Point of order.

Good morning. Let us pray.

Prayers.

Resuming the debate adjourned on April 18, 2023, on the motion for second reading of 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.

Further debate? I recognize the member for Ottawa West–Nepean.

I return to the member for Ottawa West–Nepean.

Thank you, Speaker.

I’m very pleased to have the opportunity today to rise to speak to Bill 98, the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act. This is another example of the government’s Orwellian naming of legislation. I think a more apt title for it would have been “the micromanaging school boards as a distraction from the underfunding of schools act,” or, as OECTA president Barb Dobrowolski recommended, “the failed Conservative government keeps on failing students act.” I’d also like to suggest “the Wizard of Oz act”—pay no attention to the minister behind the curtain. Because what we have here is a spectacular refusal to take responsibility for the government’s failures on the education file and the many ways in which this government is shortchanging our kids. Instead, the government is trying to distract parents by blaming schools and school boards for the underinvestment. He’s desperately hoping that you don’t notice that, once again this year, education funding is not keeping up with inflation. Instead, he wants you to believe that if he blusters enough about basic skills, you won’t even notice that there’s no actual plan here to address the real reasons why our children are struggling. He’s hoping you won’t pay attention to rising class sizes, to the cuts to teachers and education workers, to the lack of special education supports, to the absence of mental health supports, to the rising tide of violence in our schools because of the mental health crisis, to the burnout that teachers and education workers are experiencing because of the cuts and conditions imposed on them by this government, and to the impact of e-learning on students and school budgets.

This bill and the timing of it, along with the minister’s announcement on Sunday, is smoke and mirrors. It is sleight of hand. It’s saying, “Please look over here so that you don’t notice what we’re doing over here,” so that you disbelieve the things you are seeing in schools with your own eyes.

Are our children struggling? Yes, absolutely. Do they need and deserve better supports? Yes, absolutely. But let’s talk about why they’re struggling and who is actually responsible and what the solutions are if you’re not a minister obsessed with avoiding responsibility.

The past three years have been rough; there is no doubt about that. I know, as a parent, speaking to my kids’ teachers at parent-teacher interviews, that they have flagged that students are behind where they should be. They can’t compare kids to previous years because kids aren’t meeting the same markers that they would normally meet. Kids definitely need support in their learning.

During the past three years, we have also had longer school closures here in Ontario than any other jurisdiction in North America because this government refused to make the investments and put in place the policies that would have kept kids safe. They refused to invest in smaller class sizes. They gave COVID tests to private schools and left publicly funded schools at the back of the line. They made ventilation upgrades but refused to set any kind of standards for ventilation or implement any kind of monitoring or reporting that would ensure that we were actually getting better air quality in schools. They didn’t fully fund COVID measures to protect our kids and to help prevent learning loss, either. They required boards to pay for many of these measures out of their own reserves.

For instance, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board paid $30 million out of reserves for COVID safety measures and for investments to prevent learning loss. Trustees have told me that they viewed the reserves as an emergency fund or a rainy day fund, and a global pandemic is nothing if not a violent downpour. So they spent their rainy day funds. That’s a decision I can wholeheartedly support, and yet I am left to wonder why they had to make that decision.

Why wasn’t the Ministry of Education pouring funds into COVID measures and programs to protect against learning loss, especially when the government was sitting on billions of dollars in COVID relief funds from the federal government? Why sit on that money and then force school boards to spend down reserves?

And now some of those school boards are in the position of facing deficits, again due to the minister’s underfunding of education, and the government is refusing to reimburse school boards for those COVID-related deficits.

The Ottawa-Carleton school board spent $30 million out of reserves, and now they’re facing cuts of up to $10 million to $13 million for next year.

The Toronto District School Board spent $70 million out of reserves. Now they’re facing cuts of upwards of $64 million, and the government is forcing them to make these cuts instead of refunding them for those COVID-related expenses.

This learning loss, this need for additional supports for learning among our children didn’t just happen. It’s not just the inevitable outcome of a pandemic; it is a result of policy and funding choices by this government not to invest in our kids when they needed it most. So, yes, our kids came out of the last three years struggling.

Now let’s talk about why our kids are having trouble catching up, and let’s start with class sizes. I spoke with a teacher last week who told me that he has children who are at four or five different grade levels in terms of their ability, in a single class. That one teacher has to try to provide lessons and support to all those children where they’re at so that everybody learns and everybody is challenged and no one is left behind. How are you supposed to do that when you’re in a class of 35 students? How are you supposed to provide 35 students with four or five different skill levels the help and support they need, especially when five or six of those kids have an individual education plan or a disability and you have no EA in your class? And from the students’ perspective, how are you supposed to learn when your classroom is that cramped and noisy? I know in my riding, I’ve heard from parents of children in classrooms where they can’t even accommodate the number of desks for the number of children in their class, so kids are sitting elbow-to-elbow at tables, trying to learn. How do those conditions set children up to succeed? Not getting enough attention in a noisy, crowded room—it would be a miracle if kids were doing well.

Let me be frank here, Speaker: Crowded classrooms are not a new problem in Ontario. They were a problem under the former Liberal government, as well.

