Ontario Students March for Free Education and Against the ‘Student Choice Initiative’

By Ivan Byard - organiser of the Toronto YCL-LJC

While students are getting ready for an Ontario-wide rally against OSAP cuts on February 19th, here is a report on the last student demonstration that took place on January 25th in Toronto.

On January 25th thousands of students, faculty, organized labour members, and their community allies gathered in Toronto to demonstrate their outrage against the provincial tory attack on public education. The march was a spontaneous response to the January 17th announcement from the Doug Ford government that a 10% reduction in tuition fees was a ‘bait-and-switch’ swindle that would be paid for with devastating cuts to the Ontario Student Assistance Plan (OSAP) and universities and colleges institutional funding.

Young Communists prepare for conferences on free education

Special to RY 

As the school year is about to start, thousands of students across the country are looking at their bank statements sparing any penny to make it through the year without getting too much into debt simply to go to school to eventually find a job. Young communists in the meantime issued a call-out to convene student and young progressive activists to attend two unique conferences on free education.

Organised under the theme "The fight for free education, a Communist Perspective", the conferences will be organised in Toronto and Vancouver on September 15-16 and 28-29 respectively. Exact locations will be made public shortly.

Young Communists mobilise for the Ontario Day of Action for Free Education

Special to RY

In 2017, the CFS Ontario, delegates voted in favour of an Ontario Day of Action on February 1st, 2018 with free education as one of the main demands. After the positive experience of the November 2nd, 2016 Pan-Canadian Day of Action, which mobilised 56 campuses in 38 cities, the YCL-LJC welcomed the mobilisation for an Ontario Day of Action.

"Considering the increasingly difficult situation for students in Canada and in Ontario, we thought it was important for us, young communists, to actively participate and mobilise for this Day of Action and focus on the need to organise and fight for free education, which we see as the first priority and uniting demand for the student movement", says Peter Miller, Chair of the Student Commission of the YCL-LJC.

Student action ramping up for November 2nd

Peter Miller

This November 2nd, students from across Canada will be mobilizing for the Pan-Canadian “Student Day of Action” for free and accessible education initiated by the Canadian Federation of Students. As discussed in the statement from the YCL-LJC on the Day of Action, students are facing attacks across the country but are also fighting back.

The Rock says: Grants not loans!

Canadian Federation of Students

The Newfoundland and Labrador government’s decision to replace all provincial student loans with grants is a landmark step towards equality of access to post-secondary education.

“By listening to students’ concerns about the growing student debt crisis, this government is helping both young people and the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador,” said Jessica McCormick, National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students. “This decision builds upon 15 years of growing investments in post-secondary education by successive Newfoundland and Labrador governments.”

The Newfoundland and Labrador government’s decision to replace all student loans with grants, announced in today’s Budget, is a significant step towards fully public, accessible post-secondary education.

Protests demand Fix or scrap "Fair Elections Act”

A member of the YCL being arrested at a
recent anti-Harper protest action in Vancouver

 Canadian Federation of Students

Canadians rallied at over 25 Conservative MP offices today to oppose the government’s proposed changes to election law and tell their MPs to “Let People Vote!”

Citizens delivered an 80,000-strong petition that opposes the unnecessarily strict voter ID requirements that could stop hundreds of thousands from voting in the next election, and calls for election fraud investigators to be given the power to compel political operatives to testify.

The “Let People Vote!” national day of action was supported and facilitated by Leadnow.ca, the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Federation of Students.

Cross-Canada Student Unity

The following article appeared in the Winter 2013-2014 edition of Rebel Youth Magazine, together with this article about the student fightback.

While the struggles for accessible secondary and post-secondary education in English-speaking Canada, Quebec, Acadia, and among Aboriginal peoples share a common class interest they have distinct political histories and realities of struggle.  These matters must be addressed to build student unity.

The awakening student movement

by Espoir Manirambona
Rebel Youth Magazine

(This article appeared in the Winter 2013-2014 print edition of Rebel Youth together with this commentary.).

Students everywhere in Canada have had it with high tuition fees and are working to build a united student fightback to make education a right, not a privilege.

