MPPs return to Ontario Legislature for first time in 21 weeks

The legislature returned for the first time in almost five months, with much of the focus on colleges and universities minister Nolan Quinn. Opposition parties calling for him to resign. It's over the province's handling of financial assistance for private career college students, freezing it for all students, while the government investigates any potential fraud. Do you know who I feel terrible for? these honest students that got trapped in the private college system but the premier defends cutting off OSAP money for tens of thousands of them we identified the bad actors we reported the OPP and they're going to get charged but according to the opposition we should just ignore it and let more people come in we aren't doing that so far the OPP is not investigating just going through the information from the province the liberals say the government should have acted years ago against specific schools that were a concern court documents show Career Colleges Ontario first flagged issues to the government in january 2023 and you're acting like you're surprised oh there are some bad actors we just found out oh my gosh golly gee and i took action right away he says students and staff at colleges shouldn't be paying the price including those at schools with no issues. They're all being penalized because these guys screwed up royally. Minister Nolan Quinn says they did investigate and found suspicion of fraud at some schools with a third party audit continuing by KPMG. Well this started with a few bad actors and it was broad and systemic and that's why we brought in KPMG because we need to ensure that we have confidence in OSAP dollars flowing. The premier with this message for students who right now can't access student loans. After we we finished doing the audit. They'll be back next semester in January, but I want to get rid of these bad actors. But some students say without the loan money, they may not be able to continue their schooling. Meanwhile, the minister says he'll be bringing in tougher legislation this fall for private post-secondary schools, and it will remove any OSAP eligibility for ones with online-only programs. Lorenda Reddick-Hopp, CBC News, Toronto.