In 2014, nine years ago, when we were picking a school for my oldest daughter, the first school we checked out was projected to have a junior kindergarten class that year of 36 or 37 kids. My daughter was a shy, quiet kid. She would have been completely lost and overlooked in a class of 37 “kinders.” Thankfully, we had another choice in our neighbourhood.

I know there are many, many other parents who don’t have another choice, and getting a smaller class size for your child shouldn’t come down to luck.

But what the Conservatives have done since forming government in 2018 is to open up a can of gasoline and pour it all over the fire of crowded classrooms. In fact, they wanted classrooms to be even more crowded than they are now. In 2019, they tried to jack up the average high school class to 28 students. Thankfully, parents, teachers and education workers stood up and fought back against that proposal, forcing the government to back down, although they still increased the average class size by one student, to 23.

The government has also been increasing class sizes through stealth, with its underfunding of education. One way that they’re doing that is through e-learning. The government imposed a requirement on all students that they take two online courses in order to graduate high school. Many students, unsurprisingly, protested, as did their parents, so the government provided the ability to opt out. But school boards are being funded based on the assumption that every student is taking those online classes, regardless of whether they’re actually taking them or not.

The government also made the arbitrary decision to set funding for e-learning courses based on a higher class size of 30 students per class. They have offered no evidence to demonstrate that kids need less support in an online class than they do in a classroom, and in fact, all of the virtual learning of the past few years would actually suggest the opposite.

There are many legitimate concerns with the e-learning plan, including the fact that not every child has access to decent Internet at home, and the fact that the agenda seems to be driven more by an interest in letting privatization and commercialization get a toehold in our education system than in actually meeting the needs of students. This is also a form of underfunding by stealth. As students opt out, boards will continue to get the e-learning ratio funding, which means that class sizes in high schools will need to be larger to accommodate the loss of funding.

Then there’s the much bigger picture, which is that Conservatives are cutting education funding in Ontario by not keeping up with inflation. Quite simply, funding for education in Ontario has not kept pace with inflation throughout the entire tenure of this government. Even under the Liberals, the system was not really adequately funded. But since then, the Conservatives haven’t even kept up with the Liberals’ level of funding. If the Conservatives had simply kept pace with inflation, funding would have been $2.5 billion higher this year alone. And now, by the minister’s own admission, the increase in funding for next year will be way below the rate of inflation. The latest Bank of Canada inflation numbers put inflation at 5.2%. The government’s own projection for inflation this year is 3.6%. The minister’s increase in funding is just 2.7%. So the government’s funding isn’t even keeping up with their own prediction for inflation.

By tabling this bill at the same time as announcing education funding for next year, Ontarians are being distracted from the funding announcement for next year. Because when you compare funding for next year with the funding in place before the Conservatives formed government in 2018, what we see is that average funding per student is down $1,200 when you account for inflation.

As the ever-quotable Laura Walton said, the minister keeps referring to his funding as “unprecedented,” but remember that “unprecedented” can also mean “lower than we’ve ever seen before.”

The minister likes to use the word “historical” a lot. I actually think it’s a pretty apt word because, in some important ways, we’ve seen this movie before. The last Conservative government, under Premier Mike Harris, also drove education funding levels down to very low levels, which resulted in a task force being created to review education funding in Ontario. That report called for a significant increase in education funding because the Conservatives had broken the system so badly.

This underfunding has been driving up class sizes and robbing students of essential supports. The background document that the minister released with the Grants for Student Needs yesterday revealed that for every 1,000 students, school boards now have 3.87 fewer secondary school teachers than they did in 2018. For a medium-sized board of 20,000 students, that’s equivalent to 77 teachers, or roughly the size of one entire high school. What impact do you think that has on the ability of students to learn?

On top of that, school boards have told us that because this government’s funding is lower than inflation and because they refuse to reimburse COVID-related expenditures, school boards are going to have to implement cuts. For the Toronto District School Board, this means the loss of 65 teachers, 35 special education workers, 35 child and youth workers, and 40 school-based safety monitors. In fact, the TDSB has to cut 522 positions because of their deficit; the Toronto Catholic District School Board will have to eliminate 120. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board has already voted to eliminate 21 teacher positions and still has to decide what cuts they will make to education worker positions. So we’re already at 663 positions lost in just three boards. How is the minister’s commitment of just one new math lead per board going to make up for that loss? How does the equivalent of one new position for just 20% of our schools make up for these kinds of cuts?

And what about these vaunted new positions that the minister has been bragging about since Sunday? First of all, let’s be clear what we’re talking about. These are not 2,000 new teachers. The government has been very carefully using the word “educators.” That’s because the government is not hiring 1,000 new teachers to support math and reading. The minister has been talking about “math coaches” in classrooms, and that was a commitment in the government’s budget as well. What is a math coach? What are their qualifications? Are they going to have to pass the minister’s famous math tests in order to be hired? All of this remains to be seen. We have no idea who these math coaches are. Second, let’s put these positions into context, given the size of the Ontario education system. This is less than one additional education worker per school in Ontario—in fact, it’s way, way less. It’s equivalent to one new educator for every two out of five schools. Or, to put it another way, this is one new educator for every 2,850 students to provide reading help and one new educator for every 6,650 students to provide math support.

