Close to 10,000 college faculty and staff have either been let go or are projected to lose their jobs amid hundreds of program cancellations and suspensions since last year, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union said Wednesday as it warned of serious trouble in the sector.
The union representing some 55,000 college faculty and support staff said the cuts amounts to “one of the largest mass layoffs in Ontario’s history” as colleges grapple with a funding crisis.
“This is bigger than the Hudson’s Bay liquidation, which laid off 8,000 employees across Canada,” OPSEU president JP Hornick said at a press conference outside Centennial College’s Story Arts Centre campus in Toronto, which is slated for closure later this year.
“(About) 1.5 million Ontarians, nearly 1 in 10, have seen a campus closure in their community,” Hornick said.
An arbitrated faculty contract between the union and the College Employer Council released last week said the federal government’s cap on international students led to a dramatic decline in enrolment and tuition revenue, and the cancellation or suspension of more than 600 college programs.
The document showed 23 of 24 colleges in Ontario have reported a 48 per cent decrease in first-semester enrolment of international students from September 2023 to September 2024.
It said 19 colleges have reported current and planned staff reductions totalling more than 8,000 employees as of June, noting the data was incomplete as some colleges hadn’t reported their layoffs.
The union said the layoffs and program suspensions will have generational impacts and college workers are prepared to fight back against the cuts.
“We need strong colleges today for the accessible, low-barrier job training that they offer, especially in the face of trade wars that are undercutting and restructuring our economy,” Hornick said.
“But instead we are bleeding jobs.”
Hornick said the suspended and cancelled programs are not only those primarily attended by international students.
“It’s also programs we domestically need, programs like nursing, child and youth care, environmental technologies, specialized art training that is not offered anywhere else,” Hornick said.
Among them is the culinary management college program in Thunder Bay, which Hornick said is the only one of its kind within 1,000 kilometres that has supported food security in the north.
The union said the Ontario government and the colleges “never intended” to tell the public about the full scope of job and program cuts and that its workers fought “tooth and nail to get this information.” Hornick also said the province has been chronically underfunding post-secondary education.
A spokesperson for Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn said OPSEU’s claims against the government are “baseless and categorically false.”
“In the last 14 months alone, we have provided unprecedented amounts of new funding to our publicly-assisted post-secondary sector, with over $2 billion in new funding into our colleges and universities, on top of the $5 billion we put into the sector every year,” Bianca Giacoboni said in an emailed statement.
“Due to the federal government’s unilateral changes to the international student system, difficult decisions are being made across the country in the post-secondary sector,” Giacoboni said, adding that a college funding model review is set to begin this summer.
The College Employer Council, the bargaining agent for the province’s publicly funded colleges, also disputed some of the union’s claims.
“CEC has been informing OPSEU about the pending severity of this situation since Jan. 29, 2024. To suggest this information has been hidden from anyone is obviously wrong,” CEO Graham Lloyd said in an emailed statement.
“All colleges have specially designated union committees that are consulted about all layoffs, suspensions and voluntary retirement packages for union employees…Any suggestion that the union has not been aware of the extent of the layoffs is simply inaccurate.”
Lloyd said the 10,000 reported layoffs represent a staff reduction of about 17 per cent in a workforce of more than 60,000.
“This is certainly unfortunate but is not proportional to the 45 per cent reduction in student enrolment,” he said.
While OPSEU said that Centennial College alone had suspended more than 100 programs, the school disputed that number, saying it suspended 54 programs in 2025.
“Centennial is facing significant financial pressures due to external factors, including the federal policy shifts related to international students, which has reduced enrolment numbers, alongside a broken funding model,” the college said.
“Given that these challenges are sector-wide, we are working with sector partners to address these headwinds in a holistic way so that we can continue to serve the economic needs of Ontario.”
