Normally, I would start this editorial with the words, “Doug Ford is an idiot”, but I won’t because I really want our Conservative-leaning readers to... well... read it.

The reason for my outrage and what should be the outrage of all Ontarians is the Ford government’s decision to slash funding to the Ontario Student Assistance Program, known more popularly as OSAP. The program disburses grants and loans to students attending colleges and universities in the province.

The previous Liberal government had been offering students whose family income was less than $50,000, up to a 30 percent rebate on tuition fees. The idea was to make post-secondary education more affordable and, ergo, more accessible to students from middle- and low-income families. How enlightened. And then the Prince of Darkness was elected.

Now I can understand that hundreds of thousands of Ontario voters had had enough with the Liberals and Kathleen Wynne in particular. They would have voted for pretty near anybody as long as they weren’t Liberal. But elections have consequences. Just ask the folks south of the border.

I didn’t vote for Ford because I knew what he could be capable of. But never in a million years did I think that he would enact funding cuts to post-secondary education that would, in effect, disqualify hundreds if not thousands of students from attending college or university, and some who are currently midway through their studies, or on the verge of earning their degree.

Students who can’t earn a college diploma or university degree because they can’t access the necessary funds for tuition because either they or their parents aren’t in a position to pay for it means they are doomed to a life of low-paying jobs. It creates a vicious circle.

Post-secondary eduction should be made as accessible as possible to Ontario’s youth. Having a more educated population is good for everybody. Not so under a Ford government which is more interested in cheap beer than improving access to post-secondary. education Of course, the Ford government and its supporters will point to the fact that they also cut tuition by 10 percent. But if you cut tuition by 10 per cent and then cut OSAP by 20 per cent there’s no benefit at all, unless your family income is such that you don’t need to apply for OSAP.

The Ford government also said that it would place a priority on benefiting students and then those students started applying for OSAP for next year and then – surprise, surprise – they found out that their OSAP funding was cut by up to 60 per cent next year compared to the past year. For some, it’s a difference a few hundred dollars which their parents can hopefully make up. For others it’s thousands of dollars.

Kids from single-parent families will be especially hard hit. Imagine, if you can, being a single mother of two or three kids, all of whom dream of going to university. Now imagine one of them is already in university and the other has just graduated from high school and wants to follow in their sibling’s footsteps but can’t because you can’t afford it thanks to Doug Ford and his shortsighted, moronic decision. And now you get the picture.

– Fred Sherwin, editor