Ontario Government's New Budget: cancelling tuition tax credit

 The Ontario Government just came out with a new budget. Despite having a huge debt load, wi

U of Alberta

th citizens demanding more healthcare services, with lower taxes, the so-called middle class wants the government to pay for everything.

As Macleans writes: Ontario's 'free tuition' promise doesn't add up!
The Ontario Government has decided, in its infinite wisdom, to provide grants to aspiring university students whose parents earn less than $50,000 per year. There are winners and losers!

Postsecondary students: The government will create a single grant, the Ontario Student Grant, beginning in the 2017-2018 fiscal year. Students who come from families making less than $50,000 a year will get free tuition, and students from middle and upper-income families will get access to more low-cost loans, and expected parental contributions will be lowered.

Students have increasingly called for free tuition, common in many communist countries, or places, like Denmark, where higher taxes can pay for this option.  Sadly, there are many kids in
university who do not belong there. Too many of our kids graduate with huge debts, with a degree in humanities, for example, unable to apply it to a job. These are kids who should have gone to college, instead. There have been books and articles on current the lack of standards in university, too. What is wrong with universities?

Also, for any workers, who must endure professional development at their own cost, this will be a huge problem. As a teacher, I had to upgrade my qualifications to be a better educator, and to keep current. My employer wasn't great at this.

My graduation in 1979, married and 7 mos. pregnant!
Tuition was $484 per term.
My ECE degree gave me a job!

The way our government paid for this free tuition is to cancel the tuition tax credit for people taking courses. This means that, for example, when I did my M.Ed., while a single-parent and working full-time, I would have been unable to claim this on my taxes.

The government says cancelling the tuition tax credit and education tax credit will save $145 million in 2017 and that will fully fund the new grant plan that year, but it is unclear what will offset the costs in the future if participation rates soar.

There are significant things missing from this budget:

Health care: Health care is the single biggest expense in the government’s budget — it is projected to account for 38.7 per cent of the province’s expenses in 2016-2017. In order to keep costs down, the government anticipates only a 1.8 per cent increase in spending across the health sector.
This figure will just barely keep up with inflation, and fails to address the growing needs of an aging and growing population.