Asking the Court for Help

On June 6, 2007, two students attending different Ontario Community Colleges launched a 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. Ancillary fees are charged to students for auxiliary services and are in addition to tuition fees. These two students have had the courage to come forward and launch a legal challenge on behalf of every student who has attended an Ontario Community College and have been forced to pay prohibited and illegal ancillary fees.

This case represents an unprecedented move by Ontario's college students and demonstrates the seriousness of student concern about the questionable lengths to which college and university administrations have gone to generate more revenue from students.



These students feel strongly that the regulatory framework established by the province to control the type and amount of mandatory fees charged to students is an important mechanism that must be enforced in order to ensure that the province's public post-secondary institutions remain accessible.

The two students who have launched this court challenge are acting as "representative plaintiffs" on behalf of their peers on campuses across Ontario.

They do not stand to benefit in any special or personal way that is different from their peers. If this lawsuit is successful, any compensation awarded by the courts will be to the benefit of all students who paid the illegal fees.

More importantly, a core principal would be defended—that no institution should be able to circumvent the law in order to download additional costs onto individual students.