A local college is expressing its support for the OSAP pause. The Ontario government has delayed the resumption of student assistance program until 2027. “This is action that needed to be done,” Hailey Etchen, Campus Manager for Canadian Career College of Health Science and Technology (CCHST) told CTV News Wednesday. “We fully support what they’re doing and controlling the sector and eliminating people that are abusing the system. It’s just really unfortunate that colleges like ours and our students are now impacted by this.” Etchen believes the province needed to identify private career colleges that were operating mostly online with little to no oversight or verification. “It’s colleges that are running asynchronous online programs,” Etchen said. “Some colleges are using these programs as a funnel mechanism to get a large amount of students into one program.” Etchen believes no one is tracking the students or verifying the work is being done on computers in Ontario. She says CCHST trains approximately 200 students per year, in-person and hands on at their Walker Road school. “Unfortunately, the large majority are OSAP [recipients],” Etchen said. CCHST made the decision to pause classes until Nov. 2 to figure out how to keep classes going with no funding coming in. “This is a long-term situation we’re in,” Etchen said. One of the impacted students is Thiago Gamito, a massage therapy student who does not know when he might be able to resume his schooling. “It’s not fair that all the students will pay the price for this, because it’s not our fault. I did everything right. I planned myself. I budget[ed] myself,” Gamito said Wednesday. Gamito was issued some funding from the federal government to continue his studies, but he says the provincial government “intercepted these already-disbursed funds during their sudden crackdown on private career colleges.” Ontario’s Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security (MCURES) has embarked on a “system-wide audit of private postsecondary institutions.” Minister Nolan Quinn says they are working towards a “strengthened validation process” to protect against OSAP fraud. Expected in 2027, Ontario won’t resume OSAP payments for private institutions until the process is in place. It will require new legislation be passed at Queen’s Park. “Proposed measures will include caps on OSAP-funded enrollment, the exclusion of predominantly online-only programs, and strengthened student identification and verification controls,” Quinn said in a news release issued Oct. 21.
