It gives me great pleasure to welcome, from the Access to Seniors and Disabled advocacy group, Maria Sardelis from Ottawa and Cherie Vandevenne from Chatham. Thank you for coming.

I would also like to welcome, from Congress of Union Retirees of Canada, Lance Livingstone and Ron Vanderwalker.

Thank you so much for your advocacy.

My question is to the Premier.

This morning, in the media studio, Maria Sardelis and Cherie Vandevenne spoke about the terrible suffering caused by the illegal use of the trespass act by care homes. Far too often. when caregivers make complaints about poor standards of care, facility operators retaliate by using the Ontario trespass act illegally to permanently ban entrance to family members.

Will this government ensure that care home operators cannot hide from accountability by using the trespass act to punish patients and their loved ones?

In March 2021, this House unanimously passed a motion, presented by my colleague from Ottawa Centre, stating that the government of Ontario would “provide clear direction to operators of retirement, long-term care and group homes that they cannot use the Trespass to Property Act to ban family members who speak out about their loved ones’ living conditions.”

Will this government fulfil this commitment from 2021 by posting clear direction in publicly accessible spaces in every care facility in Ontario and ensure, also, that the police forces no longer misapply the trespass act by blocking families from visiting their loved ones?

The bill enacts the Advocate for Older Adults Act, 2023, which establishes an advocate for older adults who is an independent officer of the Legislative Assembly. The functions of the advocate for older adults include advocating in the interests of older adults and family members of older adults who act as caregivers. In addition, the advocate for older adults is required to advise, in an independent manner, the minister, public officials and persons who fund or deliver services for older adults on systemic challenges faced by older adults, policies and practices to address existing systemic challenges and other matters that may come to the attention of the advocate for older adults.

This is entitled “For the Love of Seniors and Disabled.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas some operators of private retirement homes, group homes and long-term-care homes have banned family from visiting their loved ones by misusing the Trespass to Property Act;

“Whereas these punitive measures have been instituted when family or friends raised concerns for their loved ones;

“Whereas Ontario courts have ruled, pursuant to the Trespass to Property Act, a person cannot be trespassing if:

“—the person has legally conferred authority; or

“—the person is the invited guest of the occupant;

“Whereas on March 4, 2021, the Ontario Legislative Assembly unanimously passed motion 129, Voula’s Law, which requested that the Ford government provide clear direction that the Trespass to Property Act does not permit seniors’ homes or homes of the disabled to issue trespass notices...;

“Whereas the Ford government has not complied with the March 4, 2021 Legislative Assembly’s unanimous request via motion 129...;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“That motion 129 be transitioned to a bill which would be a binding authority and in alliance with Ontario courts rulings regarding the use of the Trespass to Property Act.”

I support the petition and affix my signature, and I will give it to Maya.

Resuming the debate adjourned on April 19, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 98, An Act to amend various Acts relating to education and child care / Projet de loi 98, Loi modifiant diverses lois en ce qui concerne l’éducation et la garde d’enfants.

Question: Do you see anything in the bill that’s really going to support students with special needs? Because I’m very concerned. I see a lot of blame being cast on boards, who have to work with the budget they’re given. They don’t have a choice about that. So I’m very concerned that students with special needs are going to be left without the supports they need.

Well, I’d like to put myself in the picture. I have a PhD in education, and I taught future teachers at the faculty of education at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay for about 10, 11 years, until I was elected to my current role as an MPP. Before that, I was a guest artist educator in schools throughout the province, working together with classroom teachers at all grade levels to design creative music projects with students.

Now, this goes back to 1998 and, at that time, all the instruments in elementary schools were broken. There was nothing useful there to use, so I wound up buying and building—using recycled materials—to create enough instruments for the children I was working with in schools. Underfunding was very present then as well.

So my time in schools usually involved 10 half days, sometimes over a week or over two months, in both capacities and working with, together, collaborating with teachers in classrooms and teaching future teachers at the faculty of education. I’ve been witness to the stresses faced by teachers with classrooms with too many students, not enough EAs and the ever-increasing demands on teachers to fulfill the roles of teacher, social worker, mental health worker, all while being blamed for the socio-economic conditions shaping the lives of students, conditions that were completely out of the control of teachers.

I see the minister’s current bill as a grand effort to divert and misdirect. Like a skilled magician, illusion distracts the audience from the reality of what is actually taking place before our eyes. I have many thoughts on what I think the purpose is of various bills in education that have been introduced and the persistent underfunding. I will just add that if we were able to access the mandate letters, perhaps we would know actually what the intent was behind the bills that we see that we have so many concerns about, but the government continues to resist sharing that information publicly. It kind of makes me think, gee, when we want parents to know exactly what’s going on in schools, the people of Ontario also have the right to know how decisions are being made in the Legislature, the people who represent them here, but that is not an option at this moment.

According to this bill, the minister wants people to think that the challenges for students are all about weak board governance or weak teachers, but the reality is quite different. I ask myself, why would the minister create a distraction at this moment in time? Well, this distraction is not all that different from the ones that have preceded it, always with the intention of blaming teachers and now blaming boards for societal stressors that do have an enormous impact on student success.

Now, I’m not saying that teaching and board governance can’t be improved—

Now, I’m not saying that teaching and board governance cannot be improved, but many boards—and I heard a board representative interviewed this morning on my local Thunder Bay radio station—already write annual reviews and reports on their performance and post them publicly. So the requirement to do something that is already happening—again, I’m concerned that this is a distraction and a way of finger pointing to take blame away from, really, the cuts that we have been experiencing to education funding.

So, frankly, when the minister refers to working with experts but has not in fact met with boards, met with teachers’ unions, met with many people who actually do the work, I’m concerned that it’s not a full picture that we are seeing. And I really ask myself, why would he not take the time to have conversations with people working on the front lines?

We do know this minister was never a student in a public school and, I warrant, has very little idea of the realities of teaching, let alone teaching in classrooms with too many students and trying to integrate all students, whatever their needs, without enough EAs, social workers, mental health workers to support the students and, frankly, to support the teachers and other staff.

We know that there was funding for COVID that the federal government provided. Many schools had to actually put up the money to address the COVID situation in their schools, pay for PPE and so on, and that money has not been returned to the schools. The government has chosen not to give that money to the schools, so that’s already put them in a shortfall position. I do want to note also that it’s interesting that private schools had access to PPE when public schools did not.

So, I’m just going to—I have a lot of different things here. But I recall—really, I do have a long memory, especially about things to do with education and health care. I remember when the Mike Harris government started the attack on teachers; I remember it as if it were yesterday. John Snobelen’s advice to the Premier of the time: Create a crisis, and then you can impose basically whatever you want, any kind of solution that you want.

When the Ford government came into power, one of the first things they did was propose cutting staff, including over 10,000 teachers, arguing perversely that it would build children’s resilience—

Again, there is a risk of imputing motive, so I will try to be careful here. I am concerned, as always, that there is a lot of money to be made by privatizing education. My concern is that as schools are underfunded and as there is finger pointing, then it creates an opportunity, really, for privatization. It creates an appetite for it. That concerns me.

I want to tell you a little bit about my nephew. He was a very active boy, but he was also oppositional. He was not doing well at home or at his public school. Luckily for him, his parents had the money to send him to a private school, where there were only 15 students in the class. Not surprisingly, happily, he really thrived in a small setting because he was able to get one-on-one attention, much more attention from the teacher than in the classrooms where I’ve been a visitor where we’re dealing with 25 to 35 students—very, very different situation.

My nephew has grown into a very lovely, smart, confident man, and I really wish that all young people could have that advantage of being in small classrooms and really having the attention of teachers.

Again, I feel that the bill really points at boards as if boards were the source of a fundamental problem, and I just don’t buy it. I want to talk a little bit—the Associate Minister of Transportation expressed earlier a lot of frustration about board decisions and the impacts of those decisions on what kind of programming is available. Yes, ministries don’t determine programming, but budgets do.

I’m just going to take us on a little bit of a journey. In my teaching at the faculty of education, particularly during COVID, from one year, we went to having 22 students in an online class. I was teaching music in this case—incredibly difficult to do in an online context, but that was the situation.

But the second year, our class sizes were doubled. My initial response was to be angry, of course. We’re being paid the same money, we’re expected to educate the next generation of teachers, and yet it’s extremely difficult to do.

But why did this happen? What could I say? I could go to my dean and my chair and say, “This is incredibly difficult,” but the reality is they got a budget. That budget was limited, so they were forced to work within that budget and make their decisions on that basis.

That is exactly what boards have to do. They’re given a budget. They have to make a decision. It’s not going to be the decision that everybody wants because the money isn’t there. There isn’t enough money.

Really, instead of providing schools with the dollars they need to have reasonable class sizes with good resources, we see this government claiming to be spending what they describe as historic amounts of money. But we know, in fact, that the dollar amounts do not come close to matching the rate of inflation. In fact, inflation-adjusted school funding is down about $1,200 per student since the Ford government came to power.

In addition, we also know that thousands of children with autism are being moved into regular classrooms without any transition planning and without the needed supports in classrooms. There will inevitably be a crisis in classrooms if the supports are not there to support these children. You cannot be a teacher alone in a classroom, even with an EA, and have many students who really need special attention. You can’t do it. It’s not physically possible, and it is a recipe for failure.

I really question why teachers and boards are being blamed for things that are really outside of their control.

I’m going to go back a bit in time. In 2000—that’s when I first started teaching at the faculty of education—I witnessed math and literacy get the lion’s share of instructional hours relative to every other subject area. When the province went to a two-year teacher education system, math and literacy got an even higher percentage of instructional hours while other subject areas, such as phys ed, music, drama, social studies, shrunk to the smallest possible unit of instructional time.

My point is that math and literacy are already the primary focus of faculties of education, existing teachers, as well as teachers in training. There can always be improvements, but rather, not only do we have to look at class sizes, you also actually have to look at the capacities of specific children to learn easily. I’m very, very concerned with the 100% emphasis on math and language skills, that far too many children are going to be shamed into seeing themselves as failures. Frankly, not succeeding in math and literacy is nothing to be ashamed of. Children need to be able to celebrate the gifts that they bring, and teachers need to be able to support the development of those children, whatever skills and gifts they have.

I think of the many children I have met who have fetal alcohol syndrome. These children have different degrees of what is currently understood to be permanent brain damage. These kids are in school. I’m very close to some who are now adults. They can learn and grow in schools, but to demand that they need an arbitrary level of math and literacy competence is not only unrealistic, it’s frankly cruel. No one should set arbitrary limits on what a child can accomplish, but likewise, no one should impose arbitrary expectations on children whose gifts may lie elsewhere.

To punish and shame schools, teachers, boards and students because they have a higher percentage of children with significant challenges is the worst possible model of education, and because the government keeps going down this road of forcing everyone to teach to the test, and because teachers and schools are evaluated on the basis of test results, it’s in the interests of schools to actually discourage the attendance of children who may not have the capacity to do well on these tests. Should this happen? Is it against the rules? Sort of, sort of not. There is wiggle room—and frankly, it doesn’t matter whether it’s allowed or not, because it happens, and I know it happens. It happens because there is so much emphasis on jumping through the testing hoops, there is an incentive to attract the students who are easiest to teach and discourage those who are more of a challenge. This is human nature: If you are going to punish me and my school for something that is out of my control, I will use whatever tools I have to protect myself.

All students deserve the opportunity to develop to their fullest capacity, and that includes students with the widest possible range of attributes. In order to meet all students’ needs, however, the funding and staff need to be in place to support every student, and that is far from the case with the funding model being used by this government. Instead of being honest about what students, teachers and boards actually face in their individual communities, this bill blames boards, teachers and administrators for conditions created, really, by anti-public-education, anti-teacher and now anti-board policies.

I’ve just got a couple of minutes. I did hear one of the members talking about trying to have ideological unanimity across boards throughout Ontario. I’m thinking about—I’ve taught in Catholic boards, I’ve taught in public boards, I’ve taught in First Nations boards. They’re not all ideologically lining up to one viewpoint. What they do all share is putting students first, putting the well-being of students first, and that has to look different depending on where you are, what students you have in your space. Teachers do understand that. I believe boards understand that, and recommending and really enforcing a cookie-cutter view of what boards must think and do and prioritize actually underserves the students.

Yes, of course, they need to know what their responsibilities are, like any board position. Anything that we take on—if you do a volunteer position somewhere, you want to know exactly what your responsibilities are. I don’t have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with the notion that all boards must think alike and have exactly the same results, because children and communities are different. Some communities, certainly in my region, have very, very significant challenges, and those students need to be supported, cared for, loved, encouraged and not shamed for not being the math geniuses or the language geniuses.

I have a nephew right now who is the loveliest young man. He’s 10. He’s not going to do well in math and he’s very, very slow with language. That’s the reality. Should he be punished? I don’t think so.

I really think that the bottom line is that schools need money. They need more money than has been given. Schools have actually experienced significant cuts since the Ford government came into office, and that has resulted in crises in our schools, classrooms that are too big to manage and many, many students who need a lot of additional help. The money is not there to provide those supports.

I’d like to thank you, Speaker, for your tolerance and for the ability to speak here.

There is already a great deal of accountability built into the system. In addition, at faculties of education, there is constant research taking place about looking to improve how different subject areas are taught. The bottom line is, the money is not there to look after children and give them a fair education.

So a code of conduct is fine. I just don’t see that that’s where the problems lie. The problems lie in lack of funding and class sizes that are too large.

Well, it’s an amusing question, but thank you. Of course, nobody here has said that we’re opposed to accountability. What I have said is that accountability must go beyond test results; it must include other data. Otherwise, it’s too narrow to make any informed, intelligent judgments.

Frankly, I’m just going to throw it back because it’s nonsensical.