Save our Colleges: ALL OUT! Day of Action, Thursday, October 2

A day of action in support of Colleges and College workers.

Posted on behalf of our friends at Georgian College and OPSEU / SEFPO, in alignment with our values of Empowerment, Accountability & Transparency, and Education:

This Thursday, starting at 7am, OPSEU/SEFPO members, students, and allies will be holding a Day of Action at Georgian College’s Orillia campus. It’s part of a coordinated push across the province to show that it’s not business as usual while workers are on strike and Ford’s cuts are dismantling our colleges.

We’ve already seen 229 Georgian jobs lost and campuses closed in Orillia, Muskoka, and Collingwood. Thursday is our chance to show up together to stand with workers and students, and to make it clear that our communities won’t sit quietly while public education is gutted.

If you can make it, please come. Bring a sign, a friend, or just yourself. What matters is that we’re there in numbers, shoulder to shoulder, sending a message that we won’t let Ford dismantle education and good jobs in our region.

Details at a Glance

What

• ALL OUT! Day of Action in support of Ontario Colleges and the future of student support and public education

When

• Thursday, October 2, 7am

Where

• Georgian College's Orillia Campus, 825 Memorial Avenue, Orillia

• Also at other locations across Ontario - please visit saveourcolleges.ca for more

Organized by

• OPSEU/SEFPO

More information

• Please visit saveourcolleges.ca for up-to-date information and other ways to take action

From the Organizers

10,000 college full-time support workers are on strike, fighting for the future of student support and public education. College support workers – across 150 job classifications – navigate students through their college experience, registering them for classes, finding op placements, maintaining safe buildings, staffing labs, configuring IT, or offering supports for those with learning disabilities.

As jobs are laid off and services cut back, striking workers are fighting to protect student supports for generations to come.

What’s happening at colleges?

Ontario colleges were built to provide local, affordable, and accessible job training in our communities.

But that system is on the brink of collapse, as the Ford government drains public funding from our college system. Per-student funding in Ontario is the lowest in Canada, just 56% of the national average.

It’s greenlit college admin to embrace risky and failed financial schemes like price-gouging international student tuition: a house of cards that has now collapsed.

The worst part? It’s a manufactured crisis.

Our communities pay the price of college cuts. We’ve lost over 650 programs and 10,000 jobs across the system – opportunities in our backyard are shrinking day by day, especially for non university-track learners.

So where is our money going?

Taxpayer money is being shifted away from campuses, that have graduated countless workers, towards subsidizing duplicate programs by private companies with little to no oversight.

No transparency, no accountability.

While our colleges are stripped of provincial funding, private companies are getting handouts. 

Provincial funding for Ontario colleges has dropped 30% since 2013/2014, while funding for these private companies through the Skills Development Fund (SDF) has climbed by 800% since 2020 – with another $1 billion committed over the next three years.

This isn’t even mismanagement – this is a blatant attempt to gut our public education system.

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Engage Barrie Organization will often post on behalf of our community partners and other organizations, as long as they fall under our "equitable, empowered, engaged" umbrella, and align with our mandate and policies.

Please be aware that the views and opinions expressed by our friends and partners do not necessarily reflect any official position of Engage Barrie Organization.