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TORONTO — Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government is eliminating free tuition for students from low-income families while also cutting tuition fees.

The Ontario Student Assistance Plan grants had become unsustainable and it was time to refocus it to provide help to students in the most financial need, said Training, Colleges and Universities Minister Merrliee Fullerton.

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“The previous government believed in handing out OSAP money to some of Ontario’s highest income earners with virtually no meaningful criteria for success,” she said.

The previous Liberal government increased the number of grants and made it possible for low-income students to attend college or university free of cost. But the auditor general found last month that costs for that program jumped by 25 per cent and warned it could grow to $2 billion annually by 2020-21.

Under the Liberal plan, families earning up to $175,000 could qualify for some funding and that threshold is now reduced to $140,000. Low-income students could qualify for grants large enough to cover the full cost of tuition under the previous plan, but now a portion of the funding they receive will be a loan.