Issue date: 11/10/09 Section: News

Demanding lower tuition fees and an end to poverty, Ontario students marched through Toronto's streets Photo: Laura Cicchirillo / CUP

On Thursday afternoon, students from across the Greater Toronto Area gathered at Queen's Park as part of the Canadian Federation of Students' (CFS) Day of Action.

The gathering, themed "All Out" by the University of Toronto Students' Union (U.T.S.U.), was intended to protest against Ontario's tuition fees, which U.T.S.U. claims to be the highest in the country.

This year, the stakes are high, explained one protester. In 2003, the Ontario Legislature passed a tuition freeze, which was replaced two years later with a plan that the U.T.S.U. website alleges "allows for the fastest rising fees in Canada."

That plan expires this year. "We really need to be heard, because this time we have a chance to make a difference at a critical period," the student continued.

Bearing red placards and banners, approximately three thousand students marched from Sidney Smith Hall to the Legislature building.

Some blew whistles or shouted through bullhorns, chanting "Solidarity!" and demanding "access now," and an end to poverty in Ontario.

Since Ontario was declared a have-not province in 2008, the Drop Fees movement has expanded to embrace the larger goal of "A Poverty Free Ontario."

Connecting tuition fees with a number of other public welfare measures, the various speakers called on Premier Dalton McGuinty to raise social assistance rates and ensure a living wage, among other objectives.

"It doesn't matter how hard you work or save or how much you budget," declared one speaker. "The only budget that matters is the provincial budget."

"Education is a right, like housing, or healthcare," another insisted. Explaining that the recession has made tuition reduction even more essential, she called on the government to "bail out the entire public system," calling the current state of the undergraduate degree, "not an opportunity, but a death sentence."

Despite the impassioned speakers, the crowd at Queen's Park was largely unresponsive. A police officer estimated that, at the beginning of the rally, one thousand people had been in attendance, but that number diminished to four or five hundred thirty minutes later, which he attributed to the poor weather. A few students cheered and whistled, but many left in large groups as stragglers wandered up in ones and twos.

Around Queen's Park, students continued to walk between classes, in apparent disregard of the Provost's permission for students to miss lecture or tutorial without penalty. Inside the nearby Tim Horton's, many protesters dropped their pickets in exchange for a coffee and refuge from the cold.

"People care," insisted a Ryerson student clutching a walkie-talkie and a Tim's mug. "They just have to get more angry. They have to be at risk of losing something big, and they're not."

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