The minister spent quite a bit of time yesterday going on about math and reading supports and back-to-basics, but his new bill only uses the words “reading,” “math” and “literacy” once. But somehow, just naming it as a priority is supposed to magically help children to succeed at reading and math while in crowded classrooms without additional supports available.

Teachers I spoke with last week in Ottawa told me that demand for resource teachers and for additional supports is at an all-time high. So many kids need help who never needed it before. But the schools don’t have the resources to respond to that demand, so these teachers are constantly trying to triage: Who needs help the most right now? How can we divide the little bit of help that’s available so that every kid gets at least a little bit?

This is not a scenario that demonstrates that we want every child in Ontario to succeed. And adding one new educator to only two out of every five schools isn’t going to be any different in that regard.

It’s not just teachers who are missing in our schools, and it’s not just teachers who help our kids to thrive and succeed. The safe and successful functioning of our schools depends on education workers who support our children, keep them safe, and keep our schools running. Thanks to this government’s underfunding of education and its attack on wages, we don’t have enough education workers either.

School boards are spending more on EAs than they are getting from the government, but they’re still not even close to being able to meet students’ needs.

According to data released by People for Education in February of this year, 93% of schools in Ontario say they need support staff such as educational assistants, administrators, and custodians.

ECEs provide learning supports to our littlest learners. EAs provide crucial supports that help children with disabilities or accessibility needs to participate safely in our schools, making sure their needs are looked after.

One Ottawa teacher I spoke with last week said that when the EA is not present in her classroom—and she doesn’t have an EA assigned full-time—all learning stops. She has 26 kids, including several with very high needs. Her focus has to be on keeping the kids safe and alive. Without an EA present, she can’t do that and teach the kids at the same time. Unfortunately, it happens at least once or twice a week that the EA isn’t present for the whole day, because the demand for EAs is so high and there aren’t enough EAs available. Schools are desperately trying to triage who needs EA support the most at all times.

I heard from another Ottawa teacher that she had to change two GI tubes last week. That’s work that teachers aren’t supposed to be doing, but there’s no support available for these kids, and the teacher had to put the interests and safety of the child first.

Another teacher told me that there aren’t enough EAs in their school to support children who need help with toileting, so kids in her class are soiling themselves in class, and then she has to track down an EA who can help change the child after that has happened. We have so few EAs that parents are getting regular phone calls to come and pick up their children from school or are told that they can’t take their child to school today because there is no EA available.

Earlier this year, parents at Cootes Paradise Elementary School in the Hamilton-Wentworth school board sent a letter to the minister asking him to take urgent action on this issue. They told the minister, “On Friday, February 3, 2023, several students with additional needs were effectively sent home from the school, because EAs were absent and the school was not equipped to support their additional needs. This has happened to students and their families several times this year but in the last few weeks, it is happening with increasing frequency.”

Children like Desmond, who is four years old, has autism, is non-verbal, and requires assistance with eating and toileting—his mom, Amanda Strong, is getting called regularly to come and pick him up from school because there’s no one available to support him. Amanda told CHCH, “Yeah, he can’t talk, he’s not toilet trained, but he still deserves to be here. He still deserves the right to his education.”

The result of this lack of support is that there are parents who are sitting outside of schools all day in this province just in case their child needs to use the bathroom, but we also know that it’s a minority of parents who can afford to do that. There are also children who are trying to hold it in all day because there’s no EA available to help them. Just imagine trying to learn in that situation.

The EAs who are working in our system are overburdened and are being asked to provide unreasonable levels of support. One EA shared that one day last week, they were the only full-time EA in a school of 800 kids. Every day, after running from classroom to classroom, they go home feeling like they failed because they can’t possibly provide the level of support that is needed to every child.

I wish this was uncommon, but unfortunately, what we’re seeing is that the conditions that teachers and education workers are being asked to work in, with overcrowded classrooms, children with high needs who aren’t getting the supports they need, kids in crisis due to their mental health, and the absolute and utter disrespect from this government—teachers and education workers are getting burnt out and getting sick.

Absence rates are unusually high, both due to the levels of illness circulating and due to burnout and mental health issues. Staff are retiring at much higher rates than usual, and young workers are leaving the profession at worrying rates.

One teacher is on mental health leave after struggling to teach a class of 28 students in which 16 of the students had an IEP, and she had no EA support. The majority of her class required accommodations, but there was zero support.

We don’t have replacements available when teachers or education workers are absent because of the shortage.

Just two weeks ago, we learned that the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is being forced to close classrooms regularly due to the shortage of replacement teachers. Roberta Bondar Public School had to close two classes in one day. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board has reported 462 class closures between January and June 2022 and 173 class closures just since November 2022.

Meanwhile, in the Ottawa Catholic School Board, there is one school that has had 122 EA absences unfilled as of March this year. This is not only a massive safety concern for students and staff, but it disproportionately affects students with disabilities or accessibility needs, resulting in those infamous phone calls saying, “Your child may not come to school today.”

