Thank you for your question.
We've noticed that most U15 group universities are in urban centres. The first problem students face is therefore housing, because most of the students who want to study at these large universities have to cohabit. They have to leave their parents' home and find somewhere new to live. This sometimes happens because the only programs to which they have access, and for which university assistance is available, are institutions of the U15 group, which once again are all in urban centres.
Furthermore, most students don't have the means to live comfortably with the funding available to them. In a city like Ottawa, it costs approximately $1,200 per month for a room in shared accommodation. Students therefore use most of their research funding to cope with the cost of living. They don't have the means to live suitably and pay for their rent and food.
If you speak with the student associations, you'll hear that at the end of each year, our student aid funds have run dry. This affects every campus. We can't handle the number of requests we get from students. Even if they have financial support from the universities, they don't always manage to make ends meet because of current circumstances. It's even worse for graduate students, because most of them are also parents. It's therefore impossible for them to live in shared accommodation. They need a house, which is even more expensive. As a result, their financial needs are enormous. That's more or less where things stand right now.
So to begin with, in terms of what has to be done to remedy the problems, provinces like Ontario could follow Quebec's lead. A room on the campus of the Université du Québec à Rimouski, l'UQAR, costs $380 per month. At the University of Ottawa, it's $1,000 or more. That really affects the student experience.
As for the cost of living, in provinces like Quebec, once students have completed their courses, their tuition fees are reduced, which leaves them with more money in their pockets. That's not the case in the other provinces. At the graduate level, after the first year, for example, Ph.D. students don't have any more courses, but they continue to pay full tuition fees.
If arrangements were made for students to pay only what's required for their circumstances, it could reduce the burden of high tuition fees, and student grants could be used for their actual purpose, which is to support students and enable them to focus on their research.