Day of action makes noise
CRYSTAL LANGILLE
Issue date: 2/12/02 Section: News
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That day at 11 a.m., about 40 people gathered in front of the Schmon Tower in support of the Canadian Federation of Students’ (CFS) campaign to freeze tuition fees across Canada. The day called for a walkout by all students, but after marching through the school in hopes of getting more student support, very few had joined in the fight.
On Dec. 11, 2001, in response to a proposal by Queen’s University, Dianne Cunningham, minister of training, colleges and universities, announced that the provincial government was considering deregulating undergraduate tuition fees, which would allow colleges and universities to set tuition as high as they would like, with no limits set by the provincial government.
A major concern for students and CFS supporters is that post-secondary education has become inaccessible to aspiring students.
“Education is not just for the rich. It’s for the poor also,” said Ed Krueger, a representative of CAW Local 199.
However, Adam Daifallah, president of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association (OPCCA), said, “Post-secondary education has always been a privilege to be earned by students, not a right to be handed out indiscriminately.”
He called the National Student Day of Action “misguided,” in a media release, and said the campaign was “just a media ploy to promote an extreme agenda.”
Daifallah was also quoted as saying that it was nothing more than “an attempt to twist the facts.”
“Studies have demonstrated that there is no direct link between free tuition and accessibility as the CFS likes to claim,” he said.
He explained that Sweden, for example, does not charge tuition beyond ancillary fees, which averages at about $60 a year, whereas Ontario’s average arts and sciences fee was $3,951 for the 2000/2001 school year.
“Despite the staggering difference in tuition, the enrollment rate (the percentage of 18 to 21-year-olds who attend) is 13.7 per cent in Sweden, compared to 20.8 per cent in Ontario,” he said.
A CFS press release states that since 1998, deregulated programs including graduate, professional and post-diploma programs have seen tuition increase anywhere from 40 per cent to 700 per cent in four years. For example, medical school fees at the University of Western Ontario were raised from $4,844 in 1997 to $14,000 in 2001.
