Statement on Court Ruling

Tuition Fee Hikes Through the Back Door

On June 6, 2007, two Ontario college students, acting on behalf of thousands of other students across Ontario, launched a $200 million class action lawsuit against the province's 24 community colleges of applied arts and technology, claiming that certain types of prohibited ancillary fees had been illegally collected.

This website was created by the Canadian Federation of Students to support this important legal challenge in order to defend the principal that no educational institution should be able to circumvent the law in order to download additional costs onto individual students.

The Canadian Federation of Students, which represents more than 500,000 college and university students from coast to coast, and nearly 300,000 students in Ontario, helped the plaintiffs connect with their legal counsel and compile the background research for their case. In doing so, the Federation hopes that this class action lawsuit will be successful in seeking compensation for every student who has paid illegal ancillary fees to an Ontario community college.

For this case to be fully successful in preventing the future collection of such fees, it requires the support from students and parents across the province. Together, we can pressure the government to:

• stop unfair fee increases by strictly enforcing current prohibitions against back-door tuition fee increases; and
• provide adeqaute funding for the colleges.