#562 Open Letter - to CBC's Crummey

 Open Letter to the CBC Ottawa Newsroom and Arthur White-Crummey

October 12, 2026

To the CBC Ottawa newsroom and Arthur White-Crummey,

I am Peter Karwacki, the challenger for Ottawa City Council in Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe). We spoke briefly at candidate registration on May 1. With the municipal election on October 26, I am writing to request fair attention to this two-candidate race.

Incumbent Councillor Rawlson King and I disagree on several issues that affect residents directly. Voters therefore have a genuine choice, not an automatic return of the status quo. Those differences are documented, with sources, on a single summary page at https://peterkarwacki.blogspot.com/p/peter-karwacki-for-rideau-rockcliffe.html (with further posts and primary documents linked from there).

Key areas of difference include:

• Infrastructure and transportation: Support for the Eastern Bridge (with specific conditions to protect local neighbourhoods, including truck routing, noise/air standards, grade-separated connections, and transit/active-transportation elements on opening day), versus the incumbent’s opposition; the long-delayed Hemlock Road connection at Wateridge Village; and traffic-calming measures such as a traffic circle or equivalent at St-Laurent/Hemlock (and related Beechwood corridor concerns).
• Parks and recreation: The planned loss of the Bathgate Park basketball court (and associated naturalization) relative to amenities elsewhere in the ward, such as Riverain Park; programming and access questions at Jetform Park; and the future of 815 St-Laurent for soccer and other community use.
• Governance and access: Reducing Ottawa City Council from 24 wards to 12 to improve decision-making and reduce costs, and expanding public Wi-Fi hotspots in parks and community spaces.

Each item is on the record with supporting material. The Eastern Bridge in particular is a defining file for the ward and the region; the candidates’ approaches to leverage, conditions, and engagement differ sharply.

I am asking for three practical things so that coverage can inform voters rather than simply note that an incumbent faces a challenger: (1) reporting on where the Ward 13 candidates differ on the issues above; (2) an invitation to any candidate Q&A, debate segment, or voter-guide process CBC is running; and (3) a named contact to whom I can send documents or answers on short notice. I am available at any time to answer questions.

A two-person race with documented policy differences is the minimum condition for residents to exercise a real choice. I hope CBC Ottawa will help provide that information in the remaining days before October 26.

Sincerely,

Peter Karwacki
Candidate, Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe)
peterkarwacki.overbrook@gmail.com
613-304-5844
https://peterkarwacki.blogspot.com

#561 On the doorsteps

"most greet me with a tentative bark. Then, somehow, they seem to decide I'm okay."

On Every Doorstep

Hundreds of doors in, door-to-door campaigning has taken me to every kind of doorstep imaginable.

Some days it's the stairs. Wateridge has a lot of them, and after hundreds of doors my legs know every flight. Many times, nobody is home. I leave a card with my blog address instead of a flyer: less paper, less waste, and it sends people to where the details actually live. Then I note the address and move on to the next flight.

When someone is home, there's often a dog first. About half the homes have one, and most greet me with a tentative bark. Then, somehow, they seem to decide I'm okay. I'll take that endorsement. Too bad the dogs don't vote. Only about 40% of eligible voters in Ottawa do, so a few more ballots from the humans behind those doors would go a long way.

The doorsteps themselves tell you something before anyone answers. Some are welcoming, with swept steps, a wreath, a light left on. Others are littered with garbage and cigarette butts, the corners thick with spider webs. And some have wheelchair ramps, a quiet reminder that a sidewalk, a curb cut, or a snowplow schedule can decide whether someone gets out of the house at all. None of it shows up in a council report, but you see it from the top step.

The people behind the doors are just as varied. One woman ruefully said "you politicians are all the same! I wondered, how did she reach that conclusion?

One door was occupied by a neo-Nazi. At another, I met a candidate for another federal party. Very different people, with very different politics, and I won't pretend otherwise. But both believed they were going to make a difference.

That stayed with me. Everyone on these streets is trying to shape the community, for better or worse, and the real question is what kind of difference we're making and who we're making it for. Each has their own pet issue.

That's why I keep climbing the stairs. Hundreds of doors in, I've heard things no poll or committee report would have told me. A candidate who only shows up for the photo op never hears what people say on the step. I want to know what Rideau-Rockcliffe is dealing with, including from the people who weren't home when I knocked.

With two weeks to go, I'll be at more doors. If I missed you, the card on your door has my blog address. Everything I stand for, and every piece I've written on how City Hall spends your money, is there.

