Do good. Give heck.

In the context of an ongoing project offsite, I wrote the below today and thought it was perhaps worth sharing more widely. One of my current topics of interest is propaganda, which I think the Doug Ford government calling Bill 33 the “Supporting Children and Students Act” most certainly is.

(Note also: I added minor updates to ongoing projects Bell and Bags. The wrongfully punished driver got unbanned, but otherwise there has been no satisfactory resolution anywhere. (I might try to figure out small claims court.))

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One of the things that came up [on this Ontario law project] today is a change in vocabulary in recent years, from “publicly funded” universities to “publicly assisted.” Source: https://academicmatters.ca/how-the-student-choice-initiative-seeks-to-silence-student-voices/

The “Tuition Fee Framework and Ancillary Fee Guidelines” published in 2019 by the Ontario Ministry does use the language “publicly assisted.” https://www.tcu.gov.on.ca/pepg/mtcu-university-tuition-framework-guidelines-mar2019-en.pdf

The Ontario Court of Appeal struck the framework down because the relevant provincial legislation didn’t authorize the Ontario government to make law that way; they had to amend the law first. https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2021/2021onca553/2021onca553.html

Then the Ontario government amended the relevant legislation, giving themselves the authority to make regulations on [student fees], through “Bill 33,” which they propagandized as the “Supporting Children and Students Act, 2025” https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-44/session-1/bill-33?tabSelected=view-bill#BK5

Amendments to statute law in Bill 33 also allow police forces in schools and give government control of school boards (see: the Education Act https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90e02), plus the government gets to dictate in law to universities and colleges what counts as “merit” for the purposes of admission to higher education. See, not yet in force, sections 16.0.2 and 21.1 of the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities Act: https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90m19#BK31.

So at the moment we’re waiting to see what the regulations say. In theory they will be published on the Regulatory Registry for a period of public comment before coming into force. https://www.regulatoryregistry.gov.on.ca/home

In case any of that is of use or interest to anyone.