Concerns about the future of Loyalist College were front and centre as another large rally was held on Wednesday morning.
Hundreds of people attended the event with several high-profile speakers including OPSEU President JP Hornick.
The event was focused on privatization concerns stemming from a recent Skills Development Fund partnership for a shuttered program.
Hornick says the college recently closed its manufacturing program, only for a privatized program to start just weeks later through a $1.275 million dollar SDF investment.
The union says over 1,000 community members signed a petition calling to keep the college public, accessible and serving the community.
The following are the speaking nots for two of the high-profile speakers that addressed the crowd.
JP HORNICK – PRESIDENT, OPSEU/SEFPO
– Good morning, and thank you for joining us this morning.
– I am so proud to be here today with local college and community leaders as well as – in a happy surprise – leaders from other colleges throughout the region!
– Right now, full-time college support members are on strike – to protect their work, to save jobs, to ensure students can access the supports they need to succeed for generations to come.
– As a college worker myself – I couldn’t be prouder of our members standing up to meet this moment.
– OPSEU/SEFPO represents over 45,000 college workers in virtually every community across Ontario.
– Our community college system, much like our union, connects us to each other.
– For generations, colleges have been the infrastructure around which we build our communities.
– They were founded on a principle of public access to affordable, local education.
– But now, their founding vision is being replaced by a different, deeply concerning vision.
– A vision to privatize and sell off our colleges.
– A vision to make education about profit.
– And the plan to make that vision a reality is well underway – including right here in Belleville.
– We have obtained copies of corporate audits of ten Ontario colleges – called “efficiency reviews” – commissioned by the Ford government.
– These audits, commissioned by the Ford government, map out ways colleges can cut costs, at any cost.
– From outsourcing and off-shoring jobs, to automation, to recommending mergers and further reckless cutbacks.
– They indicate the new vision for post-secondary college education:
– If it doesn’t generate profit, it’s not worth the investment.
– When we allow this kind of logic to go unchecked, it leads to moments exactly like this.
– Moments when public colleges are defunded;
– Moments when services, like Canada Post, are dismantled. Services critical to small and rural communities in particular;
– Moments when we fall out of step with making investments based on what our communities need, instead of what makes money for someone else.
– This government’s biggest spending cuts have been in post-secondary education.
– So where exactly is this government “investing”?
– Over the last several years, the Ford government has increased spending on private training by 800%.
– Recently, this private spending spree through the Skills Development Fund has come under fire.
And rightly so:
– More than half the time, qualified applicants aren’t getting the money.
– Lower scored applicants are, to the tune of nearly half a billion taxpayer dollars.
– And many of them are private companies or corporations.
– Why? In many cases, they hire lobbyists with ties to Ford.
– At least $200 million in funding has been awarded to clients of a lobbying firms led by people like:
– Doug Ford’s former campaign manager;
– The Progressive Conservative party president;
– Ford’s longtime righthand man and former campaign chair;
– Two former chiefs of staff to Michael Ford, the premier’s nephew. And so forth.
– I don’t have to spell out to you how serious these findings are.
– And by our projections, the money that went to these lower scoring applications could have maintained all college workers in suspended programs for over a year.
– It could have bought time for the colleges to adjust to changing enrolment – responsibly.
– Budgets, and investments, are political choices.
– And we can demand different political decisions.
– We can also demand better from the leaders of our colleges.
– Recent decisions made by Loyalist College President and CEO Mark Kirkpatrick paint an alarming pathway to privatization.
– Once public assets, like campuses in our communities, are sold off, we won’t get them back.
– They become governed by whether they can make money for someone else.
– And under this agenda, we won’t get any richer.
– Students won’t get a better education – certainly not the kind you or I may have had access to.
– Education won’t get any cheaper.
– Someone else will profit, at our cost.
– College presidents, like Mark Kirkpatrick, and this government need to tell us the truth about the plan for our community colleges.
– Because we can still stop this agenda.
– Our communities deserve publicly funded, thriving colleges.
– And as the public they are meant to serve, we all deserve say over their futures.
TRACY MACKENZIE – PRESIDENT, OPSEU/SEFPO LOCAL 420 REPRESENTING FACULTY AT LOYALIST COLLEGE
Good morning everyone,
My name is Tracy Mackenzie, and I am proud to serve as President of Local 420, representing the dedicated faculty of Loyalist College. I’m equally proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our L421 Support Staff, who have been out here for four long weeks, standing strong, for a fair contract and job security.
At Loyalist, we’ve already endured devastating cuts to both support staff and faculty. And the College has made it clear, more staffing cuts are coming. Programs that are vital to our community (such as manufacturing, carpentry, esthetics, culinary and more)
that are aligned with real labour market needs are being eliminated, even when they have strong enrolment.
Loyalist College is drifting away from the purpose/mission of community colleges. We’re witnessing a disturbing pattern: fiscal irresponsibility, and decisions that prioritize profit and private partnerships over students and communities.
Just last month, Loyalist proudly announced a $1.25 million partnership with the Quinte Economic Development Commission to deliver short-term manufacturing training—funded through the Skills Development Fund, government money that colleges can only access by partnering with private companies. This announcement was just months after Loyalist suspended its own two-year manufacturing diploma program—a proven, high-quality program that built real careers in our community.
That same fund was heavily criticized by Ontario’s Auditor General just last week for being neither fair, transparent, nor accountable. The Skills Development Fund is essentially a slush fund that bankrolls private training initiatives while starving our public institutions.
Let’s call this what it is: privatization by stealth.
Instead of investing in sustainable, public education, Loyalist College is chasing short-term money and private deals that do little for students or our community in the long run.
Now, a newly obtained “Efficiency Audit” funded by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and conducted across several Ontario colleges paints an alarming picture of Loyalist’s financial state, and the creeping plan to privatize our college system. Loyalist is projected to face a $41 million deficit by 2030, the worst in the province. The next highest? Northern College, at just $8 million.
This isn’t leadership. This is fiscal irresponsibility, short-term thinking, and a betrayal of our public mission.
We call on Loyalist College to show real leadership—leadership that fights for public education, not one that sells it off piece by piece.
We call on Loyalist College to invest in people, not private profit.
(PAUL MARTIN)