#560 Hemlock Wateridge...where's the connection?

Hemlock Road: Wateridge was promised a connection. Where is it?

By Peter Karwacki, October 2026

Disclosure: I am a candidate for Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe) in the October 2026 municipal election. The facts below come from public documents, linked at the end.

Wateridge Village residents have been asking the same question for years: why is there still no road link from Hemlock to the rest of the neighbourhood?

This was never a surprise feature. City transportation work for the Rockcliffe lands said a future Hemlock Road connection, north of the Aviation and Montreal intersection, would provide an additional road access to the community. People bought homes on that understanding. A resident petition says as much: many bought having been told that this road would eventually be re-opened.

What the record shows

• The road is tied to a stormwater pond. The Wateridge Village Community Association reported in its 2024 newsletter that the reconnection is coupled with stormwater work for the western sector, including a new pond beside the future connection.
• Digging the pond raised well-water concerns. The work means excavating rock, and extra engineering was needed to protect drinking-water wells used by neighbours in Fairhaven.
• The timeline has already slipped. In 2024, Canada Lands Company hoped, pending approvals, to start construction in 2025 and open the road around 2026. It is now October 2026 and I can find no confirmed opening date.
• The file bounced between CLC and the City. By 2025, CLC described a lot of back and forth with the City over the pond's configuration and exact location.
• The landowner has changed. Canada Lands Company has been integrated into Build Canada Homes, which says it will carry forward the remaining phases of Wateridge.

The questions that matter

Residents do not need another explanation that the road is "coming." They need dates and names. I am asking:

• When were the pond and road applications submitted, and what did the City's comments say at each round?
• Which approvals are still outstanding, and who is responsible for each?
• What is the committed construction start and opening date now that Build Canada Homes holds the file?
• What did the ward councillor's office do, and when, to push this file forward?

Years of "pending approvals" is not a plan. Residents gave this project their time and their trust, and they are owed a date.

What I would do

I would put the Hemlock timeline on the public record, with milestones, owners and dates, and report progress to residents regularly instead of waiting to be asked. If the City is the bottleneck, residents should hear that plainly. If the delay sits with the developer, the City should use every lever it has.

I have not found evidence in the public record that assigns the delay to one party, and I will not claim otherwise. The point is that a connection planned for years is still not open, and the public has not been given a clear explanation or a firm date. That is a failure of accountability whoever is ultimately responsible. but consider this! The incumbent King has attended many a buffet during the last seven years of his incumbency....still no link.

I'd make it a priority!

Sources

• Wateridge Village Community Association, Winter 2024 Newsletter
• Wateridge Village Community Association, Winter 2025 Newsletter
• Change.org, Residents for opening Hemlock Rd
• City of Ottawa, Wateridge Phase 1B Transportation Impact Assessment (2019)
• Wateridge Village, Build Canada Homes integration notice

What's missing:
a documented duty, plus a refusal or silence you can point to. These five steps follow from that.
1. **Get the documents that could create a duty.** Request the Wateridge subdivision agreement, the draft-plan conditions, the servicing agreement, and any Community Design Plan policy on Hemlock. The City request would go through MFIPPA. CLC is a federal Crown corporation, so its request goes through the Access to Information Act. You're looking for any signed condition or milestone that actually requires the western reconnection. Without one, you have a delay case rather than an injunction case.
2. **Put your questions to the City and CLC in writing, with a response date.** Use the questions from items 1 to 5: when the package was deemed a complete engineering submission, how many comment letters exist, whether an ECA has been filed, and whether anyone requested a scoped early-servicing package. Address CLC's current director (your post notes Taylor Marquis is now listed) as well as Jarvis. Mandamus needs a demand and a refusal, so a dated letter creates the record either way: an answer, a refusal, or silence.
3. **Get the engineering memo on which Hemlock stations are independent of the pond.** Your items 1 and 5 both depend on it. If the carriageway, sidewalks, and dry utilities don't change with pond geometry, the early-servicing argument holds. If they do, it fails. Ask the City and CLC for that determination, or find an engineer willing to assess it from the public drawings.
4. **Build the winter incident log.** Ask OC Transpo for delayed, short-turned, or cancelled Route 17 and 25 trips on the Wateridge approaches in winter 2024-25 and 2025-26. Ask Ottawa Fire and Paramedic Service what the second apparatus access is if the south grade is impassable. A court will want dates and incident numbers. This also covers the harm side, since a judge will ask why a political timetable isn't enough.
5. **Take the winnable ask to council and the City.** Seek a motion or direction for a fixed decision date with written reasons. It should also require City and MECP review to run concurrently and require the independent Hemlock works to be separated from the pond. Ask for the Fairhaven well baseline survey and the monitoring and remedy conditions at the same time, so the well issue is addressed rather than ignored. As your post says, this is the realistic route: a court is more likely to order a decision on a timetable than to order construction.
Steps 1 and 2 come first because their results decide whether you go to court or keep up the administrative pressure.

