Your vote matters.
Help rebuild our politics in Ontario by becoming a member of the Ontario Liberal Party and voting in the upcoming Leadership race.
The answer is participation. Sign up now at teamnate.ca
#teamnate #ontario
Our work to rebuild the province starts now in Scarborough Southwest. If you want better, the answer is participation. Sign up today.
teamnate.ca/ssw
And that change starts here in our shared east end.
Thank you to everyone who has been part of our east end team over the years. Now let’s build a better province together.
There’s no question that the biggest opportunity to make a difference right now is at Queen’s Park, rebuilding our politics and province.
Ontario is overpriced and mismanaged, and we deserve smart, fair and honest leadership instead of Ford’s incompetence and self-dealing.
It’s been a real privilege to represent BEY in Parliament.
Thanks to your support here at home, I’ve been able to do politics differently in Ottawa. And we’ve been able to make a real difference for our community and country.
If we win the nomination, we have a great opportunity to win the by-election and then the leadership.
Having a seat in the legislature is important to hold Ford accountable and to show Ontarians what we’ve been able to show our east end community these last 10 years.
If you live in the riding, register at teamnate.ca/ssw
And spread the word no matter where you live. Get your friends and family who live in riding registered. It’s grassroots politics that wins.
You can vote in the nomination race if you live in SSW and have registered as a member.
The boundaries are from Vic Park to Markham Rd and from the lake north to Eglinton.
With Doly Begum moving from the provincial NDP to our federal Liberals, there will be a provincial by-election in Scarborough Southwest in the coming months.
To become the Liberal candidate in that by-election, we need to win a local nomination race.
It’s past time for change in Ontario. And we need your help now to deliver that change.
It starts in our east end, with a provincial Liberal nomination in Scarborough Southwest.
Here’s how it will work and how you can help:
Safety. Dignity. Stability.
Aurora House provides lifesaving support, ensuring women and children fleeing violence have a safe and dignified place to rebuild their lives.
Let's step up to support this work in our east end: www.aurorahouse.ca
In the end, the only way to protect OSAP is to mobilize for change.
And it is past time for change at Queen's Park.
Join our growing team.
Sign the petition from Ontario Young Liberals to protect
OSAP here: change.org/p/fix-osap-asap
Join upcoming protests at Queen's Park.
Call Doug Ford and Paul Calandra and demand better for a generation of Ontarians already squeezed by housing and a tough job market. /
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Education should be the great equalizer. It should be the foundation for opportunity and social mobility. And with these changes, Ford is putting it further out of reach for so many.
We deserve better. /12
Again from Usher:
"Students from wealthier families will see an increase in costs next year of $200...the impact on poorer students will be as high as $3500...
In sum, this package is good news for institutions, but it is being funded in the most regressive way imaginable." /11
As expert Alex Usher puts it:
"A student receiving the maximum $175/week from the provincial portion of OSAP will receive about $3500 less in grants than they did last year, and $3500 more in loans."
$3500 more per year in debt for those who can least afford it. /10
And this brings us to the recent OSAP changes.
While the Ford government has put some new money into post-secondary education, "over 50% of the new money is being reallocated...by taking about $700 million/year away from OSAP." /9
Without unsustainable reliance on international student revenue, Ontario could no longer hide its failure to fund post-secondary education directly.
For a government that talks about financial literacy in education, it shows little financial literacy in managing education. /8
International students bring great benefits to our country, contribute to our communities and add talent to our economy. It's also true that the program had grown rapidly and unsustainably.
As @mikepmoffatt.bsky.social put it, we needed to bring some rationality back to these numbers. /7
Of course, Ford ignored this advice and actively did the opposite.
From 2020-2023, Conestoga went from 8,295 international students 30,395. Fleming from 1,113 to 8,849. Niagara from 2,286 to 11,199.
Fanshawe from 5,544 to 11,706. Algoma University from 747 to 9,329. /6
In 2021, Ontario's Auditor General warned the government:
"do not further increase dependency on international enrolments without a longer-term strategy in place to address the risks of this approach for financial sustainability." /5
In 2017, an expert report recommended that public college-private partnerships be shut down, concluding that they "do not serve an important public purpose and are an inefficient way to provide needed revenue to colleges." /4
Without adequate public funding, the Ford government unsustainably supercharged revenue by expanding public college-private partnerships against the advice of experts and the Auditor General of Ontario. /3
How did we get here?
Well, the first answer is provincial austerity.
As per Higher Education's 2023 Report:
"Now Ontario is an outlier. No province has underfunded PSE more...it is tenth out of ten in every inter-provincial comparison of funding.
...in a word, abysmal." /2
Why is Doug Ford changing OSAP?
It's simple: he is trying to balance the post-secondary books on the backs of low and middle income students and their families.
His changes to OSAP will cost students up to $3500 more per year in debt.
We deserve affordable education.
Language is central to who we are and where we belong.
Always means a lot to celebrate International Mother Language Day with our Bangladeshi community in Dentonia Park.
Ramadan Mubarak to our Muslim community here in our east end. Always a pleasure joining the Jummah congregation at Masjid Al-Abedeen.
Canadians are collectively making millions of decisions every day that reflect a changed relationship with the US. We are buying Canadian and seeking out more reliable partners.
The new Gordie Howe Bridge is a critical piece of economic infrastructure and a testament to the long-standing partnership between our two countries.
Yesterday was a fulfilling day representing Canada in Boston! 🇨🇦
Here’s a moment from a thoughtful and productive conversation on housing policy with students at Harvard University, moderated by Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
