By Dara Hakimzadeh
Stuart Ryan has a message. As the Communist party’s candidate in Ottawa Centre, Ryan knows he is not likely to get elected on Oct. 2.
But this father of two says the public and post-secondary education systems in Ontario will suffer if the Progressive Conservative party remains in power at Queen’s Park.
Revised high school funding formulas have “made it so difficult for the board to provide the services that students really need,” he says.
For example, his son John, who is in Grade 5 sells chocolate bars to enable him to buy supplies which the government used to provide.
University students often shuffle into Ryan’s office on the campus at Carleton University. He is a representative of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, a union that bargains on behalf of teaching assistants for wage increases.
As a student radical in the 1960s, Ryan protested the war in Vietnam and the lack of affordable housing in Kingston, Ont.
An early introduction to politics came from home.
“In my family we talked a lot at the dinner table. My father was a law professor at Queens. He was a Red Tory then and is now a New Democratic Party supporter,” he says.
After completing his journalism degree at Carleton University, he went to McGill University to study law, with aspirations of becoming a social movement lawyer.
Unfortunately, Ryan did not have the marks to stay in law but he now fights for increased education funding and teacher rights with the Communist Party of Canada.
A 1998 Statistics Canada report notes the average university student debt in Canada is close to $25,000.
In three years, Philip, 15, Ryan’s eldest son will apply to university.
“I know I can’t even afford it right now,” he says.