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10 tweets,
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1/ A little historic perspective on OSAP spending, which I am sure will endear me to no one: the amount being spent on OSAP in 19-20 ($1.3 billion) is still over twice what it was in 2006-07 (roughly $540M/year). In fact, it's more than was being spent just 4 years ago ($1.1B).
2/ Wait, you say: so why are so many students upset about cutbacks? Because this year's cut is about $600M from last year. Student aid expanded *enormously* in the past few years, in two ways. Understanding this is key to understanding the current furore.
3/ When the Liberals moved to a targeted free tuition program in 2016, they did so by axing by i) moving aid which had previously been delivered as debt remission to "upfront" grants and ii) killing about $550million in education tax credits and shifting those $s to OSAP grants.
4/ So most of the "unsustainable" cost increase the Tories were raving about was in fact costless, because it was aid for by the tax credits. But in addition, costs rose because - guess what? - the program was successful! Lots of new clients showed up and received $s.
5/ We can argue a bit - and the AG did - about what constitutes success here. Some students getting these new large grants probably did not need them & certainly the program was overgenerous in some ways. But some new recipients were genuine high-need new-to-PSE students
6/ Anyways, the upshot is that OSAP has the same budget as three years ago, but a hell of a lot more clients (+20-30%, I believe), thus much less $ to support more clients. And the tax credits no longer exist. Inevitably, some people are receiving a lot less money than last year.
7/ So, true to say students getting a worse deal than students of last 2-3 years. But still getting more aid than they got 5 or even 10 years ago (even taking rising tuition into account). In fact would argue, students still probably better off than at any time since '93 or so.
8/ (93 was the year federal student loans went way up and the Ontario program went from being mostly grants to mostly loans. The effect on debt was enormous. 90s were also decade tuition was rising at inlfation +6% every year. Completely different from today.)
9/ In short: Tory OSAP policy is bad policy. But anyone talking about how younger generation is being uniquely burdened/attacked/whatever has literally no idea what they are talking about. The mid-to-late 90s were *much* worse
10/ For those of you who like graphs, here are total budgeted OSAP expenditures, by fiscal year end, in constant 2019 dollars. 
