An Ontario post-secondary institution is introducing voluntary staff exit packages as colleges across the province continue to grapple with financial pressures linked to declining international student revenue and a prolonged tuition freeze.

Humber Polytechnic says it is launching a Voluntary Employee Exit Program (VEEP), citing what it describes as significant fiscal challenges.

In a letter to the Humber community, president and CEO Ann Marie Vaughan said the school is facing budgetary strains despite recent provincial funding for the sector.

“Humber continues to navigate significant fiscal pressures outside of this investment, including caps on international students, rising operational costs driven by inflation, and the structural impacts of years of constrained funding,” Vaughan wrote.

She said those factors have placed increasing pressure on the institution’s finances.

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“Unfortunately, we have arrived at the time when we must make more fundamental choices,” the letter states.

Humber said the voluntary exit program is being introduced in an effort to minimize involuntary job losses.

The program is open to all full-time employees, including the executive team, and offers financial packages for eligible staff who choose to leave.

Employees have until March 9 to indicate their interest.

The institution says it will assess participation levels after the deadline before determining whether further workforce reductions are required.

The move comes amid broader financial challenges facing Ontario’s publicly funded colleges, with the past year being marked by falling revenue from international students and the continued freeze on domestic tuition.

Several colleges, including Seneca and Algonquin, have announced campus closures, while others, such as Sheridan College, have suspended dozens of programs.

Other institutions have also reduced staffing levels.

Meanwhile, the Ontario government has defended its funding commitments to the post-secondary sector.

“We’re investing a record amount. No one’s ever invested upwards to seven billion dollars in our colleges and universities. Those are staggering numbers,” Premier Doug Ford told reporters on Wednesday.

Ford also praised Humber, calling it the largest college in the country.

“I wish them all the best, drive efficiencies, run it like a business, educate our kids for jobs of the future.”

Humber acknowledged the uncertainty created by the staffing review and said further updates will be provided once decisions are finalized.

“Change is never easy. I believe our community will emerge from this time stronger, more agile, more innovative,” Vaughan wrote.

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After the COVID-19 pandemic,  ridership on Toronto’s buses, streetcars and subways struggled to rebound.

But it surged back in nearby cities.

Brampton, Mississauga and parts of Waterloo Region were among the suburbs that rapidly recovered from COVID-19, setting records for the number of passengers and struggling with overcrowding.

Then, the federal government put a cap on the number of international students who could study in Ontario. The move appears to be directly linked to suddenly plummeting ridership in those cities, which are now recording millions fewer rides.

“In 2024, federal policy changes reduced immigration inflows and began to affect ridership,” the City of Brampton wrote in a statement to Global News. “Demand slowed late in the year and declines continued into Spring and Summer 2025, resulting in a revenue shortfall.”

Mississauga, for example, saw its student ridership drop 24 per cent last year and its total number of riders fall by 10 per cent.

“A 10 per cent drop in ridership does seem significant,” Mississauga’s Miway transit director Maureen Cosyn Heath acknowledged. “Certainly, the policy change is an impact on that.”

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In Waterloo, Grand River Transit provided four million fewer rides in 2025 than it had the year before.

“Decreases in ridership were mainly due to reductions in the local student population,” a recent report from the agency explained.

The cap on international students was brought in by the federal government in January 2024 and then tightened. It’s been blamed by the Ontario government for financial struggles at provincial colleges as even overseas students who can get visas begin to stay away.

Cosyn Heath said the long-term impacts of the policy would mean Mississauga has to change how it plans its transit system, perhaps dropping or reducing its routes serving campuses or student housing.

“We’re aware that the changes on international students are going to have a permanent impact on us in the longer term,” she said. “So we revise our ridership projections, and then we pivot and shift to figuring out what new markets exist that we need to serve better.”

Brampton, too, said it would be “aligning service delivery with demand and long-term sustainability.”

Despite the short-term hit to transit ridership around Toronto, one transit expert believes it’s a bump in the road rather than an existential threat.

“Brampton was the transit success story of North America long before the international boom,” Jonathan English, principal at Infrastory Insights, told Global News.

“They experienced a 250 per cent ridership bump before international students arrived. Is it a significant drop? For sure. And will that have financial consequences? Definitely. But I think we need to keep it in perspective.”

In Mississauga, the transit agency is taking a pause to assess the impacts, but not scaling back. After increasing ridership hours, MiWay will freeze them for 2026 as it works out how to address a 10 per cent drop in travellers.

“You’re not going to see service cuts unilaterally across the system as a result of one pocket of our ridership,” Cosyn Heath said.

English said that’s the right approach, urging cities to ensure service improves to attract new riders who aren’t as reliant on transit as students might be.

“It’s hard to change routes before ridership data comes in. Now the ridership data has come in and there is an opportunity for the systems to respond — and they need to respond,” he said.

“Are some routes going to permanently or, for the foreseeable future, have less ridership? Absolutely… but overall the cities continue to grow, people continue to travel to work, to play, to school, so the key goal has to be here ot make sure we maintain a basic quality service level.”

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