With post-secondary institutions suffering the financial effects of the pandemic, the City of Quinte West will support lobbying federal and provincial governments for more post secondary funding.
“The pandemic has further added to financial burden with the Ontario Council of Universities reporting revenue losses of more than one billion dollars due to COVID-related health costs and falling revenues. Across Canada, post-secondary institutions are running into a financial wall.”
She said that she’s addressing multiple municipalities, including the City of Belleville, in order to drum up support to lobby the federal and provincial governments to put together more sustainable funding for post-secondary institutions.
Bourgoin explained the things that they’d like to see.
“To summarize, this will require emergency stabilization funds for post-secondary education institutions to address the costs and revenue losses associated with COVID-19, a federal post-secondary education act with clear conditions and accountability measures for federal funding to these provinces, a dedicated post-secondary transfer that provinces must adhere to, an increase in federal transfer funding by 40% to restore the level of per student post-secondary education funding that was provided in 1993 and a similar increase by provincial governments to ensure that 80% of all funding in post-secondary education is provided by public dollars.”
Councillor Terry Cassidy echoed the presentation and suggested that council vote to support the initiative.
“I think it’s one way of supporting the people that work there (Loyalist College) which is a big part of our economy, but also supporting the opportunity for kids to have a likely place to go when they finish secondary school.”
Later in the council meeting council approved supporting the initiative.
