OPEN LETTER: In the Face of Catastrophic College Cuts, We Find Strength in Each Other to Fight Back
Read the full letter in The Grind magazine
We are among the professors, counsellors and other faculty affected by mass layoffs at George Brown Polytechnic (GBP) in Toronto. We are writing to raise the alarm about the dire state of Ontario’s colleges, and the increasingly anti-worker, anti-student climate of the post-secondary system.
Between January and May 2026, our institution has laid off over 100 faculty, nearly 25 per cent of the full-time complement. These cuts come in the wake of similarly devastating layoffs at schools across the province — over 10,000 workers in 600 programs since 2023. Beyond the loss of livelihood, the seniority-driven structure of these layoffs means colleges are eliminating an entire generation of young faculty, many of whom have led initiatives to build more equitable, accessible and accountable classrooms. In a system that continually lacks representation of racialized, queer, trans, disabled and Indigenous faculty, administrators have obliterated a decade of progress and struggle.
The College Employer Council claims that job losses are unavoidable due to low enrolment and financial precarity, but managers across the province are receiving enormous year-over-year raises. George Brown President Gervon Fearon’s salary has risen by nearly $75K since 2022 to $412,582 in 2025. Senior VP Leslie Quinlan has received a $100K raise, now making $334,369 a year. As of this writing, GBP is actively hiring a new VP of marketing.
In April, as dozens of faculty faced news that we were losing our salaries, health benefits, and pension plans, George Brown somehow managed to have enough cash on hand to purchase a property at 219 King St, formerly the Patrician Grill.
Management’s hypocrisies are a microcosm of a provincial agenda that relentlessly puts profit over people. Doug Ford’s government spends less per student on post-secondary funding than any other province, at only 0.6 percent of GDP. Yet as of 2025, the Conservatives have invested $2.5 billion in “Skills Development Funds,” non-college training programs with little or no public accountability. These shifts are modeled after a privatization drive in Australia from 2013 to 2018 which ended so catastrophically that it was rolled back completely — the year before Doug Ford imposed it in Ontario.
Tens of thousands of Ontario students will bear the brunt of these catastrophic decisions.
As this round of job closures takes its toll, colleges will have fewer full-time professors than ever before, with course caps in already-overenrolled programs raised beyond classroom capacities, and precarious part-time faculty left to fend for themselves with minimal support.
Meanwhile, Ontario colleges have dumped millions into the fantasy that AI can provide a cost-effective replacement for human-led education, with predictably grim results.
Worse still, Doug Ford’s rescinding of OSAP grants and college tuition caps all but guarantees working class students will be driven into debt as they pursue their interests and careers.
Despite this bleak moment, we believe that collective action by faculty, students and the countless communities strengthened by healthy colleges can and will force the province to course-correct Doug Ford’s educational death spiral.
As members of OPSEU, in solidarity with other labour unions and worker- and student-led movements within the sector, we call on the premier to:
- Permanently raise college and university funding to at least the national average;
- Restore grant-based OSAP subsidies that reward rather than penalize students; and
- Reverse tuition increases that pass the buck of provincial mismanagement to students.