#559 One more time...Cycling In Ottawa

Where They Meet

I ride. The danger isn't the lane. It's the seam where cars, bikes and people on foot have to share the same few metres.

I've owned four bikes since 2012, and I organized a Critical Mass ride down St-Laurent Boulevard. Anyone who rides regularly knows that a stretch of protected lane feels calm until the next intersection, and then every sense you have switches on. That moment is the design problem.

Ottawa has plenty of road where cars, bikes and pedestrians each have their own space, and those stretches are mostly fine. People get hurt where the three meet: a driver turning across a bike lane, a bus passenger stepping off into a rider's path, a pathway hitting a parkway with only paint to protect you. Those seams are where the City needs to be most aggressive, and where it is usually least.

A typical arterial intersection. The lane is separated for the whole block, then the separation ends exactly where the conflicts begin.

The seams, and what fixes them

Seam	What goes wrong	What fixes it
Right turns	Fast, wide corners let drivers turn without slowing or looking beside them	Tight corner radii, raised crossings, bike and pedestrian signal head start
Driveways	Every driveway is a crossing of the lane	Consolidate driveways, continuous sidewalk and lane surface across them
Bus stops	Passengers step off straight into the bike lane	Boarding island with a marked crossing
Parked cars	Opening doors reach into the lane	Buffer strip, or move the parking
Path-to-road crossings	Pathways meet fast arterials with only paint	Signals or beacons, and one agency accountable for the crossing
Where it ends	The lane stops and the rider is dropped into traffic	A designed transition, or don't build the fragment

A protected lane is only as safe as its worst intersection.

What "aggressive" should mean

1. Inventory the seams. Map every conflict point on the arterial network, rank them using crash and near-miss data, and publish the list.
2. Fix the worst ones fast. Concrete curbs, bollards and planters can go in within weeks. Waiting for the next full reconstruction leaves the hazard in place for a decade.
3. Slow the turn. Tighter corners and signal phasing do more than any sign.
4. Give each crossing one owner. Many of the worst crossings sit between the City, the NCC and the province. When three agencies each control part of one corner, the hazard becomes nobody's job. Council should assign a single accountable owner and a decision deadline.
5. Use 311 as safety infrastructure. Let residents flag a near miss or a blocked lane where it happened, and publish the map.

Judge it by outcomes

"Kilometres of bike lane added" is an output, and it can include paint on the edge of a curb lane. What residents need is an outcome: how many of the 25 most hazardous interfaces are fixed by the end of the term, how many crashes occurred at them before and after, and how many people now use those routes. Report it every year, good or bad.

Ward 13

I've proposed a protected path on the St-Laurent median, designed like the old Brooklyn parkway paths rather than a narrow centre lane squeezed against turning traffic. A lane like that only works if the seams are solved: how a rider crosses Hemlock, how someone on foot reaches the LRT station, and who is accountable for the Aviation Parkway crossings. That is a council decision, not a design-manual problem.

It also has to work for the rider who isn't a confident commuter: a senior on an e-bike, a parent with a cargo bike, a teenager heading to school. If the seams aren't safe for them, the lane isn't finished.

Ask your candidate:

Which dangerous interface in the ward will you fix first, by what date, and who will you hold responsible if it isn't done?

#558 Its a matter of priorities

It's a Matter of Priorities: Two Files, One Councillor

Disclosure: I'm a candidate in Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe), challenging Councillor Rawlson King. Every fact below comes from published news coverage, linked at the end. Where I give my own reading, I say so.

A councillor has limited time, limited political capital and one vote among twenty-five. What he chooses to fight for says more about him than any slogan. Two files from this term show where Rawlson King put his effort.

Two files, side by side

	Lansdowne 2.0	Manor Park sidewalks
Where	A citywide project in another ward	His own ward
The money	$419M plan approved by council	$180,000 inside a $13.9M road, water and sewer project
What the coverage shows him doing	Voting No, both times	Delaying for about ten months, then moving motions at committee and at council
Outcome	Lost 17–7 and 16–9	Lost 7–5 at committee and 16–7 at council

Lansdowne: a No vote, twice

King opposed Lansdowne 2.0 when it came to council. In the previous term, council voted 17 to 7 to proceed with the $332 million plan, and King was among the seven. In November 2023, council approved the $419 million plan 16 to 9, and he was again among those opposed.

That is a legitimate position, and many residents shared his worries about the debt. He deserves credit for voting it consistently. But a vote is one act. In the coverage I reviewed, his Lansdowne record is a pair of votes. I found no reporting of motions he moved or amendments he led. If he has a record of that kind, I'd like to see it and I'll add it here.

Manor Park: a campaign

On sidewalks, the coverage shows a sustained effort over many months.

1. June 2025Staff bring forward a plan for sidewalks on four quiet streets, which needed the area councillor's consent to proceed without a council vote. King gets it deferred until September.
2. September 2025King announces in a newsletter that sidewalks will be deferred for further study. Three residents' lawyer calls the deferral unlawful, arguing a councillor can't direct staff to defer on his own.
3. Winter 2026The decision is pushed back again, to February 2026. King and staff disagree about how long a deferral should run, so the issue goes to committee.
4. End of March 2026At the public works committee, his motion to defer loses 7 to 5.
5. April 8, 2026At council, he moves to remove sidewalks from sections of Arundel and Kilbarry, and it loses 16 to 7. Mayor Sutcliffe supported his motion.

King's stated reason is about order of work. He told council the question had always been “sequencing and prioritization,” and that traffic needs hadn't been studied enough. Some residents made a similar case: the streets are quiet, and sidewalks are needed more near the school and on busier roads. That deserves a fair hearing.

But the money tells the other side. Staff said doing the work with the road project cost $180,000, against more than $500,000 as a stand-alone job. Councillor Leiper warned that the chance to add sidewalks during a street rebuild comes around perhaps once in 70 to 90 years. Each deferral risked losing the cheap window. And the families who wanted safe walking routes to Manor Park Public School, the park and the community centre were the ones waiting.

My read. The pattern looks like priorities, and I think it also looks like protecting support in Manor Park. I can't show his motive and I won't claim to. What the record does show is a councillor who used every tool he had, for about ten months, to slow a $180,000 item in his own ward, and who left a nine-figure commitment to a vote.

What I'm not claiming

I'm not saying he was silent on Lansdowne. I'm saying the news record shows votes there and a sustained effort on sidewalks, and I'd like him to explain the difference. I'm also not saying his Manor Park position was without merit although I disagree with it. I'm saying that when council, and the mayor on his final motion, had the same information, he lost by a wide margin, and the cost of the delay fell on residents who asked for the sidewalks.

The questions for voters

• Where should a councillor spend his effort: on a $180,000 line item in his ward, or on a decision that commits the city to hundreds of millions?
• When residents in his ward are divided, whose view does he carry to council, and how does he explain the choice to the others?
• When he loses a vote by a wide margin, does he adapt the plan or keep delaying it?

Ottawa votes on October 26. The votes are on the public record. The priorities are for you to judge.

Sources

• CTV News Ottawa, Here's how city councillors voted on Lansdowne 2.0 (17–7 vote).
• CTV News Ottawa, Council approves $419 million Lansdowne 2.0 plan (16–9 vote).
• CTV News Ottawa, Sidewalks to be built on some residential streets in Ottawa's Manor Park (committee vote, project budget).
• CBC News, Manor Park braces for next round in sidewalk fight (deferral history, cost comparison).
• CBC News, Manor Park sidewalks to go ahead after council vote (April 8, 2026 council vote).
• Manor Park Chronicle, Sidewalks decision pushed back.
• Ottawa Citizen via Yahoo News Canada, Three Manor Park residents demand the city build sidewalks in lawyer letter.

#557 Free Wifi in Rideau Rockcliffe?

Connecting Ward 13: Why Free Public Wi-Fi is No Longer a Luxury, It’s a Basic Utility

For too long, Canada has been home to some of the highest cellular data and internet prices in the world. In 2026, internet access is no longer a luxury item or an optional perk—it is an absolute necessity.

Whether you are a student trying to complete your homework, an entrepreneur running a small business from a local café, a senior keeping in touch with family, or a resident simply trying to check transit schedules on your commute, you need to be connected.

