Ontario Government is back with student grants

The government has announced $100M is new grants for 16,000 low-income students (those with a household income of less than $35K/year). Sounds interesting, but leaves a few big questions hanging out there:

- what do you define as a "household"? When applying for OSAP, the government assumes a level of contribution from your parents, even if you haven't lived with or spoken to them in a long time. So you could see the problem of a kid living on his/her own trying to go to school but being ineligible due to their parents income level. And it takes 5 years of living on your own to be considered outside of your parents income. This is a bad deal, I've seen this happen at school.
- They take pains to state "this not a loan, its a grant". So? Does that mean it doesn't have to be paid back? Under what conditions? Don't just go handing out a heavier debt load to students, especially poor ones who may have trouble in school. If it's a handout with no expectation of repayment (based on some criteria of course) bravo.
- As NDP MPP Rosario Marchese says - what about the middle class? Ever seen a middle-class family try to send four or five kids to school. It doesn't always work out well for the last in line. What about the family making 36K a year? Are they out of luck?

I wouldn't be surprised if post-secondary schools take this opportunity to raise tuition either. Be wary of new "student access fees" or some crap like that. If this is truly an attempt to help less fortunate students get a chance to go to school and not have to split their time between work and study unfairly, then I really do applaud the government on this one.