Will Algonquin College shut down? A strike deadline is approaching

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As Ontario’s 24 community colleges face a strike or other job action as early as Thursday, one side says colleges are broke and growing more broke, while the other argues colleges are sitting on $1 billion in surpluses.

OPSEU, which represents full-time and partial-load professors, instructors and librarians, gave notice Friday that a province-wide strike could begin Thursday. On Dec. 12, the union requested a no-board report after more than five months of bargaining. 

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The two sides sat down for two days of mediation on Monday and Tuesday. If there is a strike, it will affect about 450,000 students across Ontario.

The Colleges Employer Council (CEC), which represents the colleges, said it could not discuss the content of mediation. However, CEO Graham Lloyd urged OPSEU to enter mediation “with more realistic demands” to avoid a strike. 

“Since July, we’ve been telling the union of the financial instability occurring in the college sector, a predicted $1.7 billion in losses, and the need to adjust their demands,” said Lloyd in a statement. 

OPSEU’s demands have included an additional five weeks of paid self-directed time above their current nine weeks’ vacation, resulting in a 25 per cent reduction in teaching time and dropping the average teaching time to less than nine hours per week and only 29 weeks annually in the classroom, according to CEC.

The CEC charges that OPSEU’s “wholly unaffordable demands” will cost more than $1 billion and that OPSEU rejected CEC’s offer of binding arbitration to get a new contract. OPSEU’s demands would increase academic costs for colleges by 55 per cent annually, said Dr. Laurie Rancourt, chair of the management bargaining team.

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Meanwhile, OPSEU argues that the only offer on the table would leave it worse off than their last agreement. The CEC is “fear-mongering in the media about how ‘expensive’ our proposals when they can’t even show us the breakdown behind their unsubstantiated $1-billion costing, despite months of requests,” said OPSEU in a statement. 

“Perhaps they are mistakenly referring to the colleges’ accumulated surplus of $1 billion in 2023-2024?” said OPSEU. 

“We’ve done our own math, and faculty’s plan invests back into our colleges at a fraction of what the province will spend building a new luxury spa in Toronto.”

The reference is to a controversial 95-year lease for Therme Canada, which plans to build a mega-spa at the former site of Ontario Place. 

Algonquin College declined to comment on the potential for a strike, referring questions to the CEC.

Tracy Henderson, the president of Local 415, who represents more than 950 full- and partial-load instructors and other academic workers at Algonquin, said the local is prepared for labour action, but remains hopeful mediator William Kaplan can help the parties find a resolution.

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“In the meantime, our office is extremely busy as we support members in the event that a resolution cannot be found,” said Henderson. “In short, nobody seeks to be engaged in labour action. However, the 79 per cent majority strike vote delivered sent the clear message that current conditions are not sustainable.”

Colleges have become increasingly dependent on international students in the face of declining numbers of domestic students. The financial health of the province’s colleges has been on rocky ground in the past year as post-secondary institutions faced a sharp drop in revenue from international students after the federal government announced it was setting an intake cap on international student permit applications for two years.

In August, the Ontario government announced it was suspending all new college international activities, pending a review of entrepreneurial activities.

The CEC said the $1.7 billion in losses will cover two years, 2025 to 2026, but did not release figures for individual colleges. While the data has been broken down by college, it is not readily available, said the CEC.

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Alex Usher, the president of Higher Education Strategy Associates and an expert on post-secondary education believes losses will be higher than $1.7 billion. Incoming numbers of international students will be down 60 to 70 per cent from where they were two years ago when the new rules kick in this September, he said.

“No one made their visa quotas. The feds poisoned the well. International students stopped applying.”

But dependence on international students varies by institution. Some colleges have developed partnerships with 3P colleges to instruct international students and have indeed collected surpluses or have used the money for new buildings, said Usher.

“If you look at where colleges chose to spend their extra money, it was almost all in buildings,” he said.

“I can see where they (union members) might feel hard done by. And they’re going to be asked to pay for challenges down the road. That would tick me off. But what’s done is done.”

Some Ontario colleges have already announced belt-tightening measures, and there is more to come, Usher predicts.

In November, Sheridan College, which has three Toronto-area campuses, announced it was suspending 40 programs and conducting a comprehensive review of another 27 programs, citing a drop of 30 per cent of students in the coming years.

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Fleming College in Peterborough cut 29 programs starting last September. Mohawk College in Hamilton cut its administrative workforce by approximately 20 per cent, or 65 positions. 

Algonquin is not high on the list of troubled community colleges, said Usher. However, there will be program cuts at every college in the province and job losses — and not just because of program closures, he said.

“There is zero chance that any college will not make cuts. Every college will close programs,” said Usher. “There will be a re-think of lots of parts of the college mission. It is going to be painful. It’s going to be a much different college system when they’re done with it. In the next month or so, we’ll see how they deal with it.”

A five-week faculty strike in the fall of 2017 affected about 500,000 Ontario college students. The Liberal provincial government of the day legislated faculty back to work and later said students who withdrew could apply for full tuition refunds.

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