Ontario, government funding represents just 30 per cent of the revenues that colleges and universities get,” she said.

“That’s far lower than in any other province. Ontario will still be dead last across Canada, in terms of the level of per-student funding that our colleges and universities receive … From the minister’s announcement today, it is clear that this Conservative government does not in any way understand the severity of the crisis that our post-secondary institutions are facing.”

2) Canadian Cancer Society Urges Ontario To Cover Cost Of Take-Home Medication

Courtesy of Barrie360.com and Canadian PressPublished: Feb 28th, 2024

By Allison Jones in Toronto

Kirsten Watson was weeks away last year from losing access to potentially life-saving medication — a situation she found herself in because Ontario does not cover the cost of take-home cancer drugs.

The 43-year-old is on medication to help prevent a recurrence of breast cancer after being diagnosed in 2020. She lost her job last year due to downsizing at her company. Along with her income, she stood to lose coverage through her employer’s benefits for the $7,000 worth of medication a month her oncologist has prescribed.

“To know that there’s this treatment that was so important to be on, and the stress of not being able to potentially have it, it’s near debilitating,” Watson said in an interview.

“So during a time when I should have been focusing on getting my resume scrubbed up to start applying for jobs and starting to think about finding other employment, I was instead stressing and burdened with how am I going to be able to continue my cancer treatment when I no longer have benefit coverage?”

Watson’s former employer extended her benefits coverage for a period of time after she was laid off, and it was only weeks away from expiring when she found another job where the cost of some of the medication is covered. A patient support program at the manufacturer of one of the drugs is paying the balance.

But she knows not everyone going through cancer treatment has private insurance and wants to see the province cover those oral medications. Having cancer and receiving treatment itself is a tremendous burden, Watson said.

“You have the stress of receiving a diagnosis, going through treatment, dealing with the side-effects that are part of treatment — you’re very much dealing with the cancer, which is a huge stress already,” she said.

The Canadian Cancer Society is calling on Ontario to fund take-home cancer drugs in the same way as medications to treat cancer that are administered through IV in hospital.

“Ontario is one of the only provinces, other than Atlantic Canada, that does not cover oral cancer medication,” the society’s Ontario advocacy manager Hillary Buchan-Terrell recently told a legislative committee hearing pre-budget submissions.

“The cost-of-living crisis is at the forefront for most Ontarians. They should not have to worry about choosing to pay their mortgage or their cancer treatment.”

It’s not a new request. The cancer society has been advocating for oral medication coverage for more than a decade. There was a glimmer of hope in the 2022 budget, promising an advisory table to explore improving access to the drugs, but to date no progress has been made, Buchan-Terrell said.

When asked about that commitment, a spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones pointed back to the two-year-old budget promise.

“Ontario will continue to work with key stakeholders, subject matter experts and federal, provincial and territorial partners to identify additional initiatives to achieve long‐term sustainability of public drug programs,” Hannah Jensen wrote in a statement.

“The government is also committed to bringing together an advisory table to explore improvements to access to take-home cancer drugs.”

The Canadian Cancer Society estimates that covering the medication would cost the province between $17 million and $44 million a year, depending on whether it goes with a first-payer model or acts as a backup for patients without enough private coverage.

Watson said she was ultimately lucky to find another job with benefits coverage, but said she should not have had to limit her search in that way just because of where in Canada she lived.

“I can’t help but think, if I lived in another province, I wouldn’t have to be going through this,” she said.

Patricia Dent
Latest posts by Patricia Dent (see all)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *