Give young Ontarians a real shot at the life their parents had: a serious education, a stable family, and a home of their own, in the province where they grew up.
Make education and early career success a real on-ramp into Ontario life.
Support young families starting and supporting children.
Help young people put down roots through rent relief and home ownership.
Ask anyone under thirty-five what they are supposed to do now, and watch them hesitate. Get the degree, then carry the debt for a decade. Find a partner, want children, then look at the cost of daycare and a two-bedroom and decide to wait. Do everything right and still watch a home of your own drift further out of reach every year.
For twenty years Ontario has asked its young people to accept less than their parents had and to feel lucky for it. That is a broken bargain, and broken bargains end with people leaving. The ones who go are usually the ones a province can least afford to lose.
This section is about making the bargain whole again. The promise behind it is plain and a little old-fashioned: if you grow up here, you should be able to get your education, start a family, and own a home before thirty-five, right here at home. We want staying in Ontario to feel like the obvious choice rather than the hard one. A province that cannot offer its own children a future will not keep them, and we mean to keep ours.
Lower the cost of education for students who finish their degree and build a career in Ontario. Open new pathways into trades, paid work, and public service while students are still in school.
Make Ontario a place where young families can plant roots. Lower the cost of having kids, expand childcare that fits how people actually work, and keep more of a family's earnings in the family.
Lower the upfront cost of owning a first home and give renters real tax relief while they save. The goal is straightforward: more young Ontarians owning by 35, with the supply to back it up.
| Goal | Lower | Upper |
|---|---|---|
| Total — A Hopeful Future For Young Ontarians | ($3.5B) | ($4.6B) |
| Free Tuition (With A Catch) | ($1.1B) | ($1.3B) |
| Start Families, Plant Roots | ($1.4B) | ($1.8B) |
| The Dream Of Homeownership Before 35 | ($1.0B) | ($1.5B) |
Net budgetary impact over the Ontario Budget 2026 baseline. Negative numbers represent net new provincial spending; positive numbers represent net savings or revenue.
Detail on how each cost or savings estimate was derived. All figures represent net budgetary impact over the Ontario Budget 2026 baseline.
| Idea | Lower | Upper | How it was estimated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Make OSAP loans interest-free and forgivable for graduates who stay. | ($1.0B) | ($1.2B) | Forgives the Ontario portion of OSAP debt (about $5-7B) over ten years for graduates who stay and work or build a business here. Annual cost is $0.8-1.5B depending on take-up. |
| Make OYAP-FAST the default Grade 11 trades pathway. | ($30M) | ($45M) | OYAP runs on about $25-30M today, with OYAP-FAST a pilot within it. Making it the default Grade 11 pathway adds coordinators, employer partnerships, equipment, and stipends, partly funded by reprioritizing existing skills spending. |
| Expand co-op and work-integrated learning across high school, college, and university. | ($20M) | ($30M) | The co-op tax credit and skills development funding cover the base program. The $20-30M pays for placement coordination and added paid placements in priority sectors. |
| Partner on a voluntary full-time paid national service program for Ontarians under 25. | $0 | $0 | Federal-led and federally funded; Ontario only helps administer it. No provincial cost. |
| Idea | Lower | Upper | How it was estimated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allow capped provincial income splitting for young households. | ($300M) | ($500M) | No such program exists today. The 2014 federal Family Tax Cut, capped at $2,000, cost about $2B nationally. An Ontario version with a $50,000 cap and tighter eligibility costs $300-500M/yr. |
| Renegotiate federal cost-share and increase childcare funding to make it flexible and portable. | ($1.0B) | ($1.2B) | Early learning and child care funding in Ontario runs about $3B/yr federal plus $1B provincial. An expanded program costs $4-4.8B/yr; Ontario's half under a 50/50 renewal is $2-2.4B/yr. |
| Expand practical childcare access for young families. | ($100M) | ($120M) | The existing before- and after-school program costs about $200M. Expanding it to fast-growing communities and non-standard hours costs $100-300M, some overlapping with the childcare renegotiation above. |
| Idea | Lower | Upper | How it was estimated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cut Ontario income taxes for young renters and families with young children. | ($900M) | ($1.0B) | About 700,000 Ontario renter households are headed by someone under 35. The $500/month rent deduction for renters under 35 and for families with a child under six, plus the $200 per-child top-up, costs $0.9-1.6B/yr depending on take-up. |
| Work with the federal government to allow 10% down payments for first-time buyers. | $0 | $0 | Set federally through CMHC; no direct cost to Ontario. |
| Offer a 5% down payment zero-interest loan for families under 35 with young kids. | ($100M) | ($500M) | Each year 50,000-70,000 Ontario home purchases involve families with young children. At 30% take-up, carrying those zero-interest loans costs $100-500M/yr. |
| Work with the federal government to allow 35- to 40-year mortgages. | $0 | $0 | Set federally; no direct cost to Ontario. |
| Give families portable mortgage stability. | $0 | $0 | Set federally through CMHC; no direct cost to Ontario. A 25- to 40-year fixed-rate option shifts mortgage risk to capital markets (like the US 30-year fixed) and would need a federal guarantee or new CMHC product. |
| Build the family-sized homes young people can actually live in. | $0 | $0 | Construction cost is counted in the Housing and Municipal section, not repeated here. |
Every dollar goes to work — with up to 75% back in tax credits.
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