Latest / Kvetch & Release / Asleep at the Wheel: Public Cuts, Police Probes, and Ontario's Growing OSAP Scandal

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Asleep at the Wheel: Public Cuts, Police Probes, and Ontario's Growing OSAP Scandal · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It is time for Litkey's Got a Take. Good morning, John.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Good morning, Gene.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Well, we're going to talk about the Ontario Student Assistant Program, OSAP. Now,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the Liberals are asking the Auditor General to investigate OSAP.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And the Liberal Colleges and Universities critic, Tyler Watt, requested
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: this value for money audit. And this is his quote,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: not mine. I don't need to be sued. He says,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: this has all the makings of a Doug Ford next
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: billion dollar scandal. So, John, governments launch audits and they
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: look into programs all the time. Now, is referring this
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: to the OPP really a major scandal or just sort
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: of like an administrative cleanup?
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, for the government to be referring this
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: to the OPD, I guess it is a big deal.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't call this, you know, just administrative scandal or
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: administrative cleanup. I mean, if this is just administrative cleanup,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: then when I was on a cruise ship and they
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: drained it because a child decided to use the pool
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: as a bathtub, that was just a minor cleanup, I suppose.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, we've got to call this what it is.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: It's a full-blown industrial-scale siphoning of public dollars while the
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: province was asleep at the wheel. Look at the raw
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Freedom of Information numbers that the Canadian press has pulled.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Just seven strip mall-type private career colleges pulled in $ 385
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: million through provincial OSAP grants, just so those seven ones
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: were accounting for that $ 385 million. in one single academic year. Now,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: those are private colleges. Contrast that with the entire public system,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: which received $ 385 million as well across all 24 Ontario
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: public colleges combined. So seven private operations matched the grant
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: footprint of Humber, Seneca, St. Clair College, and 21 other
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: institutions combined. So when 95% of all new provincial grant
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: spending in Ontario is being funneled into a handful of unmonitored,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: which in these cases were online cash course factories, you're
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: not looking at rounding errors or administrative issues or bookkeeping glitches.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: This is a huge, multi-hundred-million-dollar drain on our Treasury. So
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: the province didn't call up the OPP because they felt
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: like this was routine housekeeping. They sent it to them
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: because what became so clear was a problem that they
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: couldn't keep ignoring it anymore.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: You know, I think most people don't realize how much
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: money went to these few little mills, education mills, I
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: guess we could call them. So the minister first brought
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: in KPMG, the accounting firm. now froze funding. They've handed
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the file over to the police. So isn't Queen's Park
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: taking the proper decisive action here?
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: I think that they're playing firefighter right now after letting
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: the house burn down to the foundation. I mean, the
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: minister wants a pat on the back for proactive crackdowns,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: but the paper trail shows a completely different narrative that
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: gets blown up from what the minister's saying. Court records
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: show that the institution which processes these applications, it's an
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: industry association, Career Colleges Ontario, they were dropping formal red
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: flags on the ministry's desk about suspicious massive application spikes
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: way back in January of 23, I believe. So Queen's
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Park knew about those warnings for nearly four years while
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: hundreds of millions of dollars was walking out the door.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: They didn't call in KPMG out of sudden institutional vigilance.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: They did it because journalists were filing Freedom of Information
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: requests and pulling back the curtains on it. And then
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: calling in the OPP on October 2nd after almost $ 400
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: million had been extracted. I don't see that as leadership.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I see it as pure, panicked, cover-your-backside damage control.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: You know, here's what I'm trying to figure out. How
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: does a private career college even game OSAP to that level?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, what was actually going on here behind closed doors?
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, bureaucratic laziness. So we've got to go
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: back to the pandemic. Oh, so many of our problems
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: go back to the pandemic. So the province opened OSAP
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: eligibility up to asynchronous online-only programs at private colleges and
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: then virtually abandoned any real oversight, like it was a
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Zoom meeting that they walked away from the screen. When
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: you throw unmonitored online modules together with zero identity verification,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: bad actors can turn government financial aid into a self-dispensing ATM.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: The ministry's own inspection reports filed in court reveal absolute
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: regulatory comedy. They found course-in-a-day setups where ghost users or
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: even third-party operators, that's other people, not the student, logged
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: in and knocked out entire semester courses, quizzes, and final
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: exams in less than a full day. They tracked single-user
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: accounts operating across multiple IP addresses. They found private career
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: colleges sharing physical office suites with immigration recruitment outfits. It
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: wasn't a sophisticated heist. This is a wide-open door with
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: a sign saying, take what you want.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Wow. So how does this hit the average Ontario taxpayer
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: or student going to any post-secondary Ontario school?
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: You know, this is where political cynicism becomes sickening, Gene.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Earlier this year, the Ford government gutted OSAP grants for
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: legitimate students at public universities and colleges. They capped grants
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: at just 25%, forcing kids to take 75% of their
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: aid on as debt and lifted the domestic tuition freeze.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Then the minister stood up and defended those brutal cuts
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: by claiming overall OSAP budget growth was unsustainable. But the
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: data exposed the lie. Public university students weren't blowing up
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: the budget. 95% of the budget growth was being gobbled
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: up by private online operators. So students at Brock, McMaster,
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: or University of Windsor were forced to swallow higher tuition
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: and drown in personal debt just to cover the fiscal
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: crater being left unchecked by private operators. So the government
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: didn't use a scalpel on the problem. They used a
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: sledgehammer on public students to cover their own oversight failures.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Wow. Well, is the government freezing funding across the entire
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: private career college sector? Is it really the best way
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: to stop the bleeding or not?
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I think it's just lazy policy, Gene. It's like carpet
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: bombing the entire sector because you failed to police a
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: dozen bad actors. By slamming a blanket freeze across all
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: almost 600 private career colleges mid-semester, they're crushing legitimate essential institutions.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, there are essential places like Mothercraft, for example.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: They train early childhood educators, and they've been doing it
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: for decades. Or look at local accredited dental hygiene programs.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Those students are six, seven weeks into terms relying on
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: OSAP transfers to pay rent. groceries, cover tuition. And overnight,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: their aid is frozen. They're left hanging in complete financial limbo,
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: wondering if they're going to have to drop out of
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: their classes. And that's coming from students who have been,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: you know, giving interviews with the media. Compliant, hardworking trade
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: students are even taking the hit for government's complete inability
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: to manage their own programs.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Sounds like the majority suffer because of the few. Where
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: does it go from here, John? How does the province
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: fix a system that is so broken?
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: First, the OPP needs to follow the money, lay criminal
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: charges where fraud occurred. Second, Queen's Park needs to be
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: changing regulations or passing promised legislation to shut off OSEP
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: access for unmonitored, asynchronous online programs permanently. But let's talk
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: about the underlying structural absurdity. The Ministry of Colleges and
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Universities employs eight inspectors. Eight! to cover nearly 600 private
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: career colleges across the entire province. That's not enforcement. That's
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: a joke. It's administrative jokes. It's an honor system with
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: a rubber stamp from the government. So until Queen's Park
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: puts actual compliance officers on the ground and treats regulatory
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: enforcement seriously, Ontario taxpayers will keep getting fleeced while ministers
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: act surprised when the cops show up and students are
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: going to be left in the lurch.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: A great take. I thank you this morning, and we'll
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: be talking to you on Friday.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Gene.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: There he goes, John Litke with Litke's Got a Take.