In many other industrialized capitalist countries such as France, Denmark and Spain post-secondary education is largely free.  Poorer nations, such as socialist Cuba, provide access to education as a guaranteed right.  In Canada students must pay a great deal of money to get the education they need to pursue their dreams or just get a job that’s above the poverty line.

Corporations, of course, want an educated workforce but they are not willing to pay for it through taxes -- and are instead forcing the students and their families to pick up the bill. This «debt sentence» is made heavier by the low wages most youth earn; and doubly hard for aboriginal students, young women, and racialized youth who face additional barriers.

Most students, and a large section of the Canadian people, oppose this full-scale attack on access to education. The challenge for the student movement across Canada is to turn this sentiment into action and mass public pressure. Quebec, which last year saw massive, militant and united student actions that shocked the country, shows the way!

All or nothing? The case for cross-Canada student unity.

Nora Loreto presents a hard-hitting commentary from the blog Rabble.ca about renewed claims of 16 CFS disaffiliations across Canada.  As has been said before, "Students have long rejected the parameters of Canada’s flawed Constitution, placing education as a provincial concern, and fought hard for a federal-level student movement... After smashing the CFS, what’s next? We would wake up with a horrible hangover and have to rebuild. At best, the defederation campaigns are an incredible waste of time and distraction; at worst they make all students, well beyond CFS members and including the Quebec’s student unions, incredibly vulnerable to the right’s agenda."  

Please note that not all the opinions expressed in this article are necessarily those of the Rebel Youth editorial board.

Toronto students and labour unions build unity

Report from the Toronto and York Regional Labour Council:

Last week more than 70 representatives of student unions, campus labour unions and the Labour Council met to dialogue about their common goals of tackling austerity. The symposium called "Students and Workers Unite" was hosted by Labour Community Services, the Labour Council and the Canadian Federation of Students - Ontario office.

Workers and students discussed the many challenges faced in the post-secondary arena with added pressures of declining government support and increased privatization on university and college campuses. The common consensus build was that a united front of both students and workers must be presented in order to protect public education.  Campus labour unions and student unions committed to building a framework of ongoing communication and mutual solidarity in each of Toronto’s three universities.

The case for eliminating tuition fees

The following document, produced by the Canadian Federation of Students - Ontario, outlines how free education could be achieved in that province. 

The flyer outlines long-standing government commitments for free education, as well as how it could be funded through existing programmes and progressive taxation. 

It makes for an interesting contrast with something RY magazine put online last summer: a document the Quebec-based IRIS think-tank group produced, arguing the same idea. For easy comparison, their leaflet is also below.

Technical note -- You can click on the bottom left icon to view the files in full screen: 

 

Free post-secondary education in Ontario: the case for eliminating tuition fees

IRIS - the case for Free Education

Discussion: the student movement is my movement

The Canadian Federation of Students has released a new and polished video about the necessity for the student movement. Without making an over-analysis of a simple video, the Youtube can kick-off wider discussion about the situation of the student movement today and what needs to be done. Here are five quick proposed questions. Comments are open here, and on our RY facebook page.

1. What do you think about the problems or grievances listed in the video. Do you have experience with these concerns? How or how not? What is going on at your campus?

2. The goal of the film is to draw more people into a united student movement. Do you think the message is complete? How or how not? If you had only three minutes to talk to a student about the importance of united action, what would you say?

3. Would you make reference to the Quebec student struggle? Why do you think the video does not? What would you tell students about the Quebec student strike? What about other struggles, like Idle No More or against Bill 115?

4. In the dynamic of the student movement, is unity -- or as this Youtube says being 'united' -- enough? What is the connection between unity and struggle? Could they be opposites? Could they be linked?

5. How does this film compare with the YCL's perspective towards the student movement and our demands?


Note: RY will have news shortly about the big announcements in the past few days about Quebec tuition fees.

Political parties and student struggle

Jean Chrétien, Liberal Prime Minister
of Canada from 1993-2003 

Commentary
By Rebel Youth

Other articles and series on this theme: the student fight back and struggle today; our coverage of the Quebec Student Strike; Students of Canada Rise Up; YCLer Marianne Breton Fontaine speaks on Student Solidarity tour; Call to 2013 YCL student conference.

