Students in Toronto are among those hit by Ontario's decision to pause OSAP payments to all private post-secondary institutions while an audit examines how the loans and grants are used.
Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn announced last week that KPMG had been tasked with auditing Ontario Student Assistance Program usage at career colleges, and that preliminary findings were serious enough that he referred the matter to the Ontario Provincial Police, according to Global News.
While the audit continues, no OSAP money is flowing to private institutions — a category that includes private universities, chiropractic and naturopathic medicine colleges, divinity schools, and performing arts schools such as Canada's National Ballet School in Toronto.
"I'm heartbroken": ballet student unsure how she'll pay rent
Alessia Di Palma is in the final year of the ballet school's five-year joint teacher training program with York University. She told Global News she works two jobs and still doesn't know how she will pay her rent.
I'm heartbroken. My heart sunk when I found out because it's unfair that I've had this funding for four years and then the fifth year it's just gone now because of something that didn't even have anything to do with me.
About half the students in the school's post-secondary teacher training program rely on OSAP to pay tuition, executive director John Dalrymple said. He criticized the government for enacting the pause before securing the replacement loans it has promised.
Quinn has said he is working on arranging low-interest loans for affected students through financial institutions, but no timeline has been given.
Toronto Film School students facing "tremendous uncertainty"
At Toronto Film School, president Andrew Barnsley said there is "tremendous uncertainty and anxiety" among students, and he is calling for OSAP to be promptly reinstated for eligible students or for a clear, expedited timeline to resolve the pause.
Many students have rearranged their lives, reduced or left employment, made child-care arrangements and, in some cases, relocated to Toronto in order to pursue their studies. They need to know whether they can meet their financial obligations, including life essentials like rent or food, and continue the programs in which they have already invested time, money and effort.
Ministry spokesperson Bianca Giacoboni said in a statement that the government does not have assurances from the audit team that the problems are limited, "leaving us with no choice but to pause OSAP payments to all private institutions to protect taxpayer dollars and hold bad actors accountable."
Hundreds of millions at stake
Data obtained by The Canadian Press through a freedom-of-information request showed sharp increases in OSAP usage at a small number of career colleges between 2020-21 and 2024-25. The seven career colleges with the highest OSAP usage in 2024-25 received $385 million in provincial grants — the same amount that went to students at all of Ontario's publicly funded colleges that year.
Career Colleges Ontario has been raising concerns since 2023 about what it calls potentially "suspicious activity" at a few schools.
The pause has also reached theological schools such as McMaster Divinity College, where registrar Ambrose Thomson said students are beside themselves. About 10 per cent of the non-profit institution's revenue depends on OSAP-paid tuition.
Second-year master's student Deanna Hutten, a single mother of a one-year-old, said she is borrowing from family and working 10 extra hours a week to make up for her paused funding.
It definitely feels very unfair. They had known about this since 2023 that there were people kind of (allegedly) fudging the system, and now we as private career – not even career colleges, but private institutions – are kind of being swept into that field or that group of people, even though we're not a part of that.
No end date has been given for the audit or the pause.
