Students suing Ontario colleges

BY LAUREL MYERS

Cambrian College is one of 24 community colleges in Ontario named in a $200 million class-action lawsuit claiming illegal fees have been collected from students since 2004.

This June, two former college students, Amanda Hassum, 20, a graduate of Conestoga College, and Daniel Roffey, 26, a graduate of George Brown College, launched the lawsuit to stop the collection of illegal student fees and seek compensation for students and graduates who have been forced to pay them. They are acting as representative plaintiffs on behalf of thousands of students in Ontario.

“For years, students have suspected some of the additional fees paid at colleges and universities were high and increasing quickly,” said Joel Duff, spokesperson for the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) – who represent nearly 300,000 students in Ontario and assisted the plaintiffs in obtaining legal counsel and compiling the background research for their case.

Duff explained the issue first came to their attention when representatives of the CFS were participating in a government sponsored committee to review the issue of college ancillary fees.

“During a meeting, (the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities) acknowledged that certain fees being collected on almost every campus, though being collected universally were actually prohibited,” he said. “That demonstrated the government was aware of it but doing nothing to stop it.”

On stopunfairfees.ca, the website dedicated to the class-action lawsuit, the addition fees or “ancillary fees” are described as ones that can be applied to the costs of enhancing the cultural, social or recreational life of the students, or to provide other non-academic services to students.

However, government policy prohibits the collection of these fees to fund capital projects or core academic operations, such as library, computing and learning centre service, that are already covered by tuition fees or general purpose operating grants, according to a CFS news release.

In order to increase or introduce new fees, the policy requires student participation and support in the development and implementation of those fees, as well as an agreement between the college administration and student government representatives.

Though the lawsuit was filed four months ago, Cambrian College president Sylvia Barnard said the college is unsure of exactly what the implications of the lawsuit will be. “At this point we’re just waiting,” Barnard said, adding there have been no ramifications to this point.

As to the validity of the lawsuit against Cambrian, the president emphasized there were no illegal fees included in the tuition costs.

“We have regulations that tell where we’re allowed to charge fees and we are in compliance with those,” she said.

However, there are a number of fees in question in Cambrian’s tuition breakdown, according to the Duff.

One such fee is the Technology fee, set at $110 per student per year, which is expressly excluded from the types of services for which an ancillary fee can be levied, the CFS spokesperson explained.

Other fees in question include the capital building fee, the student support fee, and the administration or registration fee – a total of over $400 approximately.

Though the ultimate goal of the lawsuit is to have the monies reimbursed to the students and the collection of the illegal ancillary fees abolished entirely, Duff said the CFS would also like to see the government increase funding for colleges in Ontario.

“This is a political issue as much as it is a legal one,” he said. “Though a lawsuit has been launched to find a legal remedy, I think the best was to resolve it politically in order to stop this issue from continuing. “As of this September, a whole new cohort of students have been affected.”

Because the lawsuit has been made on behalf of all college students, the representative plaintiffs – Hassum and Roffey – are unable to accept any kind of settlement outside of court that doesn’t include all the colleges involved.

“If this case is successful, every Cambrian student will be affected in a positive way,” Duff said.

A support group has also been set up on Facebook, called Stop Unfair Fees.ca. For additional information on the lawsuit, visit www.stopunfairfees.ca or the Canadian Federation of Students website at www.cfsontario.ca