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NEADS calls on provincial governments to immediately increase post-secondary education funding to support disabled students

May 28th, 2025

NEADS in collaboration with Lindsey Byrt (Owner/President of the Alberta Captioning & CART Inc), the Canadian Federation of Students,  
 
The National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS) is disappointed to learn that Humber Polytechnic has chosen to lay off Accessibility Consultants working in Accessible Learning Services. With caseloads of over 400 students each, Accessibility Consultants are counsellors - a non-teaching faculty position within the faculty union - who support students with a wide variety of disabilities and academic accommodation needs. The decision to lay off these employees speaks to a concerning trend in post-secondary institutions across Canada of eliminating crucial positions of student support due to stagnant funding from provincial governments. This trend is echoed across most colleges in Ontario and has also been seen nationally at institutions such as Concordia University of Edmonton, Medicine Hat College, and Bow Valley College.  
 
NEADS has also recently learned that the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology has paused admissions to their Captioning and Court Reporting Program. Students in their first year of this program are currently being denied access to the second year of the program which would result in a Captioning & Court Reporting diploma. This diploma qualifies individuals to provide CART captioning, Live-written CART captioning helps individuals by providing real-time, accurate access to spoken communication and this ensures full access to participate in life, work, education, and community. This is yet another blow to accessibility in the post-secondary space and joins the lengthening list of programs being cut across the country that have a significant impact on the disabled community. This list includes the Mental Wellness and Addictions Worker program at St. Lawrence College as well as the Chronic Disease Management graduate certificate program at Fanshawe College. The loss of these programs directly impacts Canadians with disabilities.  
 
These reductions in critical staff and programming in both Ontario and Alberta are symptoms of a larger crisis facing the post-secondary education sector. Both provinces are engaging in a long-term, systemic underfunding of post-secondary education as emphasized by their most recent budgets. The 2025 Ontario Budget indicated a decrease of provincial spending on post-secondary education from $13.3 billion in 2023-24 to $12.8 billion in 2027-28. This reduction in both base funding and student financial assistance forces post-secondary institutions to eliminate programs and employees which will undoubtedly impact student experience, and this is exacerbated by the multiple marginalizations disabled students face. A similar decision was made in the 2025 Alberta Budget evidenced by a reduction of 5.2% in post-secondary education spending when factoring in the indicated 0.4% cut in the budget in tandem with inflation and population growth. This contributes to a total decrease of post-secondary education by 23.1% since the 2020-21 fiscal year.
 
This trend of shrinking post-secondary spending by provincial governments is a Canadian trend emphasized by a recent article by the Higher Education Strategy Associates. While over the last year, provincial budgets released across the country have increased post-secondary funding by around 1%, the five-year picture of post-secondary funding evidenced in the following chart tells a different story.
 
Provincial governments are choosing not to fund post-secondary education and place blame on institutions for financial mismanagement while ensuring education transfers do not adequately support the growing post-secondary sector and rising inflation. The percentage of post-secondary education spending by provincial governments across Canada within the context of total provincial budgets is steadily decreasing – while budgets grow, investments in the future of Canada shrink.
 
Budgeted Provincial Expenditures on Post-Secondary Education as a Percentage of Total Budgeted Provincial Expenditures, Canada and selected provinces, 2006-07 to 2025-26.
 
Disabled students will continue to be negatively affected by the reduction of support staff by colleges and face the consequences of overworked accessibility staff managing higher caseloads with fewer employment supports. Additionally, people with disabilities more broadly will suffer from losses of post-secondary programs that are intended to train individuals to support the disabled community. We call upon the provincial governments of Alberta and Ontario to immediately increase per-student post-secondary funding to put a stop to this crisis.
 
Isabella Fiore (they/she | iel/elle)
NEADS Communications and Partnerships Director
National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS) 

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