Ontario has not said when aid will return to private colleges, and Premier Doug Ford has asked KPMG to give lower-risk schools earlier attention, The Canadian Press reported Nov. 4.
Ontario says payments through the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) to private postsecondary institutions will stay paused until strengthened validation checks are in place. Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn said Oct. 20 that the revised process is expected in the new year, after legislation is introduced and passed. Proposed safeguards include a cap on OSAP-funded enrollment, excluding predominantly online-only programs and stronger student identity checks.
Ontario engaged KPMG in August 2026 to audit OSAP applications at private institutions. The ministry's initial concerns ranged from clusters of applicants in the same locations to shared college ownership and ties to immigration-services firms; it also questioned how well schools verified student identities and enrollment. The province said it paused payments associated with the institutions during the audit, notified the Auditor General and referred the matter to the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP). Ontario outlined the audit and pause in its earlier account of the OSAP review.
The Canadian Press reported that students were withdrawing from APlus Institute, a dental-hygiene college, and that vice-president Tatiana Bramnik was weighing possible layoffs. Bramnik called it, “This is a crisis they created, and now they don’t know how to deal with it.” The Canadian Press also reported that Career Colleges Ontario said students at compliant schools should regain access to aid, which the association said helps cover living expenses as well as tuition.
The ministry said investigators began in-person inspections at eight private career colleges in the week before its Oct. 20 statement. The province has not announced a date for individual colleges to regain access to aid; its stated next step is to put the strengthened validation process in place after legislation passes.
