Howard Hampton and the NDP are committed to ensuring that the daughters and sons of hard-working families have access to college or university and can afford in-class apprenticeship courses.

Fairness means making sure working families can help send their children to post-secondary institutions without both parents and students facing crippling debt. Unfortunately, the costs of higher education are increasing in Ontario thanks to the McGuinty Liberals. Before the last election Dalton McGuinty campaigned against the high cost of tuition for college, and university. He promised to freeze tuition for two years, but after he got elected he announced massive tuition hikes of up to 36 per cent. Costs for professional programs like medicine and law have skyrocketed – the current tuition for second-year law is $17,791. What courses you take shouldn’t be decided by how much your parents make.

High tuition fees mean some working parents just can’t afford to send their kids to college or university. And kids who do go are graduating with the highest average post-secondary education debt in the country – a staggering $22,700. That’s no way to start out.

Through the NDP Fair Deal for Students, tuition fees would be frozen at pre-McGuinty levels. This year the average undergraduate tuition is expected to be $5,360, up from $4,900 in 2005-2006. The Fair Deal For Students will mean a reduction in annual tuition of about $460 for an average Ontario undergraduate university student.

McGuinty also promised to eliminate classroom fees for apprenticeships, which can be as much as $400 a session for apprentices at worker training centres or colleges. Another broken promise: the fees are still there. In many cases, apprentices take five in-class sessions, which means paying more than $2,000. Howard Hampton and the NDP will eliminate those fees and put more money back into the pockets of the 90,000 people who enrol in apprentice programs every year.

Dalton McGuinty is out of touch with hard-working families struggling to give their kids a better future. The NDP believes that fairness means no one is denied the chance to go to college, university or take an apprenticeship because they can’t afford it. Dalton McGuinty got it wrong when he allowed tuition to skyrocket and broke his promise to eliminate unfair apprentice fess. New Democrats will make it right by removing barriers to university, college and training.

We will remove barriers to university, college and training:

• Immediately roll back university and college tuition fees to pre-McGuinty levels – a savings on average of $460 for university students and $200 for college students
• freeze tuition fees following the roll back
• eliminate classroom fees, averaging $400, for apprenticeship programs

Filed Under: Election 2007 | Removing barriers to post-secondary education