Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation - Dissolution and Legacy

Dissolution and Legacy

In February 2008, the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper decided not to renew the CMSF at the end of its 10 year mandate. Instead, the federal government replaced the foundation with a new Canada Student Grants Program, which will distribute $350 million dollars per year to post-secondary education students. Much controversy has come to light since the government has announced this program, in which 250,000 students will now benefit per year, as opposed to the approximately 100,000 that are receiving money from the CMSF. Although the amount of money that the federal government will be putting towards post-secondary education has not changed dramatically, the average student award decreased from about $3000 per year to about $1250 per year.

Before the decision was made, Canada's two largest national post-secondary student organizations, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) and the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), took dramatically different views on the fund's future. While CASA fully endorsed the foundation's renewal, on the basis that non-renewal would constitute a significant cut to student financial assistance, the CFS had called for the organization to be replaced with a system of grants based purely on financial need.

Ironically, after the announcement was made, CFS president Amanda Aziz noted in an interview with Canwest that the new grant program is just “splitting the same amount of grant money among more students”.

The Millennium Excellence Awards Program, the merit-based component of the scholarship program, was not renewed, thus ending one of the two Canada-wide merit scholarships in existence, with only the Loran Scholarship remaining. However, as of 2009, alumni of the MEAP founded the Millennium Network, a non-profit organization that is part alumni association, part community action group that aims to help build capacity of existing community actors.