That is why I am announcing my policy to roll out a Free Public Wi-Fi Network across Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe). It is time we stop treating internet access as a private commodity and start treating it for what it truly is: a vital civic utility, just like clean water and well-maintained roads.

The Problem: The Digital Divide in Our Community

Right now, our neighborhood relies on a fragmented, frustrating patchwork of internet access. If you aren't paying for an expensive mobile data plan, your connectivity drops the moment you step off an O-Train platform or walk out the door of a corporate coffee chain.

This creates a hidden tax on our most vulnerable residents. Low-income families, newcomers, and seniors are routinely priced out of the digital economy. If you cannot afford a premium data package, you are effectively locked out of modern civic life. I believe our municipal government can—and must—do better.

The Solution: A Smart, Scalable Wireless Grid for Rideau-Rockcliffe

We don’t need to dig up every sidewalk or spend millions of taxpayer dollars trying to build a massive legacy network from scratch. Instead, my policy focuses on a smart, modern, and financially responsible rollout built on three core pillars:

• Anchor Institution Hubs: We will leverage the high-speed fiber lines already running into our ward's public buildings. By installing high-powered, outdoor routers on properties like the Rideau-Rockcliffe Community Resource Centre (RRCRC), local community halls, and Ottawa Community Housing complexes, we can instantly radiate free, high-speed Wi-Fi into the surrounding parks, public squares, and residential blocks.
• Public-Private Main Street Partnerships: Taking inspiration from successful global models, we will look to establish zero-cost corporate partnerships to revitalize our commercial corridors. By deploying smart, ad-supported or sponsored digital kiosks along major thoroughfares like Beechwood Avenue, St. Laurent Boulevard, and Donald Street, we can provide seamless outdoor Wi-Fi to shoppers and pedestrians at absolutely no cost to local taxpayers.
• Targeted Density Subsidies: For pockets of our ward that suffer from poor traditional infrastructure or high architectural barriers—whether in Overbrook, Manor Park, or Rockcliffe Park—we will look to integrate cutting-edge local mesh network solutions to bridge the gap. No corner of our community should be left in a digital dead zone.

Improving Affordability and Boosting Local Business

This policy is about more than just convenience; it is an economic driver.

By providing free public Wi-Fi on our main streets, we encourage foot traffic, support local businesses, and give residents a reason to linger, shop, and gather in our community spaces. More importantly, it directly improves affordability for residents. It means a student can study in Lawson Park, a remote worker can take a meeting outside, and families can shave gigabytes off their monthly cell phone bills.

As I argued in my recent post on whether basic services are a need or a right, the City of Ottawa needs to start evaluating essential services based on what vulnerable and low-income households can actually afford before setting arbitrary rates and tax targets. We cannot continue to ignore how cumulative infrastructure choices impact daily cost-of-living pressures, a theme that also cuts right through the current mayoral budget and property tax debates.

Let’s Build a Connected Ward

A progressive, liveable city is one that breaks down barriers to accessibility and ensures every single resident has the tools they need to thrive. Digital equity is social equity.

I want to hear from you. Where in Ward 13 do you experience the worst connectivity? Which parks or public spaces would benefit the most from free public Wi-Fi?

Leave a comment below, share your thoughts, and let’s work together to build a more connected, affordable, and accessible community for everyone.

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Disclaimer: AI tools are used for drafting, research assistance, charts, references, and music; facts and positions are mine.

#556 Career College Grant Fiasco

Fix the Bad Actors, Not the Students: Better Options Than Cutting Off Career Colleges

Queen's Park had a real problem to solve. The way it has chosen to solve it risks punishing the students who did nothing wrong.

What the province did

In February, Ontario announced it would flip OSAP from mostly grants to mostly loans: starting this fall, grants can be at most 25% of a student's aid, down from up to 85%. Students at private career colleges lose grants altogether and can only borrow. In July, the ministry went further and cut off OSAP loans entirely for students at five career college locations: four Academy of Learning franchises and Citi College of Canadian Careers.

The government's stated reason was that OSAP had become unsustainable. The data shows where the growth actually was.

7 career colleges$385M

All public colleges$385M

3 Academy of Learning sites$219M

Provincial OSAP grants, 2024-25, from freedom-of-information data reported by The Canadian Press. The three Academy of Learning sites are part of the seven.

