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By Kieran Moloney

There is a good recipe for creating public outrage — tell citizens you’re going to introduce an elaborate new social program, bankroll the proposition with deficit spending, and then punt the inevitable tax hikes down the line into the hands of a successive government.

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This is exactly what happened with the previous Liberal government’s changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). Just before an election, in a last-ditch attempt to buy the votes of young Ontarians with their own money, the Liberals made elaborate changes to OSAP that set the program on an unsustainable track. Besides squandering any semblance of sustainability in OSAP’s outlook, the government raised student expectations to dizzying heights, promising a steady flow of fat handouts to anyone who applied to post-secondary education.

The Liberals made elaborate changes to OSAP that set the program on an unsustainable track

Unsurprisingly, the inevitable happened in 2018 when Ontario’s auditor-general published a scathing report, highlighting that the Liberals’ OSAP tinkering would cost a staggering 50 per cent more than the government promised and that Ontario taxpayers would be on the hook for over $2 billion a year by 2020 in order to administer the program.

At best, these generous OSAP gifts were championed by a government whose integrity had been undermined by astonishing ignorance around public spending. At worst, the provincial program with the greatest ability to help low-income students achieve higher education had gone rogue, usurped by a government more interested in buying votes than ensuring the viability of the very program it sought to expand.