Can elections be used as markers in time and struggle? Perhaps only with the full knowledge that, as Marxists understand, history is not made by the comings and goings of bourgeois political parties in polite rotation through their bourgeois parliaments, like so many characters in a Swiss Cuckoo Clock -- but by the struggles of the masses.

Still, the Canadian federal election in October 1993 is significant moment to tag. The outcome shaped the terrain of struggle of the youth and student movement in many new ways. The unpopular Conservative government (formerly led by Brian Mulroney) was swept out of office in crushing defeat -- reduced from 156 seats to just two, it lost official party status. The landslide victory of Jean Chretien's Liberals began thirteen years of that party's rule.

Swept to office on somewhat vague promises of change and anti-Free Trade sentiment, the Liberal's quickly dropped their proposals like renegotiating NAFTA and made their true colours clear to all by shifting attention towards balancing the budget -- ie. paying back the big capitalist creditors. Still in their honeymoon period, the Liberal's announced that all of Canada's social programs would be reviewed with sweeping and significant changes likely to come. Cut backs would be deep.

Call-out to the second-annual YCL-LJC student conference

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Open only to members of the YCL-LJC or by invitation

1. We believe in the principle that the student movement is one of the most radical, dynamic and progressive forces for change in society and the future.

2. The uprisings of students in the Middle East and North Africa, the brave united battles of the Chilean students, and the massive struggle in Quebec last winter and spring have shown the validity of the optimistic claim that the young people, united with the working class, are continuously an important catalytic force for social transformation, overthrow and revolution.

3. At the same time, new, contradictory and even confusing developments are taking place internationally and locally. We believe that the student movements in Quebec and English-speaking Canada are at a difficult but significant and even historic juncture.  At stake is our basic access to education.

Which way forward for campus mobilizing in Ontario?

Peter Miller is a student activist in Guelph, Ontario, and a former Board Member of the Guelph student union – the Central Student Association. He is active in a local grass-roots mobilization committee and currently works as a reporter for the online student newspaper, The Cannon. Peter is also the club organizer of YCL Guelph and a member of the YCL Ontario provincial committee.  Rebel Youth caught up with him after a presentation about student politics to young workers and students at a meeting of the Toronto YCL.

Students of Canada: Rise Up!

This documents reflects discussions in the YCL about the way forward for the student movement today. We welcome opinions and comments. It was originally published in the print edition of Rebel Youth, number 13-14.

Other articles and series on this theme: political parties and student struggle; our coverage of the Quebec Student Strike; Students of Canada Rise Up; YCLer Marianne Breton Fontaine speaks on Student Solidarity tour; Call to 2013 YCL student conference; and student actions step ahead but not enough.

* * * *

We are living at a time when a sea change is beginning in people’s way of thinking, not necessarily towards revolution or even progressive politics, but searching for new alternatives to cut-backs, privatization and austerity.

Nowhere is this clearer than among the youth and students, and who is surprised?

At first glance, it might seem like there is an inter-generational war going on – in Québec, the rest of Canada, and around the world.

Youth are being denied even the hope of a future better than their parents, economically and ecologically.

But the austerity budgets just passed on the provincial level, and the Federal Harper Conservative government‘s omnibus Bill C-38, are really a sort of class warfare.

As has been said before, we are being forced to pay for an economic crisis we did not create.

In the gun-sights of the Harper Tories is the labour movement and especially public sector workers, as well as aboriginal people, women, immigrant and non-status workers, the environment, and now even our democratic rights.

An important part of this offensive is spinning the neo-liberal wrecking ball at the foundations of accessible, affordable, quality, public, not-for-profit education from cradle to grave.

Students of Canada - Rise up!

Education is a right, not a privilege!

Commentary by the Young Communist League of Canada about the student struggle in Canada and especially Ontario today.

The unity and militancy of the Quebec student struggle has begun to shake the rest of Canada. Across the country, the youth and student movement has been inspired and emboldened by the struggle in Quebec. Many have correctly concluded that the best form of solidarity is to step-up a united fight back at home.