In these conditions, how are children supposed to catch up on their math and reading skills—especially for kids who aren’t allowed to come to school?

The minister says his plan is supposed to get even kids with disabilities reading. Well, allow me to remind the minister that in order to learn how to read at school, you have to actually be at school, and these children are not able to be at school all the time because of his policy choices. No amount of setting priorities for school boards is going to change that.

Nous ne pouvons pas parler de la pénurie de la main-d’oeuvre sans parler spécifiquement de la pénurie des enseignantes et enseignants de langue française, car c’est un gros problème pour le système d’éducation francophone et le ministre ne fait rien pour le résoudre.

Il y a presque 500 enseignants et enseignantes qui travaillent dans le système d’éducation de langue française qui n’ont pas leur certificat, mais qui ont une lettre de permission du ministère. Ce nombre a augmenté de 450 % depuis 2012.

Le système d’éducation de langue française est le système d’éducation en Ontario qui grandit le plus vite. À cause de cette croissance, le système a besoin de 1 000 nouveaux enseignants chaque année, mais l’Ontario n’en forme que 500 par an. Chaque année que nous ne faisons rien, donc, il y a un écart grandissant de 500 nouveaux postes qui ne peut pas être comblé sans se tourner vers des gens avec une lettre de permission. Si on ne fait rien, les experts prédisent que dans quelques ans, nous pourrions voir 3 000 personnes qui enseignent sous une lettre de permission dans le système d’éducation de langue française.

Cette pénurie d’enseignantes et enseignants qualifiés met en péril la qualité de l’éducation francophone en Ontario. Elle rend plus difficile l’apprentissage de la lecture et des mathématiques pour les enfants francophones. Si le ministre s’intéressait vraiment dans la capacité des enfants francophones d’apprendre la lecture et les mathématiques, il ferait tout ce qui est en son pouvoir pour remédier à cette pénurie.

Mais ce que nous voyons, c’est un ministre qui reste les bras croisés, sans rien faire, alors que la pénurie s’aggrave d’année en année.

Et il le fait alors que nous connaissons déjà les solutions. Elles ont été élaborées par des partenaires de l’enseignement français, avec le soutien du ministère de l’Éducation. Le ministre les a présentées du bout des lèvres, mais il n’a rien fait pour les mettre en oeuvre. Il n’a même pas avancé le montant de financement recommandé par le groupe de travail.

Le résultat pour les enfants francophones, c’est le chaos. Il y avait plusieurs classes l’année dernière qui ont eu sept, huit ou neuf enseignants pendant l’année scolaire. Comment est-ce que les élèves peuvent apprendre dans ces conditions?

Mais bien que le ministère ait maintenant plus de 900 enseignants de retard sur sa stratégie, il n’y a pas un cent de financement supplémentaire cette année, ni aucune mesure dans ce projet de loi pour aider à résoudre cette pénurie.

Où est le respect de ce ministre pour le droit des francophones à une éducation de haute qualité dans leur propre langue?

It’s not just francophone kids who are getting their constitutional rights trampled on.

Kids with disabilities are also being shortchanged repeatedly. The Education Act states that the Ministry of Education is responsible for setting out a process for identifying and accommodating disability-related needs in the publicly funded school system. But this government significantly underfunds special education, leaving kids with disabilities struggling to participate in our system and unable to get the education they are entitled to.

I’ve already talked about the challenges with just being able and allowed to attend school—then there’s the ability to participate in school. There has been a significant increase in the number of kids in our schools with a disability because of the government’s destruction of the Ontario Autism Program. Kids who would have previously been in therapy rather than in school and kids who would have been in school but with the benefit of therapy that helped them to participate have just gone without any therapy at all. These kids are in schools, but without adequate funding for special education, leaving parents to fight over scraps to try to get their kids the supports they need, while teachers are left trying to support students who are neither getting the therapy they need outside of school nor the support they need in school.

One parent I spoke to said her son with autism is in a regular class with no EA. He can’t keep up with the curriculum, but she says she knows her son; he will just sit quietly, looking out the window, not causing a fuss, so no one will pay him any attention. But other kids get incredibly frustrated by the lack of support and become violent, lashing out at teachers and education workers.

I’ve spoken to educators in Ottawa who have been given Kevlar to wear at work by the school board because that has become the solution to violence. These are not soldiers in a war zone. These are teachers and education workers in our publicly funded school system.

We are not giving students with special needs the support and resources they need, and we are not giving teachers and education workers the specialized training they need to de-escalate and deal with violence. We’re just sending them to work with Kevlar on.

Other special education teachers have told me that they are crowdfunding or prowling their neighbourhood Buy Nothing groups to stock up their classrooms in order to be able to support their students.

The government provides funding for special education separately, and this funding is not based on need. It is based on a statistical projection of the amount of special-needs education that will be covered in any given school year. And this formula does not even begin to cover the needs of children with accessibility needs. As a result, school boards are spending tens of millions of dollars out of their own funds on special education. So when we are looking at cuts—which is what we’ve been hearing from boards—one place that boards may look to is special education, because the base costs are not covered by this government’s funding formula. This means that children who need and deserve help the most in our province are bearing the brunt of the government’s cuts.

We are already hearing about the elimination of special class placements or congregate classes across the province. Kids are being integrated into regular classrooms because it’s so much cheaper, but it’s happening regardless of whether or not they can succeed there, and without the supports that would allow them to succeed.

And while our special education system is already in crisis, we are in the midst of transitioning as many as 4,000 autism legacy kids into the system with no additional resources and no transition plan. The government cruelly and abruptly capped the funding for therapy for these children. They promised a transition plan, but they didn’t create one. In fact, they didn’t even inform school boards that these children would be coming. They didn’t provide a single additional penny in resources to school boards to support these children.

Michelle MacAdam, who is a teacher and a parent of two autism legacy kids, said, “Being in education myself, I know the lack of supports in schools, and I see these classes that are exploding, and I see the overwhelmed teachers. Now add in this tsunami of high-needs kids that are entering schools in September or in the next few months, you’re going to have a lot of stressed teachers and programs that are overflowing.” She’s worried, first and foremost, about the safety of her children with no EA to support them. They are both non-verbal, flight risks, and at risk of choking from putting things in their mouths. Neither one is toilet trained. How will they be kept safe and supported at school with no additional resources? And she is not the only parent who is dealing with the repercussions of this government’s reckless funding.

Last week, CBC Radio’s Ontario Today had an hour-long call-in show with heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story about the impact of this government’s decisions on vulnerable kids and their families in this province.

Connie has two kids on the autism spectrum, a 10-year-old and a 20-year-old. Her 20-year-old daughter received needs-based funding as part of the legacy autism program, and because of this, she was able to get through school and is now attending college. This funding is not available for her 10-year-old son. Connie has since had to remortgage her house seven times and continuously access the food bank, even with a dual household income, because her 10-year-old son’s programming is so expensive. He also doesn’t have the support he needs in the classroom. She feels she is being punished by this government and by the province. All she is asking for is basic support for her son to be able to learn in a safe environment, but instead, her son is taken out of the classroom to wander the hallways.

Margaret has a nine-year-old boy on the autism spectrum. Without needs-based support in his school, her son, who is non-verbal, has often been subjected to isolation, taken out of the classroom and put into a padded room because his teachers and assistants don’t have the training or support to properly address his needs. Margaret says that she has reached out to her Conservative MPP on multiple occasions to no avail.

Students are being left alone because there are not enough teachers, EAs, and education workers available for them. Parents do not feel supported by this government. And transitioning kids from the legacy autism program into schools without support will have even more detrimental costs.

We’ve heard these stories and countless others from parents and educators worried about the lack of any kind of plan for this transition. This government is setting these children up to fail and has left parents and school boards to try to clean up their mess.

And let’s be clear: This has an impact on the safety and ability of all kids to learn in our schools. Putting kids in classrooms with no supports leads to an increase in violent incidents, safety risks for other children, and disruptions in the classroom and evacuation of classes. I’ve seen this happen with my twins, who were in a class that had to be evacuated for safety reasons at least once or twice a week. Despite their young age, they were absolutely exasperated with the number of times they had to go down to the learning commons while their teacher tried to de-escalate a situation.

And these are not the only kids with disabilities that this government has let down. Provincial and demonstration schools across Ontario are grossly underfunded, and as such, this has led to teacher shortages and improper maintenance on school properties.

W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind in Brantford has been in operation since 1872 and is in desperate need of repairs. They have a rink that has been out of service for more than four years and chronic heating problems in the winter because the boilers continue to fail year after year. These are children who use their hands to communicate. How are they supposed to do that when it’s freezing in their classrooms? Does the minister expect them to use sign language with their mittens on? The pool on-site also remains closed. Typically, this infrastructure offers the opportunity for deaf students to learn essential skills in water safety from an ASL-using lifeguard. These are skills that they cannot learn anywhere else. So having this pool closed presents a substantive safety risk for students.

And this is not a unique experience for W. Ross Macdonald. It is one of only seven schools under the ministry’s provincial and demonstration schools branch, and we’ve heard of similar issues across all of these schools. One school had an exterior structural issue, causing bricks and stones to be falling down, endangering the students, parents and staff entering the building. It was only when substantial safety concerns were raised to the ministry that they finally installed scaffolding.

Families should not have to beg to be protected by this government, but that has become the reality for families.

Stephanie Antone, a parent of a student at W. Ross Macdonald, told CBC last year, “There’s no justification for why their schools are in the state they’re in and that they are not taking the concerns of parents and staff seriously.

“You are creating a pathway for ODSP. How fair is it that a child with a disability is not given the same resources, and is not treated as important as a student without a disability?”

The reality of underfunding at these schools has gotten so bad that in March of last year, parents and teachers hosted a series of rallies outside of provincial and demonstration schools across the province, demanding more funding and resources from this government.

