Ontario's Premier Accountability Dashboard · Queen's Park Watch
Merrilee Fullerton
Estimated cost to Ontario
>$2.0B
Ontario Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities (2019). Announced the January 2019 OSAP restructuring that cut tuition by 10% while simultaneously eliminating the Ontario Student Grant — which had provided free tuition to students from families earning under ~$50,000/year. The OSAP budget was cut from ~$2 billion to ~$1.4 billion. Fullerton defended the changes publicly as necessary because the existing program was "unsustainable."
Connected Scandals
In January 2019, Ford cut OSAP by $670 million — eliminating free tuition for low-income families, dropping 24,000 students from the program, and shifting the system from grants to loans. When the federal government doubled student grants during COVID, Ontario clawed back $400 million instead of passing it to students. The tuition freeze Ford extended repeatedly was never accompanied by restored aid or compensated operating grants — Laurentian University went bankrupt in 2021, the first public university in Canadian history to do so. In February 2026, Ford announced a second wave: grants capped at 25% of OSAP packages (down from 85%), with 75% as loans — and told students choosing the wrong programs to stop picking "basket-weaving courses." Hundreds protested at Queen's Park.
As the minister who announced and defended the January 2019 OSAP restructuring, Fullerton oversaw the elimination of free tuition for low-income students — replacing robust grants with a system that increased reliance on repayable loans. The changes disproportionately harmed students from the lowest-income families, who saw net costs rise despite the headline tuition cut.