Ontario college students and workers call on provincial candidates to fund post-secondary education [Video]

About 20 workers, students and local MPP candidates gathered outside Hamilton’s Mohawk College Wednesday — where a fifth of full-time jobs have been cut since December — to call on the province to better fund post-secondary education.

Unionized college workers also rallied in Kingston, Belleville and Toronto, drawing attention to a series of recent job and program cuts they blame in part on the Ontario government. 

Cuts at colleges are affecting entire communities, said Heather Giardine-Tuck, who represents members of the faculty union.

“We educate the students that are doing your x-rays, that are running the machines in the local shops. We turn out so many students that are working in their own home communities. We need to save this system,” Giardine-Tuck, president of Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) Local 240, told CBC Hamilton.

The recent layoffs at Mohawk College are in addition to over a dozen programming cuts there, part of an effort to make up for a …