A parent whose children attend Sir James Whitney, a school for the deaf in Belleville, is deaf herself and attended the same school her children are currently enrolled in. She told Quinte News:

“When I went to this school we had at least 200 students. Now we have 47 students. We can have more students but many parents don’t even know we exist, don’t even know that it’s an option for their students. We’re not allowed to promote our school and the services and programs that are here.

“Deaf children are placed into mainstream programs and many of them do not succeed because of language deprivation. The interpreters may not be fluent. They may not have access to the appropriate courses that they would like to take. They need to have other assessments that aren’t being done.

“We want to preserve it. It’s a part of our history, a part of our culture. My parents went here. They graduated from here. I went here. My children have gone here. I value this community and I value our deaf schools.”

The same cannot be said of the government. David Sykes of the Provincial Schools Authority Teachers said it well: “Why is it that we teachers have to come begging to get the supports we need to provide the programs and services? Why is it we need to point out that they are actively preventing our members from finding kids in the mainstream or finding kids in communities who would benefit from these schools? Why is it the government continues to look at these schools through a deficit lens and not an asset lens?”

We should be improving the funding, the transparency and inclusivity in Ontario’s provincial and demonstration schools, because when we don’t, we are denying these children the right to equal treatment in education.

Let’s be absolutely clear here, Speaker: These schools are under the direct authority of the provincial government. There is no school board here managing these schools that the minister can point the finger at and blame here. The blame lies squarely with himself and his ministry. Perhaps that is why he has been so quiet about these challenges that these students face in learning, the safety risks that they have to run just to be at school.

As a little aside, the minister is proposing training for school board trustees in this legislation, but perhaps he wants to consider some training for Ministers of Education and Ministry of Education staff as well, because what I’ve heard from teachers and union officials with the provincial schools is that the ministry has been incredibly disrespectful about the fact that many of these teachers communicate primarily with sign language.

De même, les réunions avec les conseils scolaires français et les syndicats de l’enseignement français se déroulent toutes en anglais et, bien souvent, les informations fournies par le ministère sont uniquement en anglais ou dans un français mal traduit. Une formation à la communication respectueuse s’impose peut-être.

So just to recap: Our kids are struggling because they’re in crowded classrooms without adequate supports, including EAs; they’re dealing with teacher and education worker shortages; and they are not getting the special education supports that they need and deserve.

They are also dealing with a crisis in mental health that this government is failing to address. A recent report by People for Education reported that 59% of students in Ontario are feeling depressed about the future. More than 90% of principals say that their school needs more support for students’ mental health. Less than one in 10 schools actually have access to a regularly scheduled mental health professional, and half of schools have no access to mental health resources at all.

I hear constantly from parents, teachers, education workers, principals, and mental health professionals about the crisis in our children’s mental health. Rates of anxiety are sky-high.

When I met with the Ontario Association of Social Workers, they told me that even little children are experiencing high levels of anxiety that is making it difficult for them to go to school.

We’ve been through this with one of my children, who had real difficulty transitioning back to in-person school after virtual and has continued to face challenges with going to school day to day. We waited three months for an appointment with the social worker assigned to our school, only to be told that there are no mental health resources available and we are on our own.

Bill 98 allows the minister to set out policies and guidelines regarding the mental health of students, including the materials that have to be used in teaching students about mental health, but there’s not a single additional resource provided here to actually support children who are dealing with mental health challenges. The Grants for Student Needs provide an additional $11.9 million for the salaries of mental health professionals like psychologists and child and youth workers, and that’s a good thing; it’s not nothing, that’s for sure. But it’s only 3.1 cents per day per child in additional funding, when funding now is already at less than a quarter per child per day. Don’t you think the biggest crisis in children’s mental health following a multi-year global pandemic should merit a little bit more than 27 cents per day?

This crisis in mental health connects, as well, with the shortages that we’re seeing in staffing, because supporting children with increased mental health needs with no mental health resources is putting stress on teachers and education workers and contributing to burnout. The more that we can’t replace teachers and education workers when they’re sick and on leave, the more we’re exacerbating the problem and causing it to snowball.

The other thing is that when children are in crisis and they’re not getting support, we see an escalation in violence. We’re seeing this problem now across the province, unfortunately.

There are many students in the Toronto District School Board who have said they are scared at school because of the uptick in school violence. Students are feeling restless, stressed and anxious after three years of disruptions and years of underfunding. They don’t feel supported. They feel forgotten—

Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

I recognize the member from Barrie–Innisfil on a point of order.

I recognize the member from Barrie–Innisfil.

You may continue.

Point of order.

Thank you, Speaker. I’m a little surprised that the member opposite doesn’t understand the connection between school violence and children’s capacity to learn reading, writing and literacy in our schools and what this might have to do with school boards. I am surprised, but—

After traumatic episodes of violence and lockdowns, students are just supposed to go back to the classroom, back to learning without any mental health support. Violence is on the rise in school, and the majority of principals and vice-principals within our school boards attribute this to a lack of staffing, support and resources.

The TDSB has a staffing crisis, and students, teachers, parents, and education workers are feeling the pinch. But because of this government’s unwillingness to reimburse them for the $70 million that they had to pay to protect kids during the pandemic, they will be forced to cut even more staff, including child and youth workers and safety monitors. This is only going to make matters worse for our kids.