Seven career colleges received as much in grants as every publicly funded college in Ontario combined. Nearly all the recent growth in OSAP grants was at career colleges. Career Colleges Ontario, the sector's own association, flagged ten locations to the ministry in January 2025 because their OSAP applications had jumped 500 to 600 per cent in two years while the rest of the sector was flat. The ministry told five schools on May 1, 2026 they were out. That is roughly 16 months after the warning.

Allegations, not findings. Inspection reports filed in court say third parties completed coursework, sometimes entire courses in a day, at three Academy of Learning locations (Toronto, Brampton and a North York branch). The schools deny most of the allegations and are challenging the decision in court. None of it has been proven.

Is anyone in Rideau-Rockcliffe affected?

Not directly by the five cutoffs, as far as I can tell. The three locations named in court records are in Toronto, Brampton and North York, and I could not find any of the five identified as being in Ottawa. I could not confirm locations for the other two, so a student who enrolled at one of them from here would be affected through online programs.

The wider changes reach Ward 13 much more broadly:

• Public college students. Algonquin and La Cité students, including those at La Cité's Aviation Parkway campus, face the 25% grant cap this fall. Students pay for food, rent and transit out of those grants.
• University students. The same cap applies to Carleton and uOttawa students who live here, and the uOttawa student union has called it devastating for students who depend on grants.
• Anyone at a career college. Any Ottawa resident in a private career college program is now loan-only, whether or not their school is one of the five.

A councillor does not set OSAP policy. That belongs to Queen's Park. But the debt, the housing pressure and the dropouts all land in our neighbourhoods, and a ward representative can at least ask the right questions and push the province to answer them.

The problem with the blunt tool

Cutting grants for every career college student treats a small cluster of suspect schools as if they were the whole sector. Cutting an institution off mid-year leaves enrolled students with a program they cannot pay for and a school that may close. The students in the middle did what they were told: they enrolled in a registered program and applied for the aid the province offered.

There is also an oversight question. A warning arrived in January 2025 and the response came well over a year later, after hundreds of millions of dollars had gone out. A ban that arrives late and lands on everyone is not a substitute for monitoring that works.

Better options

Approach	What it does	Who it protects
Outcome-based eligibility	Tie OSAP access to published graduation, default and employment results, and to tuition compared with the public-college equivalent.	Students at good schools; taxpayers
Early-warning triggers	Flag any school whose OSAP volume jumps sharply and audit it automatically, including its recruiting agents and attendance records.	Everyone, before the money goes out
Participation verification	Require proof of active participation in asynchronous programs before disbursement, which is the exact gap the inspectors describe.	Honest online students and the system
Teach-out and student protection	If a school loses eligibility, guarantee credit transfer to a public college and relief or refunds for students who cannot finish.	Enrolled students
Tuition ceiling on OSAP	Cap eligible tuition at the public-college equivalent for the same credential.	Taxpayers and borrowers
Targeted support in shortage fields	Keep grants for vetted programs in areas like personal support work, paramedic training, trades and IT, with a sunset as public seats expand.	Students and local employers
Grandfathering and notice	Let current students keep their aid terms to completion and give a year of notice before rules change.	Students who planned around the old rules

The province has already promised 70,000 more seats in in-demand public programs. These options could run alongside that expansion, so students would have somewhere to go.

What I would measure

The province tells us how many dollars went out. It should also tell us who finished, who defaulted, who found work, and which schools produced which results. That is the same test I apply everywhere else at City Hall: outputs are not outcomes. A cheque issued is an output. A graduate with a job is an outcome.

The aim should be to remove the schools gaming the system and keep the ones doing honest work for newcomers and career-changers. Cutting everyone's grants and a few schools' loans does the first only crudely and the second not at all.

Ottawa career colleges: which of the province's registered career colleges operate in the city, and what share of their enrolment is OSAP-funded? The province's public registry is the place to start.

Our MPPs: have they raised the grant cut, the late response to the 2025 warning, or the treatment of enrolled students with the minister? A written question gets an on-record answer, or an on-record silence.

Sources

Ontario announcement of OSAP changes and funding: CTV/Canadian Press, Feb. 12, 2026.
Five schools cut off from loans: CBC News and CP24.
$385M grants to seven career colleges: CTV/Canadian Press, Aug. 2026.
Inspection reports, court challenge and the January 2025 warning: CBC News, Oct. 2026; TorontoToday.
Student reaction: CTV/Canadian Press, Feb. 16, 2026.