The timing is especially cruel. The news that 86 support staff positions at Algoma University would be eliminated came as a shock to Sault Ste. Timmins managing its own financial concerns, Marie still reeling from the shock of more than a thousand Algoma Steel layoffs, and Brampton far enough out of the news to be mostly ignored. It didn’t go unnoticed by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. OSSTF took a strong stance, denouncing the cuts as catastrophic, stating that the situation could have been prevented, and denouncing a provincial government that it holds directly accountable for the circumstances that made this result nearly certain.
On their own, the figures are striking enough. Due to declining enrollment, Algoma University anticipates an operating deficit of $16.45 million for the 2026–2027 academic year. The university is eliminating 86 full-time support staff positions in an effort to close some of that gap. According to Michelle Dayboll, president of the OSSTF bargaining unit, these employees “supported students every day.” These 86 jobs make up about 40% of the support staff bargaining unit for OSSTF District 35. It’s not a trim. It’s a structural injury.
The directness of the argument is what distinguishes OSSTF’s response from typical union boilerplate. Martha Hradowy, president of the Federation, did not limit her criticism to the boardroom at Algoma University. She went further, citing Ontario’s funding model as the true cause of the issue, pointing out that the province still has the lowest per-student funding of any Canadian province. For a province that regularly markets its universities as world-class, this is a damning distinction. Due to ongoing underfunding, universities like Algoma are heavily dependent on tuition from overseas students, and when enrollment patterns change globally, as they have, there is just no provincial buffer to lessen the effects. What ought to have been a policy risk rather than a personal one ultimately falls on students and frontline employees.
Dayboll brought up another important point: according to reports, Algoma’s administration-to-staff ratio is as high as 2:1 in some areas. If that number is correct, it highlights an unsettling aspect of how institutional resources have been allocated despite the decline in support services. The university may have its own explanation for those ratios, such as restructuring timelines, legacy contracts, or transition costs, but OSSTF isn’t inclined to ignore the optics of eliminating the individuals closest to students while maintaining management layers.
Observing all of this, one gets the impression that Algoma University’s predicament is more complicated than a single institution’s poor management. Ontario’s funding model was never intended to withstand this kind of pressure. In February 2026, the province unveiled a new long-term model that would increase annual operating funding for colleges, universities, and Indigenous Institutes from $5 billion to $7 billion. This was presented by the Ministry of Colleges as a historic intervention. For the 86 employees in Sault Ste. who have already received notices, whether it arrives in time to matter. The province hasn’t directly addressed the question of Marie and Brampton, which is a completely different matter.
This is more difficult to write off as a local story given the larger context. Sault Ste. When the university cuts came, Marie was already dealing with the loss of over a thousand jobs at Algoma Steel. In a community that lacks the economic depth to withstand those shocks at the same time, two of the city’s largest institutional employers are contracting within months of one another. Premier Ford and Minister Quinn, who both made highly publicized trips to the Sault to announce investments in other sectors, have been urged by OSSTF to return and confront the workers whose jobs vanished under their supervision. Whether that meeting will take place is still up in the air. However, the question itself reveals how much the province’s relationship with these communities has deteriorated.