Don’t our kids deserve to feel safe at school? Don’t they deserve mental health supports in school?

This violence is not just limited to the TDSB. Violent incidents are happening at crisis levels across the province.

In London-area schools, reports by the ETFO Thames Valley District School Board show that there are an average of 636 violent incidents a month. This doesn’t even account for the majority of violent incidents that go unreported. In some cases, kids are even being sent to the hospital with severe injuries.

These are not just incidents occurring among students. Teachers and education workers are met with violence daily.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario is looking into violence against teachers and in schools to see if it will help this government understand the gravity of the situation.

Karen Brown, ETFO’s president, said, “Many school spaces are not safe, especially for those working on the front lines with students whose needs are not being met. We hope the data collected will finally convince this government to take action to address the unacceptable and troubling rise of violence in schools.”

I heard the same thing from Ottawa OECTA teachers last week. The number of violent incidents are rising, but because there’s pressure on teachers not to even report violence, what we know is just a drop in the bucket.

Teachers and education workers have been calling on this government to hire more mental health support staff and provide anti-violence training for the teachers and staff already working in our schools. They’ve been asking this government to work with them. The solutions are there, but instead, the government provides us with legislation that does nothing to address this. Our kids cannot succeed in math and literacy if they do not feel safe in our schools.

In my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean, I’ve heard from several parents and teachers about how their kids don’t feel safe at Pinecrest Public School. The parents who have reached out did not feel comfortable sharing their names, but in speaking with them, it’s clear that these are not isolated incidents. Once again, this is rooted in the lack of mental health supports available to our kids. Pinecrest is a K-to-8 school and is just one of many public schools in Ottawa that has had to cancel classes as a result of being short-staffed. One of my constituents has a six-year-old grandson at Pinecrest. In two months, her grandson’s homeroom has had three different supply staff, resulting in no consistency and a continuous lack of support for him and his classmates. In February, the students’ parents received an email from their principal informing them that, because of absenteeism, their classes would be cancelled for at least two days. Imagine being in this situation, trying to scramble to see whether you can find child care for your kids or whether you may have to bring them to work with you the following day. This woman was lucky that she was in a position where she could look after her grandson for a few days while his classes were cancelled.

After continued disruption from the pandemic, this government’s underfunding is resulting in our kids being out of the classroom once again.

Our kids are in crowded classrooms, not getting the supports they need, with teacher and education worker shortages. They’re in a mental health crisis, but schools don’t have the resources to address it, and they’re not feeling safe at schools because of rising violence due to the mental health crisis and the shortage of workers. And what does the minister think is the appropriate response to this situation? A fire sale of school properties. Instead of investments in mental health supports and smaller class sizes, Bill 98 is giving the minister the power to compel school boards to sell school buildings and land to any individual the minister designates, at any price the minister designates. This is the same government whose cozy relationship with developers always somehow seems to cost the taxpayer money while resulting in sweetheart deals for developers—

I apologize to the member.

I recognize the member for Barrie–Innisfil.

Point of order.

Merci à ma collègue d’Ottawa-Ouest–Nepean. Vous avez parlé de la situation dans les écoles francophones, la pénurie d’enseignants, de comment il y a, je pense, 300 lettres d’autorisation pour enseigner en Ontario. On sait que dans ce projet de loi, on ne le voit pas. Puis on a entendu aussi des associations des conseils scolaires francophones qui disent que ça ne répond pas au besoin, au grand besoin, parce que—si je vous ai entendu, même—c’était 3 000 dans votre présentation. Si ce n’est pas réparé, ça peut être jusqu’à 3 000, le manque d’enseignants dans les écoles scolaires francophones.

Je vous demande : ce projet de loi-là répond-il aux besoins de la communauté francophone? Et aussi, le manque de respect—vous avez parlé de ce qu’ils font quand ils rencontrent les conseils scolaires francophones et du manque de respect envers eux. J’aimerais vous entendre sur ces deux points-là.

Thank you to the member for her speech.

I have to bring your attention to the pillar under accountability and transparency, as this bill proposes to strengthen accountability by requiring school boards, via the proposed legislation, to be more transparent about their spending and how it supports student outcomes. The member from Ottawa West–Nepean, towards the beginning of her speech, talked about the reporting on HVAC systems that were going into school boards. So I would have to think that the member would be supportive, because what this proposed legislation would do is have the school boards accountable for reporting on things like this.

Can the member from Ottawa West–Nepean say this is a good part of this legislation?

I’d like to thank the member from Ottawa West–Nepean for her excellent presentation. I’d like to thank her, as well, for bringing forward the concerns of parents, students, education workers, and trustees from across the province. It’s clear that these voices are not reflected in Bill 98—it’s clear that they were not consulted.

As the member has pointed out, mental health—there are four mentions of it within this legislation, and it only relates to policies and guidelines. There are not any additional resources.

Also, I find it quite concerning, after listening to the member’s presentation, that violence does not appear in this legislation even one time—not even one instance.