The Young Communist League of Canada supports this growing mobilization, made stronger by work like the Casserole Night in Canada protests that heard post banging from Antigonish, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia; and here in Ontario, by solidarity tours like that organized by the Canadian Federation of Students - Ontario and the Toronto student strike workshops which drew in over hundred eager participants.

Now is the time to start building a broad, militant and united fight back for accessible education, which is in crisis in our province:

• fees in Ontario are 23 higher than the cross-Canada average
• college tuition has outstripped inflation by 378%
• university tuition has outstripped inflation by 509%
• students graduate with an average debt of $37,000

The McGuinty Liberal government has just announced dangerous plans to compress four year degrees into three. In Canada and around the world we are seeing a new kind of education system where we pay more and learn less. As all students scramble to find work and pay our bills in an economic crisis of capitalism, indigenous peoples, women, and racialized communities face growing barriers to post-secondary education. International students are exploited as ‘cash-cows’.

In place of  accessible education, we are being told to lower our expectations and accept a life of debt and unemployment. 

BOOKS NOT BOMBS

The McGuinty Liberal`s sham 30% tuition grant promised to students in the last election is woefully inadequate. Two-thirds of students aren't eligible. We are told by the government there is not enough money to pay for "luxuries" like education and that we must tighten our belts. 

But if there's billions of dollars that can be spent on corporate tax breaks and fighter jets, why is there no money to spend on education? Free education for Canada would be $5 billion annually. Harper`s annual military budget? $25 billion. 

We must see what the government cuts to education really are - an ideological war being waged against students in tandem with attacks on the working class majority. 

UNITY AND RESISTANCE IS THE WAY FORWARD

It is tempting to reduce the student struggle to a question of magic leaders -- or magic structure. Of course, leadership that understands its duty, listens to members, and shows uniting ways forward is very helpful -- as is a democratic approach as expressed by mass all-campus or department level meetings of students (General Assemblies), and especially when the students themselves not only make the decisions but also carry them out.

On the other hand, the main problem student's face is not a question of personalities or decision-making process: it is the political problem of unity and militancy or bringing together the broadest and most powerful unity of students and their allies, behind a militant political strategy to win access to education.

The vast majority of students already see education as socially positive and support lower fees and greater access. In order to turn this sentiment into a visible force, hard work is required, convincing our campuses of the demand that access to education is a right, and of the urgency and necessity for united and growing strategy. United struggle is the only effective path for students to win.

The way forward for the student struggle must be to place front-and-center the question of a broad, powerful and united fight back with an escalating action plan that reaches beyond access to education and ultimately demands free education. The passive tactics of lobbying, post cards and petitions, isolated or one-day-a-year actions, and campaigns centered on media outreach rather than mass mobilization are simply not enough.

As the most progressive student union in English-speaking Canada, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) is in the best position to build such a plan and win the students of Ontario to a program of united struggle. To its credit, not only reduced fees but free education is the policy (at least on paper) of the CFS. This strong mandate has to be put into action now. There is no contradiction between respecting the autonomy of local campuses and the CFS organizing and making a political battle to win students into struggle -- in fact, the opposite.

On the other hand, everywhere reactionary students have won campuses to ditch the CFS, the campus has shifted to the right and political inactivity. If we got rid of the CFS, students would wake up with a big hangover and just have to rebuild.

Many campuses are controlled by right-wing student unions in Ontario, and the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance and the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations support tuition increases. Everywhere progressive students must re-double their efforts to win their campuses back from these forces, linked to reactionary political parties like the McGuinty Liberals and Harper Tories.

The vast majority of students view education as socially positive, and strongly support greater access and lower fees!

There is also a new breeze in the air. Emboldened by youth protest internationally, more students are taking up the call of accessible, quality, public not-for-profit education from cradle to grave and challenging the  policies of big business and their  governments.

The neoliberal agenda is being implemented internationally, therefore we must also recognize this international reality in our local struggle. The same struggle is being waged by students in Chile, South Africa, Germany, Britain, Greece, Spain – and Quebec! Across the globe, students are fighting back!

