Like most, I received my “convincer cheque” from the provincial government a few days ago. It says it’s from the Ministry of Finance. But it couldn’t be plainer that its point of origin is Conservative Party HQ. It’s dated Jan. 29, 2025, exactly 24 hours after the premier visited Lt. Gov. Edith Dumont to dissolve Ontario’s 43rd Parliament for a general election Feb. 27, even though the premier doesn’t need to call an election until June 2026.
“Ontario Taxpayer Rebate,” the cheque is called.
Of greater importance to me that same week, however, I learned that Centennial College, where I instructed for 18 years, had permanently cancelled 49 programs, including 16 programs in its business school, seven at its engineering school and 14 communications courses at the Story Arts campus in East York.
That’s where I taught courses in news reporting, interviewing, law and ethics, beat reporting, broadcast history and copy editing among other courses between 1999 and 2017. Coincidentally, I ran into the current Centennial president and CEO, Craig Stephenson, at that Pickering Airport lands press conference last Monday.
“What have you done to my college?” I asked him right away.
“We’re reacting to federal immigration policy (on international student quotas),” he shrugged, but then more critically he added, “and current provincial funding.” Stephenson claimed Centennial would still offer full-time academic programs and educate students for career success.
This despite a January 2024 report that showed the Ontario government provides the lowest funding for full-time domestic students of all 10 Canadian provinces. Add to that, in 2019, Doug Ford’s Conservatives cut tuition by 10 per cent and froze direct provincial funding to post-secondary education.
According several teaching federations, Premier Ford’s announcement (in February 2024) of $1.3 billion over three years for post-secondary education “amounts to only 57 per cent of average funding provided by all other provinces” or dead last in Canada.
So, I looked more closely at the kinds of programs Centennial has had to cut versus the kinds of challenges the province faces today. Among the casualties were programs at the School of Community and Health Studies, instruction of healthcare managers for elder care, for example.
Contrast this with the state of Ontario’s long-term care facilities. Currently, there are 76,000 long-term care spaces in the province. Sounds like a lot. But more than half of seniors wait 126 days to get access to care; some wait up to two and a half years. Why? Not enough spaces – meaning beds, yes, but mostly not enough trained healthcare specialists.
Centennial’s School of Engineering Tech and Applied Science has cut seven programs – jobs such as electronics engineers, environmental techs and construction project managers. Which makes me wonder how Premier Ford expects to deliver his massive “dirt is flying” construction projects, such as the Highway 413 Bradford Bypass, his $675 million Ontario Place spa and his latest fantasy, his 70-kilometre-long tunnel under Highway 401.
Maybe the premier’s predilection to underfund education comes from a predilection not to consult with educated engineers about mega-projects.
Oh, and if the premier and his land developer buddies want to get together to party and share information while they plan their next assault on the Greenbelt, they’d better consider supporting post-secondary training of waiters, bartenders, bakers as well as their administrators.
Seven of the programs Centennial cancelled last month for lack of provincial funding would supply the hospitality personnel that Ontario tourist and entertainment spots desperately need.
Which brings me to Centennial College’s School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design, whose students I taught for 18 years. Absent in Ontario now will be competent communicators of both commercial and public service announcements, documentary and feature content, experts in public relations, animation and media management.
But perhaps the most important loss for a province that needs a capable Opposition outside Queen’s Park – in the middle of a winter election nobody but the premier wanted – is the elimination of Centennial’s journalism program.
When the premier endorses the election of Donald Trump “100 per cent” and then denies he ever liked the guy, Ontario needs reporters to catch the contradiction. When Ford claims he knew nothing of the rezoning of Greenbelt lands to potentially deliver billions to developers, Ontario’s environment needs investigative journalism to protect it.
And when the premier claims he needs a mandate to defend Ontario jobs, when he’s just thinking of his own, the discourse needs analysis.
By the way, about that “convincer cheque” I received from the Ontario Ministry of Finance? I’m sending it to fund an Ontario college journalism program which the Ford government hasn’t killed.