Career college saw OSAP usage rise 6,000 per cent, but wasn’t cut off this spring

TORONTO — An Ontario career college with four campuses saw the amount of students receiving financial aid explode over a few years, including an increase of nearly 6,000 per cent at one campus, but it was not one of the schools the government cut off this spring.

The Canadian College of Business, Science and Technology, with campuses in the Greater Toronto Area, had 562 students accessing the Ontario Student Assistance Program in 2021-22, and three years later that number was 17,157, according to data obtained by The Canadian Press through a freedom-of-information request.

That is an increase of nearly 3,000 per cent.

One campus went from 74 students on OSAP in 2021-22 to 4,481 in 2024-25, an increase of 5,955 per cent. The amount of provincial grants for students at that one campus rose by more than 8,000 per cent in that timeframe, to $39 million.

The students at four campuses in total in that latter year accounted for about $151 million in provincial grants.

The vast majority of the growth in OSAP usage was driven by students enrolled in online programs, the data shows. More than 97 per cent of the students accessing OSAP at the school in 2024-25 were online, a stark difference from 2021-22, when six per cent of the students were studying online.

Critics question why the college was not among the six schools that Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn denied OSAP eligibility to this May.

Quinn at the time cut off four Academy of Learning locations and two campuses of Citi College of Canadian Careers, citing concerns about admissions practices. They are fighting the decision in court and deny any wrongdoing. Allegations made by the government have not been proven in court.

In early October, Quinn announced a pause on OSAP payments to all career colleges and other private post-secondary institutions while KPMG conducts an audit of the sector, with the minister saying there is now evidence of systemic concerns. He has not flagged specific schools as being under suspicion.

Quinn has come under fire in the legislature over his handling of OSAP as opposition parties accuse him of not acting quickly enough, given that Career Colleges Ontario was raising concerns as early as January 2023.

He has defended his ministry’s actions by saying repeatedly that the ministry heard increasing concerns in late 2024, did targeted inspections in the summer of 2025, prevented all career colleges from qualifying for grants — only allowing loans — earlier this year, and made six schools ineligible for OSAP this May.

“I’m not sure how we’re said to be turning a blind eye when, this year, we eliminated the eligibility of six of those institutions prior to pausing OSAP across the whole sector,” Quinn said in the legislature on Nov. 3.

The increases at two of the Canadian College of Business, Science and Technology campuses in particular far outstrip the percentages seen at those six schools.

NDP colleges and universities critic Peggy Sattler said if the ministry did not notice a 6,000 per cent increase, that suggests “total incompetence and mismanagement.”

“It just gets worse and worse for this government, which is what we suspected all along from this complete failure to provide any oversight of what was going on with the OSAP program,” she said.

“Why was the government allowing this money to continue to go out the door when clearly there were some questions that needed to be asked?”

Neither the Canadian College of Business, Science and Technology nor its president have responded to multiple requests for comment.

Citi College has said its growth was in part due to aligning its programs with the job market, and that a more accurate calculation would use a pre-pandemic figure and rely on a compound annual growth rate, in which case it would have been at about 38 per cent per year.

The Academy of Learning has said its campuses often serve newcomers and adults retraining for a second career, and as those populations grew, enrolment grew with it.

Career Colleges Ontario said that it conducted an “extensive membership review” and as of Sept. 1, the Canadian College of Business, Science and Technology is no longer a member of its association, but it did not say why.

A spokesperson for Quinn would not say if the Canadian College of Business, Science and Technology was on the government’s radar or if the minister finds its growth percentages concerning.

“As of this year, private career colleges are no longer eligible for OSAP grants,” Bianca Giacoboni wrote in response.

“As we have already done in some cases, when serious concerns are identified, we will not hesitate to cut an institution off from OSAP entirely.”

Quinn announced Thursday that legislation being tabled next week will seek to put a cap on OSAP-funded enrolment growth at career colleges and ban online-only programs from OSAP eligibility, among other measures he says will strengthen accountability.

The federal government last year flagged the schools Ontario ultimately made ineligible for OSAP, but would not say why Canadian College of Business, Science and Technology was not among them.

“While Canadian College of Business, Science and Technology was not one of the institutions that was identified for potential suspension in September 2025, the Government of Canada continues to work closely with provinces and territories to monitor program activity, ensure compliance, and investigate potential risks to the integrity of student financial assistance,” Employment and Social Development Canada spokesperson Natalie Huneault wrote in a statement.

“As potential risks and issues of concern are identified, further reviews and investigations may be triggered.”

The six schools Quinn made ineligible for OSAP saw the number of students receiving OSAP increase between about 650 per cent and 1,375 per cent from 2021-22 to 2024-25.

Increases at the four Canadian College of Business, Science and Technology campuses, meanwhile, were about 1,663 per cent at one campus, 2,230 at another, with the other two seeing increases of 5,282 per cent and 5,955 per cent.

Liberal critic Tyler Watt said numbers like that should have been impossible to miss.

“(The Ontario government) only cut off the campuses the federal government warned them about, which raises the question of whether they would have ever caught any bad actors on their own, and how many more they missed,” he wrote in a statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2026.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press