The Ontario Liberal Party is accusing the Ford government of having ties to private career colleges that have been blocked from the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) until at least 2030.
The Liberal party said two months after government inspectors went to the Academy of Learning, Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria and MP Amarjot Sandhu were present for a campus opening.
The opposition party also said the two co-founders of Opulence Education Group, which owns Academy of Learning, have donated more than $8,000 to PC Party since 2024.
Government inspections, which started a few years ago, found “suspicious” activity involving entire courses at some career colleges being completed in one day, leading to six career colleges being cut off from OSAP for this academic year.
Three Academy of Learning locations said that provincial government has now blocked them from OSAP for three more years following a “final” decision by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.
Data obtained by the Canadian Press found that Academy of Learning’s three locations accounted for one-fifth of the nearly $1 billion in provincial OSAP grants that went to all career colleges in 2024-2025
“The government had the warnings, the inspectors, and the numbers, but the political connections raise even more questions,” said Tyler Watt, the Liberal party’s critic for Training, Colleges and Universities, in a press conference Wednesday.
“If someone were stealing from your bank account, and you knew, and your bank knew about it for years but did nothing, would you ever trust that bank again?” he asked in a press conference.
Ontario’s Training, Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn announced last week that the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) had been brought in to investigate further. At the same time, he said that all career colleges would be temporarily banned from receiving student funding
“Now Doug Ford always says, ‘Now don’t worry, I’ve got your back.’ Well for thousands and thousands of students, nobody has got their back,” said interim Liberal leader John Fraser.
The Academy of Learning said in a statement to CityNews that it recognizes that “unusually rapid completion patterns warrant review” and it has “strengthened our monitoring and controls.”
“As a business, we comply fully with Ontario’s lobbying and political financing rules. Like many organizations, we invite elected officials of all parties to community events such as campus openings, and any political contributions made by individuals are personal, publicly disclosed and within provincial limits. None of this has any bearing on how our programs are regulated, and we have never sought or received special treatment,” the Academy said in a statement addressing the connections to the PC Party.
The school added they believe the Ministry has “unreasonably” denied them approval to participate in OSAP.
“Political donations, lobbying, and ribbon cuttings don’t establish wrongdoing, but these connections demand scrutiny,” said Watt.
In a statement from Minister Quinn’s office to CityNews, they said the institutions that had their students’ access to OSAP suspended were “part of corrective action taken as a result of non-compliance before a sector-wide OSAP pause was implemented to protect the integrity of the post-secondary sector.”
With files from the Canadian Press
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