By SUN MEDIA
In a practical rather than criminal sense, York University's 50,000 students are the victims of an ongoing fraud.
It has been perpetrated by labour and management at York, aided yesterday by Premier Dalton McGuinty.
It's fraud because students are not getting the education they were promised and for which they paid, in advance, in good faith. Aside from millions spent on tuition, many have also committed huge amounts of money to living expenses.
But their lives have been on hold ever since Nov. 6, when the strike by 3,400 contract faculty and teaching assistants, members of CUPE Local 3903, shut down the university.
These students cannot commit to summer jobs to earn tuition for next year, because they don't know when their studies this year will end. Also in limbo are those applying to graduate schools.
Yesterday, after 11 weeks of deadlock and a 63% rejection of York's last contract offer in a provincially-supervised vote, McGuinty called in top mediator Reg Pearson to "bang a few heads together" in a bid to reach a settlement.
Gee, premier, thanks for showing up. Problem is, McGuinty refuses to do what he should have done weeks ago, recall the legislature and pass back-to-work legislation, sending the dispute to arbitration.
As Tory MPP Peter Shurman, who has been urging McGuinty to intervene, noted yesterday: "To say that he wants a speedy settlement to this dispute ... at the 11-week mark, is disingenuous ... This is an irresponsible statement by an irresponsible premier on behalf of an irresponsible government, and it owes an explanation to the people of Ontario and certainly the 50,000 young people who have been waiting around for 11 weeks worrying about their future."
Finally, how ironic McGuinty, who calls himself "the education premier", seems unaware that the few major employers looking to expand operations in a recession, aren't likely to do so in a jurisdiction that leaves a major institution of higher learning in limbo for 11 weeks and counting.
After all, what if they ever wanted to employ its graduates?