My question to the member is, if the government wanted to show legitimate and authentic care for students with special needs, how would they update GSNs in the funding formula?

It is now time for questions and answers.

I’m looking forward to getting a chance to take part in debate a little bit later this afternoon.

I did hear during the member from Ottawa West–Nepean’s dissertation here this morning that she said a lack of capital funding has been something that has plagued the province over the last few years.

I’m just curious to know why $15 billion in capital funding, which is the most the province has ever seen, would be such a plague on the province?

I suppose the member opposite did not carefully listen to my dissertation, as he thinks he did. He actually wasn’t listening at all.

I did mention the figure $16 billion, which is the school repair backlog—actually, we know that the school repair backlog is even greater than $16 billion; we just don’t know by how much, because the government has refused for several years now to report it. I know the member opposite hasn’t benefited from these new investments in math, but I think the member can probably still do the basic math here that $15 billion is less than $16 billion. We’re not even fully funding the repair backlog. And that funding also has to go to the creation of new schools. So if we wanted to be sure that every child had a safe environment to learn in, we would be investing more.

Je doute absolument que les conseils scolaires francophones puissent mettre en place un nouveau curriculum en français pour septembre. J’ai peur aussi que les changements dans ce projet de loi—si on ne consulte pas avec les conseils scolaires, les mesures ne répondront pas aux besoins des conseils scolaires. Et nous avons vu déjà la pénurie d’enseignants et d’enseignantes de langue française. C’est parce que notre gouvernement a échoué de considérer les besoins particuliers des conseils scolaires francophones.

What we have seen is that parents have repeatedly complained about the human rights of their children not being respected, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission has had to respond that that is an issue of a lack of government funding rather than a failure on the part of the school boards.

Let me tell you, if we really respected the rights of francophone learners in this province, then francophone school boards and francophone educators would be consulted on changes before they were made. We would take into account the fact that decisions that affect anglophone school boards in one way do not affect francophone school boards in that same way. We would be considering the fact that children with disabilities and accessibility needs in the classroom can’t get the same treatment as kids who don’t need any special kind of support. We would actually be consulting with parents, with unions, with school board trustees to make sure the supports were in place to protect the right of every child in the province to a high-quality education.

It is absolutely essential that we take into account the conditions in our schools, because those are our children’s learning conditions. When they don’t feel safe, when they can’t be in the classroom or they can’t be in school because of levels of violence, they can’t learn. When the supports aren’t there, they are unable to learn.

Unfortunately, the way special education is funded, our children with disabilities are not getting supports, and that is disrupting their education. Many of them are not even able to be at school full-day, full-week because of this underfunding. Many of them aren’t getting the supports they need to allow them to participate in learning in the classroom.

A government that actually wanted to help every child in our province to receive a high-quality education would be funding special education based on needs instead of some kind of strange statistical projection that has nothing to do with what is taking place on the ground in our classrooms.

Accountability and transparency are absolutely meaningless when school boards are being forced to make cuts to the teachers and education workers who would actually help our children to achieve success, when schools are lacking the educational workers that would actually allow children to be in classrooms so they could achieve success. Transparency is meaningless without an actual plan to get us from A to B.

I listened intently to the information that was provided by the member opposite.

The reforms proposed in the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act will ensure that Ontario is getting more classrooms into communities—including the French language.

To be clear, linguistic and denomination educational rights will be protected. In fact, the Ontario Human Rights Commission is pleased to know about the overhauling of the language curriculum and the screening of all young children, in its Right to Read post. Does the member opposite disagree with the Ontario Human Rights Commission?

I rise today with sadness to share the devastating loss of the Black Walnut Bakery Café, which was destroyed in a fire on Sunday, in my riding of London West.

Located in an historic 145-year-old building, the Black Walnut Bakery Café has been an anchor in London’s treasured Old South neighbourhood since 2011. Owners Ed and Mandy Etheridge are known for their dedication to the community and their commitment to maintaining the heritage feeling of the building. Local residents and Londoners have gathered at this neighbourhood gem for years for coffee, light lunches, and my personal favourite, oatmeal and date scones.

Many thanks to London firefighters who responded immediately when the fire broke out at 1:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, fought the blaze for over eight hours, and conducted search and rescue to confirm the building was unoccupied. These brave men and women ensured everyone was safe. While, luckily, no one was hurt, the structural and roof damage were too substantial, and the building could not be saved.

With overwhelming support from across our city, Ed and Mandy are determined to rebuild this beloved institution and are working to relocate their staff to Black Walnut’s two other locations in the meantime.

I echo comments of the Old South Community Organization: The entire community stands with Ed and Mandy as they plan for the next evolution of the Black Walnut Bakery Café.

London–Fanshawe, thank you.

There’s lots of great London representation here, so I know how the Speaker could get confused.

I want to thank the member for contributing to debate. She mentioned the legacy funding, the legacy children, near the end of her speech. I just wonder if she could expand on, since there wasn’t a consultation, what that’s going to look like for parents and legacy kids returning back to school.

There’s time for one final question. I recognize the member for London West—London–Fanshawe.

Further debate?

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.