When a college like Fanshawe starts cancelling dozens of programs and staring at deficits that could top $50 million, that is not an isolated budget problem. It is a signal that the province is draining the very system that trains nurses, tradespeople, technologists, and entrepreneurs.
London is already watching thousands of jobs disappear across the region. At the same time, the programs that prepare the next cohort of workers are being cut back. That is how a skills gap becomes a skills canyon.
The pattern runs earlier too. Since 2018, school boards have faced a cumulative shortfall of $6.8 billion, and secondary education funding in Ontario sits at the bottom of the pack in Canada. Underfunding kindergarten to grade 12 and then squeezing colleges and universities is not austerity, it is sabotage of workforce development.
Before going further, it is worth pausing on what is already known. The evidence available today points to a few hard facts:
Every dollar invested in public education generates about $1.30 in economic benefits.
High school non-completers cost the province an extra $2,767 per year in social services, while post-secondary completion can save taxpayers up to $1 million across a graduate’s lifetime.
Students have faced rising tuition, gutted OSAP grants, and a maximum weekly support of about $525, an amount that still meant living below the poverty line.
Private school enrolment has grown as families with means chase small classes, arts, and mental health support that are being stripped from many public schools.
Colleges are pushed to find “efficiencies” even as they cancel programs and project massive deficits.
Advocates are calling to restore OSAP grants to cover 85 percent of need for financially vulnerable students and to fund primary and secondary education at least at the rate of inflation.
These figures come from publicly argued positions and practitioner experience, not a single controlled research program, and they point in one direction: cutting education is expensive.
What often gets missed is that this is not only about fairness, it is about competitiveness. Underfunding creates a two-tier talent system: students with money buy small classes, arts, and mental health support; everyone else navigates overcrowded rooms and outdated labs. Employers then wonder why they cannot find job-ready graduates.
There is a deeper insult layered on top of the injury. Young people who fight their way into post-secondary are told to “get a job” or avoid so-called frivolous programs. That rhetoric ignores the reality that expertise is needed in policy, health, climate, and community work as much as in construction cranes and condos.
So what should change, practically, if Ontario is serious about its future workforce. First, stabilize college and university funding so that institutions can plan multi-year program delivery instead of lurching from crisis to crisis. Second, rebuild OSAP so that a student from a low-income family can realistically attend without signing up for a decade of hardship. Third, align funding formulas with what actually drives learning outcomes, including smaller class sizes, critical thinking, arts, and mental health support, not just test scores.
Picture two futures. In one, Ontario keeps letting programs shrink or vanish while tuition rises. The skills gap widens, productivity drags, and more families feel that prosperity is reserved for those who can pay for private options. In the other, the province treats education as the central economic strategy that it is, and invests accordingly.
The limits of the current evidence are clear: much of it comes from advocates, financial projections, and local examples, not from a single master dataset. That is exactly why this moment calls for active testing, transparent reporting, and public involvement, not more delay. Ontario cannot afford a broken talent pipeline. It is time to fix funding at the source.
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