STUDENT STRIKE, PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE!

Hundreds of thousands of students in Québec have mobilized over the last semester, despite violent police repression and the suspension of democratic rights using the strongest tactic to put moral pressure on the government– a student strike – and in doing so, have shown that a broad, mass, united struggle is by far more the most effective strategy.  

The Quebec students have won strong support from labour, community groups and the people. Despite the Mulclair NDP`s silence, the sound of casseroles are clanging across Canada!

Key parts of the escalating mobilization in Québec include (1) campus "mobilization committees," which operate under the regular direction of student General Assemblies, as well as (2) militant and relatively united leadership by student unions, and (3) an escalating action plan that the grassroots membership and all levels of activists feel they are democratically driving forward.

Quebec also shows that the demand for free education can open mass, democratic debate about people`s alternatives and social transformation.

Mass mobilization and cooperation between students and other movements, especially labour, is the only way we can effectively defeat corporate and government attacks on education.  Ontario students cannot afford to wait to find the best direct democratic structure or for spontaneous opportunities, or the next election to fight back. Every month, every week we delay organizing has a cost.

GET ORGANIZED, FIGHT BACK!

• Show solidarity-- wear a red square!

• Get vocal-- demand accessible education as a right, not a privilege!

• Get involved -- help build or grow a local action or mobilization committee

• Support and attend General Assemblies, student elections, and  build your student union 

• Demand an escalating plan of action for a broad and united fight back

• Open a broad democratic debate about free and emancipatory education. 

Free education should be federally funded. Cut military spending by 75%! The YCL also supports the Post-Secondary Education Act, not least as the Feds and Premiers negotiate transfer payments currently. But unity with the Quebec student movement and Aboriginal students (for whom access to education is also a treaty right continually denied) must be found on a new basis of justice and equality of nations, not Canada`s existing Constitution.

The YCL thinks that a bold counter-offensive is necessary, and we propose a Charter of Youth Rights as a basis to bring together the youth movement behind a social vision of a better Canada. 

Ultimately, we can and must win future that guarantees free education, peace, equality, ecological sustainability, and real democracy – which we call socialism!

The Situation of Youth and Student movement today

Main Political Resolution, 

YCL-LJC Central Committee

March 18th, 2012

Highlights: 

• The danger of war against Syria and Iran and the need for a peaceful resolution by the people themselves, not imperialism.
• Bill 30 is a direct attack on privacy and civil and democratic by the Harper regime
• The Robo-call scandal must increase our resolve to kick-out the Harper government!
• The CFS Day of Action was a step in the right direction, showing youth fight back
• We express our full support to the BC Teachers Strike and the great solidarity actions of BC high school students
• We send our full solidarity to the growing Quebec student strike and must spread the word!

Student actions a step ahead, but not enough

by Johan Boyden

The Feb. 1 cross‑Canada day of action by the Canadian Federation of Students was an important step towards the kind of broad, united fight for accessible education that is urgently needed right now.

Students are facing a powerful opponent - the agenda of big business. That means higher and higher tuition fees. Heavier student debt. Increased privatization. The corporate engines seem to be running on nitrous with the economic crisis these days.

If we agree on that, then the February 1st demonstrations should act as a wake‑up call for students in English‑speaking Canada, not just because of the scale of the protests. Crowds of a few thousand marched in several cities - below potential, but a good start. What was lacking was a clear, militant action plan to return to the streets, draw in a much stronger range of forces, and keep up the pressure.

Student's protests planned on fifty campuses across Canada

Special to People's Voice newspaper

Striking graphic from www.educationisaright.ca

     Confronting skyrocketing tuition fees and rising student debt, the Canadian Federation of Students will hold a cross‑Canada day of action for accessible education on February 1st. Actions are expected on over fifty campuses from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland, including mass rallies in Ottawa, Toronto and other cities.

     "The Education is a Right campaign is the expression of students' collective vision for a well‑funded, high‑quality, public post‑secondary education system that builds a fair, and equitable society" says Roxanne Duboise, CFS Chairperson.