CUPE3902 was not responsible for instilling the minimum guaranteed funding. When the Ontario government wanted to increase graduate student enrolment in its universities, U of T was the first to instill a guaranteed minimum. The other universities followed suit afterwards. The fund set up to subsidize graduate students in Ontario was mainly given to U of T because their enrolment skyrocketed after setting up a minimum. As mentioned above, apparently they do not have control over this number.
This one? Not true. Please inform your professor(s?):
Recommendations
That the university, SGS, faculties, and graduate units work towards providing a guaranteed minimum level of financial support to all of its doctoral-stream students equivalent to $12,000 per year (indexed according to cost-of-living) plus tuition (domestic or visa) for the first 5 years of study, including, where necessary, 1 year at the master's level. (As part of this process, it is assumed that units will undergo a review of their programs to define master's students who are legitimately in a doctoral-stream, versus those who are legitimately in a terminal master's.) The Task Force believes that, while $12,000 plus tuition is an achievable target in the short term, a more appropriate goal is $15,000 plus tuition. The Task Force also believes that high need students will naturally require higher levels of funding.
The creation of the Task Force coincided with a labour dispute with CUPE 3902, the union representing the teaching assistants. At the time of its first meeting, the teaching assistants were on strike. The Task Force therefore began its work in a very difficult political context, one which both intensified the focus on its work within the community and raised expectations.