Two months into the school year, Humber student Jhade Findlay-Laidley is still waiting for her OSAP funding. Findlay-Laidley is a full-time student and mother who relies on OSAP to help cover tuition and living expenses.
She said she can no longer cover the cost of daycare for her child and is now forced to look for gig work in her spare time. She has been communicating with Humber’s financial aid office and with OSAP directly, trying to understand why the funding she was promised has yet to be deposited in her account.
“How am I supposed to survive? They haven’t paid my tuition. They deducted it, but they haven’t paid it,” said Findlay-Laidley. “I’m surviving off air.”
When she does receive her tuition, she said, it will be half of what she received last year.
Findlay-Laidley is not the only Humber Student still waiting to receive their OSAP funding this year. The delays come amid growing scrutiny of the province’s oversight of OSAP to private career colleges and the reduction in OSAP grants from 85 per cent to 25 per cent for students attending public post-secondary institutions.
Meanwhile, university and college students are planning a one-day strike on Nov. 5. Students can join a province-wide school walkout to protest Premier Doug Ford’s cuts to education, but many Humber students remain unaware of the demonstration.
“I don’t know anything about the walkouts. If I knew, yeah, I would go,” said Humber student Eza Eza.
Eza is studying early childhood education and said she received only 10 per cent of the funding she did last year. Eza only took the grant portion of her OSAP.
“I work on the weekends. I have placements for my class too. Working on the weekends is hard,” she said.
Another student, Jaspreet Kooner, said she “would for sure go to a protest”, but was not sure when the walkout was happening.
Kooner has not received any OSAP funding, despite submitting all of her forms over the summer and emailing OSAP directly.
She has been using her disability support funding to cover her expenses. Kooner said ODSP funding only covered her expenses for 2 months.
“I work four jobs, but that just doesn’t cover everything I need,” she said.
IGNITE, Humber’s student union, says numerous students are struggling this school year.
There has been a 74 per cent increase in students using IGNITE’s free soup bar this year, IGNITE representative Emily Edwards said. The soup bar is the most used service for students facing food and financial insecurity, she said.
“We’ve distributed the same number of soups in the first two weeks of the service as we did in the entire months of September and October of fall 2025,” she said.
IGNITE has also seen an increase in emails from students impacted by the changes to OSAP.
“They’re feeling unsupported, or they’re stressed about their finances now. And about how this might deter them from their futures, whether that’s going on to another post-secondary path or even just continuing the degree they’re in,” Edwards said.
IGNITE released an OSAP page and organizes events to help Humber students fight for OSAP. Their next event is taking place from Oct. 19 to 21, at all campus locations. “Students Write Back” lets students sign a letter to Premier Doug Ford, or to write their own letter to their local MPP.
Last March, following the announcement of cuts to OSAP, Humber students joined other post-secondary institutions at rallies at Queen's Park. While the Canadian Federation of Students said they may organize another centralized rally in the future, their decision to organize the Nov. 5 province-wide walkouts this semester is rooted in the need for students to also organize locally.
“We’re trying to diversify our tactics, to ensure that when we talk about power being felt, it’s truly being felt in every corner of the province. So that students don’t just associate having power with a rally at Queen's Park,” CFS representative Cyrielle Ngleka said.
While IGNITE said it is willing to support anyone wishing to participate in a walkout, widespread campus mobilization efforts to promote the walkout have yet to take effect. The walkout is less than three weeks away.
Ngleka said students should put pressure on their student unions to organize and attend the walkout, regardless of whether they believe this particular event is going to solve the entire problem. It’s not about getting OSAP back through a single demonstration, she said.
“We want to show the government that we’re not backing down, that we’re not gonna let up without a fight. If we just stay quiet at the end of the day, there’s a level of complacency that develops,” Ngleka said.
Humber alumnus Etay Beaton, who went viral as “The OSAP Guy” on TikTok last year, was cited by the premier as a reason behind lowering OSAP grant limits.
“If you really want changes, you gotta fight for it. Nothing’s gonna fall into your lap. You gotta continue to protest if you want change,” Beaton said. “College students, university students, get back your OSAP."
