Ontario refers concerns about OSAP payments at private career colleges to OPP

TORONTO — Ontario has asked provincial police to look into student financial assistance payments at private career colleges after auditors identified “serious concerns” about possible criminal activity and “egregious” use of public money, the government said Tuesday.

Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn said the ministry launched targeted inspections of career colleges last year in response to growing concerns about Ontario Student Assistance Program usage and asked KPMG in August to begin an audit.

“While that work is ongoing, preliminary findings have identified serious concerns about the integrity of the OSAP system in the private post-secondary sector,” he wrote in a statement.

“These include common ownership, the involvement of immigration services firms and co-location between private career colleges and immigration recruitment or immigration services firms, inadequate student validation and verification of course enrolment and outcomes, and unusually high concentrations of OSAP applications submitted from the same geographic locations.”

As a result, the government notified the auditor general last week and referred the matter on Friday to the Ontario Provincial Police, Quinn wrote.

The Canadian Press reported on Friday that government officials who inspected three career colleges alleged in reports filed in court that they found evidence suggesting third parties were completing the coursework — sometimes entire courses in one day — and a few students who couldn’t name their school or program. Those schools deny most of the allegations made against them, and they have not been proven in court.

Quinn and the government have been under increasing pressure to explain what critics describe as a lack of oversight and inaction on unusually rapid OSAP growth at a small number of career colleges.

“It’s a colossal mess,” interim Liberal leader John Fraser said. “The minister should have taken responsibility today and resigned.”

Quinn earlier this year drastically reduced the amount of OSAP grants that students at universities and publicly funded colleges could receive, while restricting career college students to OSAP loans.

He cited “unsustainable” costs, but a freedom-of-information request by The Canadian Press showed that 95 per cent of the year-over-year growth in 2024-25 was due to career colleges.

A subsequent freedom-of-information request by The Canadian Press showed that most of that growth was concentrated among a small number of schools. Just seven career colleges accounted for about $385 million in OSAP grants in 2024-25, the same amount that went to students at all of Ontario’s publicly funded colleges.

Court records show that Career Colleges Ontario, an association representing the sector and the body that processes their students’ OSAP applications, has been warning the province about possible “suspicious” OSAP activity for years, dating back to January 2023.

A lot of the concerns have centred around asynchronous, online-only programs, Quinn said. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the province temporarily extended OSAP eligibility to students in online and/or asynchronous programs, then later made it permanent.

This fall, the government will introduce legislation to make online-only programs at private career colleges ineligible again for OSAP, Quinn said.

He denied that it was a mistake to make online-only programs eligible in the first place.

“There is a lot of value in having options for online learning,” he said at a press conference on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, this comes down to criminal nature, criminal allegations, and the bad actors, unfortunately, taking advantage of taxpayer dollars and students, for that matter.”

The government has also paused all OSAP payments for career college students while the audit is ongoing, meaning schools and students will not know if they qualify for financial aid for an undetermined amount of time, though the academic year is already well underway at many schools.

“Unfortunately, there will be some colleges that are not going to be able to survive through this,” Quinn said. “But understanding that we’re talking about egregious use of taxpayer dollars here, criminal allegations, and we need to take that very seriously.”

It has thrown the entire sector into uncertainty and unfairly penalizes students for the government’s mistakes, said NDP critic Peggy Sattler.

“Doug Ford and his government originally blamed students for their decision to cut OSAP support, but today they’ve finally admitted to the truth: the Ford government grossly mismanaged the system and is punishing every student in Ontario for their incompetence,” she wrote in a statement.

The government is talking to banks about options for low-interest, third-party loans for career college students in the interim, Quinn said.

Career Colleges Ontario said the approval delays are causing significant disruption for schools, which have to make operational decisions without clear information or timelines, and for students who don’t know if they can afford to start – or remain in – classes.

“We hope the government will introduce a policy that promptly addresses improper conduct and targets those who have acted wrongly,” the association wrote in a statement.

“Career Colleges Ontario was instrumental in bringing these concerns forward to the government in the first place, and it is not fair that students across the sector who have done nothing wrong are now being impacted as a result.”

The sector-wide delays are affecting not just schools that Career Colleges Ontario raised concerns about, but also schools such as Mothercraft, which has been offering early childhood education programs for decades and has a “stellar” compliance record, said executive director Michele Lupa.

“We’re still waiting to hear if we continue to be an eligible institution for OSAP,” Lupa said in an interview.

“So, needless to say, that’s a little concerning. We’re six weeks into the academic year, and we have students who are relying on OSAP to be able to carry out their studies. So they’re getting anxious, needless to say, and we are too.”

Mothercraft graduates about 125 new ECEs every year, and those graduates are especially critical at a time when the child-care sector is trying to expand under the national affordable child-care program, Lupa said.

Also in high demand at the moment are dental hygienists, and first-semester student Daliah Gardoque’s program at the Toronto College of Dental Hygiene and Auxiliaries is in OSAP limbo, too.

“It’s extremely stressful,” said Gardoque, who started an online petition asking the ministry to “urgently address the ongoing uncertainty.”

“I’m privileged enough to have a decent amount of savings, but that’s only to keep me afloat until the end of first semester. So after that, I wouldn’t really know what I’m going to do. But a lot of people are right now not focused on their exams just because they’re thinking like, ‘Is there any point?’ Because if OSAP doesn’t come in the next month, they might as well drop out.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 6, 2026.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press