When you first arrive in Sault Ste. The steel plant announces itself before the city does, according to Marie from the south. The slow moan of industry, scaffolding, and smoke. Located a few kilometers away, Algoma University is a smaller, more subdued institution that has spent years attempting to face its past as a residential school. Students still know their professors by first name on this type of campus. which contributes to the uncomfortable feeling of the present.
The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation vigorously opposed Algoma’s presentation of its operating budget for 2026–2027 as a “fiscal reality for a sustainable future” at the beginning of May. In a town already taking in the news of widespread layoffs at Algoma Steel, that polished and bureaucratic phrase seems odd. As you stroll through the city, you get the impression that the term “sustainable” has become somewhat meaningless. Specifically, sustainable for whom?
The head of the local AUSS chapter, Michelle Dayboll, didn’t hold back. Everyone is harmed by austerity measures that lead to layoffs, she said, and if you read that sentence slowly enough, you can hear the weariness. Her members did not establish tuition policies, cap the number of international students, or freeze domestic tuition for ten years. These are the individuals that students encounter when they enter the financial aid desk, the accessibility services counter, or the registrar’s office. Cutting them doesn’t reduce body fat. Connective tissue is eliminated.
The OSSTF response is intriguing because Algoma isn’t portrayed as the antagonist. Martha Hradowy has described the provincewide funding model as essentially flawed, and the federation appears to see the university as a victim of something much larger. The fact that Ontario has the lowest postsecondary funding per student in Canada is frequently brought up in these discussions, but it never quite seems to elicit the kind of reaction you would anticipate at Queen’s Park.
The union’s statements also contain a more subdued grievance that doesn’t always make headlines. Dayboll noted that some institutions had administration-to-staff ratios as high as 2:1. It’s an impressive figure. Ratios alone can be misleading, and universities have legitimate administrative needs, so whether or not it tells the whole story is another matter. Nevertheless, this type of data point persists.
Everything is sharpened by the political context. A line that worked well during tariff concerns earlier this year was Premier Doug Ford’s repeated pledge to fight like hell for every job in Ontario. Then came Algoma Steel’s layoffs. The university then declared its own budget cuts. The difference between rhetoric and math is difficult to ignore.
It’s unclear what will happen next. The union is advocating for a change to the funding formula, which has been proposed previously by various governments in various decades, with little progress. Perhaps things are different this time. Perhaps it isn’t. However, in Sault Ste. The people who respond to student emails at nine in the morning on Mondays, Marie, Brampton, and Timmins, are waiting to learn if their jobs will survive a budget cycle written in language that already seems like a verdict.
