If you support the following call to action, please sign our online petition to make your voice heard to the CFS.
Premier Doug Ford has struck another blow against post-secondary education, this time in the form of massive cuts to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). Grants, which currently cover up to 85 per cent of a student’s tuition, will cover a maximum of 25 per cent beginning next fall. The rest will need to be paid back in the form of loans that collect interest after graduation. The government has also ended the tuition freeze.
Ford says these cuts are in the name of “making education sustainable.” This is an obvious attempt to make students pay for the crisis in the Canadian economy. Without OSAP grants, many post-secondary students will graduate drowning in debt or will not be able to attend school at all. This is a scandalous attack that must be fought.
Ford is a hardened class enemy. He will not reverse these attacks unless we force him to. We need to prepare a serious struggle. If students fight together, we can defeat him.
The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), which represents over 350,000 students in Ontario, is in the best position to lead this fight and to give it the widest possible scope. The CFS has already called for a demonstration at Queen’s Park on March 4—a positive first step.
However, in order to catalyze this movement, we believe that March 4 should act as a launching pad for a series of escalating actions, including “Climate Strike”-style campus walkouts, culminating in a one-day student strike at as many campuses or campus departments as possible. Shutting down campuses with a strike would pose the most serious threat to the Ford regime, empower students en masse, and raise the movement’s chances of victory.
Moreover, in order to guarantee a strike’s chance of success, we believe that the CFS should publicly commit itself to preparing for a strike (which the CFS has voted for in the past), presenting its plan for escalation to students at the soonest possible date, and using every action and forum possible to educate students on the need for a student strike and how it would work.
The past can serve as inspiration. In 2012, Quebec students staged the largest student strike in North American history and, after six months, put an end to the 75 per cent tuition hikes and toppled the Liberal government.
The 2012 strike did not emerge from thin air. Instead, it was the result of meticulous preparation and mobilization. Quebec student leaders spoke to students daily and explained how the tuition hikes affected them, and the need for a strike. Importantly, a series of escalating actions was carried out in advance, including a two-day strike and a protest of 20,000 students. These actions were discussed and voted on at general assemblies involving hundreds of students, helping give them ownership over the movement.
The CFS should absorb these events, help transmit them to students in Ontario, and make it their objective to repeat them.
We must strike while the iron is hot. Students are angry. Instagram pages and WhatsApp chats are popping up, where students are discussing next steps. This energy needs to be channelled in a clear direction.
CFS leaders: the time for bold and decisive action is now! We call on you to begin preparations for a student strike, release a plan for escalating the movement, and help rally the tens of thousands of students in Ontario who are looking desperately for a lead.
In our view, this is the only way we can reverse the OSAP cuts, halt the destruction of post-secondary education in Ontario, and defeat Doug Ford.
Fight Doug Ford!
Prepare for a Student Strike!
Block Everything!
