Petition Calling on the Federal Government to Support Universities and Colleges

The pandemic has shone a giant spotlight on gaps in our social safety nets, our labour and employment standards and in our public services. Public institutions, including universities and colleges, are stretched too thin. Many of the changes that the government has introduced as quick fixes must be made permanent. We need a recovery plan that responds effectively to today’s challenges, while putting us on a path to a better, more resilient future.

It is time for a new normal.

• Post-secondary institutions and their staff quickly rose to the challenge of COVID-19, supporting hundreds of thousands students to continue their education.
• This crisis has hit the sector hard, exposing structural flaws in the current system, such as dependency on unstable and limited private revenue from students and families and precarious workers.
• Layoffs and program closures have commenced and if governments fail to act now, institutions will be forced to scale-back their operations, negatively impacting research and learning for years to come or to raise already high tuition.
• Universities and colleges are key partners in the recovery from the public health and economic crisis, and are essential to meeting Canada’s future challenges. We urgently need federal leadership to get through this crisis and to address the long-standing problems facing the post-secondary education system.

We call on the federal government to provide emergency funding for universities and colleges to protect jobs and the quality of education and to work with the provinces and territories to ensure predictable stable funding for post-secondary education.