"Currently some 14 per cent of high school students return for a so-called “victory lap” fifth year to brush up their marks or buy time in choosing what to do next."

In my first grade 12 year, I took Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Algebra, Calculus, Statistics, English, and Law, at my schools continued insistence that you had to do sciences and maths to be successful.

I hated it, I did poorly. I had no idea what I wanted to do. Had I been stuck applying to university then, I would have got into some crummy school in a general sciences program and wasted 15000$ for a year or two until I figured out what I wanted to do or dropped out.

Instead, I took an extra year. I saved up lots of money from my part time job, which helped me pay for the university I eventually did get into --- for Political Science, with good grades and partial scholarshipping. This is 5 years later, and I still say to people that this extra year was the single best decision of my life, and that it absolutely set me on the right track.

Even if only 1/3rd of that 14% (5%ish) used it well, you're screwing a full 1/20 students to save 12 million dollars a year. Take that from our wasteful crime bill instead, or something (I know, the clever person that is going to try to point out Federal/Provincial division of powers that I'm well aware of, at which point I point out Federal funding kickbacks that are a result of the growth of the Keynesian system post WW2).