Ontario Public Service Employees Union President JP Hornick speaks about the cuts at colleges across the provinces, which have led to nearly 10,000 job losses. <\/p>\n
Close to 10,000 college faculty and staff have either been let go or are projected to lose their jobs amid hundreds of program cancellations and suspensions since last year, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union said Wednesday as it warned of serious trouble in the sector. <\/p>\n
The union representing some 55,000 college faculty and support staff said the cuts amounts to \u201cone of the largest mass layoffs in Ontario\u2019s history\u201d as colleges grapple with a funding crisis. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is bigger than the Hudson\u2019s Bay liquidation, which laid off 8,000 employees across Canada,\u201d OPSEU president JP Hornick said at a press conference outside Centennial College\u2019s Story Arts Centre campus in Toronto, which is slated for closure later this year. <\/p>\n
\u201c(About)1.5 million Ontarians, nearly 1 in 10, have seen a campus closure in their community,\u201d Hornick said. <\/p>\n
An arbitrated faculty contract between the union and the College Employer Council released last week said the federal government\u2019s cap on international students led to a dramatic decline in enrolment and tuition revenue, and the cancellation or suspension of more than 600 college programs. <\/p>\n
The document showed 23 of 24 colleges in Ontario have reported a 48 per cent decrease in first-semester enrolment of international students from September 2023 to September 2024.<\/p>\n
It said 19 colleges have reported current and planned staff reductions totalling more than 8,000 employees as of June, noting the data was incomplete as some colleges hadn\u2019t reported their layoffs. <\/p>\n
The union said the layoffs and program suspensions will have generational impacts and college workers are prepared to fight back against the cuts. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe need strong colleges today for the accessible, low-barrier job training that they offer, especially in the face of trade wars that are undercutting and restructuring our economy,\u201d Hornick said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut instead we are bleeding jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hornick said the suspended and cancelled programs are not only those primarily attended by international students.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also programs we domestically need, programs like nursing, child and youth care, environmental technologies, specialized art training that is not offered anywhere else,\u201d Hornick said. <\/p>\n
Among them is the culinary management college program in Thunder Bay, which Hornick said is the only one of its kind within 1,000 kilometres that has supported food security in the north.<\/p>\n
The union said the Ontario government and the colleges \u201cnever intended\u201d to tell the public about the full scope of job and program cuts and that its workers fought \u201ctooth and nail to get this information.\u201d Hornick also said the province has been chronically underfunding post-secondary education. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn said OPSEU\u2019s claims against the government are \u201cbaseless and categorically false.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last 14 months alone, we have provided unprecedented amounts of new funding to our publicly-assisted postsecondary sector, with over $2 billion in new funding into our colleges and universities, on top of the $5 billion we put into the sector every year,\u201d Bianca Giacoboni said in an emailed statement. <\/p>\n
\u201cDue to the federal government\u2019s unilateral changes to the international student system, difficult decisions are being made across the country in the post-secondary sector,\u201d Giacoboni said, adding that a college funding model review is set to begin this summer.<\/p>\n
The College Employer Council, the bargaining agent for the province\u2019s publicly funded colleges, also disputed some of the union\u2019s claims. <\/p>\n
\u201cCEC has been informing OPSEU about the pending severity of this situation since Jan. 29, 2024. To suggest this information has been hidden from anyone is obviously wrong,\u201d CEO Graham Lloyd said in an emailed statement. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll colleges have specially designated union committees that are consulted about all layoffs, suspensions and voluntary retirement packages for union employees…Any suggestion that the union has not been aware of the extent of the layoffs is simply inaccurate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lloyd said the 10,000 reported layoffs represent a staff reduction of about 17 per cent in a workforce of more than 60,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is certainly unfortunate but is not proportional to the 45 per cent reduction in student enrolment,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
While OPSEU said that Centennial College alone had suspended more than 100 programs, the school disputed that number, saying it suspended 54 programs in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cCentennial is facing significant financial pressures due to external factors, including the federal policy shifts related to international students, which has reduced enrolment numbers, alongside a broken funding model,\u201d the college said. <\/p>\n
\u201cGiven that these challenges are sector-wide, we are working with sector partners to address these headwinds in a holistic way so that we can continue to serve the economic needs of Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 9, 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ontario Public Service Employees Union President JP Hornick speaks about the cuts at colleges across the provinces, which…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":52694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[64,2147,2724,50,39343,3161],"class_list":{"0":"post-52693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-labour","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-ontario-quebec","13":"tag-social"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114826036094557554","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}