It’s very interesting to hear the response from the member to my last question, and it shows that the NDP simply doesn’t know how this actually works. You see, the Ministry of Education sends funding to the board. The board then sends it along to the school. They are responsible for the programming decisions. It’s not the government who sits here and says, “Let’s look at these programs and see what’s best for the needs of those children.” It is up to the broader public sector—the school boards, in this case—to make those priority decisions on what programming is best for children. That is exactly how that system works, and I know this first-hand because, as I said, my wife has been a teacher for over a decade and tells me how that system works and how the programming actually doesn’t have any clarity around how those decisions are made. And parents are left in the dark when programs like reading programs are cut.

Now, we know the funding is up. You can read the budget. You see it’s 27% higher than when the last Liberal government was here—a hard stop on the facts.

Interjections.

My question to the government side: I find that this is a curious set of priorities that the government is choosing to focus on. This morning, I brought it up at question period. It was brought up that school programs like the ones that provide nutrition to students in Niagara are in crisis across this province: 16 schools have closed their nutrition program, 30 more are projected to close and 49 have been affected. The government knows that we are facing a $400,000 shortfall on the nutrition program. My question is, why are we not making items like this a priority right now when we are talking about education?

Thank you for the question from the opposition side. It is very important that we need to carry on supporting the francophone communities in our education sectors. That’s why we are investing more in education. If we have the opportunity to read about our budget for this fiscal year, we may see that there is a $2.1-billion increase in investing in the public education sector. That is one of the reasons why we are supporting this bill: because we are investing more in education than ever.

This is very important to me, because we need to always understand our own jurisdiction. We don’t cross our border. We don’t step on other people’s toes. We help each other so that we can be a board that can help our students move forward. That’s why in this legislation, we need to provide more funding for school boards for trustee training so that they know what they should do and what they shouldn’t.

The Minister of Education also announced that we are investing more than $180 million for 2023-24 in math and reading support for Ontario students in our classrooms and at home. This is building upon our previous $200-million investment with support to students with our four-year math strategy. The numbers go on and on. I don’t know why you are not supporting this one, but this is very well-supported education—

Questions?

Questions?

Just so you know, I’ll be asking you my question in French en ce moment.

Les enfants francophones ont un droit constitutionnel à une éducation de haute qualité en français. En ce moment, les études démontrent qu’on a besoin de 1 000 enseignants et enseignantes de plus par année, mais l’Ontario n’en forme pas plus que 500 par année. On a au-dessus de 450 % des enseignants et enseignantes dans nos écoles francophones qui ne sont pas formés.

Qu’est-ce que le gouvernement a dans son projet de loi pour s’assurer que les enfants francophones ont droit à une éducation en français avec des professeurs formés?

I think the member from Markham–Unionville brings a very interesting perspective to this. Correct me if I’m wrong: You were a school board trustee, I think, at one point, prior to getting elected here to the provincial government. Maybe you could talk a little bit about some of your experience and what it was like having to work with, maybe, some challenging colleagues who didn’t necessarily want to hear the views of parents being brought before the board and the other trustees.

I heard the member boast about his government’s investment in schools in Ontario, but I wonder if he would share with the people of this province what that investment would be if it had kept pace with inflation, because just looking at the dollars, without taking inflation into account, presents a very different picture of how school boards are funded.

We know that when inflation is taken into account school boards are receiving on average $1,200 less per student in the 2023-24 school year than what they received in 2018-19. Total funding is $2.5 billion short of where it would have been if it had kept pace with inflation. So would the member please comment on what the numbers would look like when inflation is taken into account?

Point of order.

Thank you to my dear colleague for asking a very important question. Writing, reading and math are very important for our children’s future. Every single one of the pages, the young people here, need to be well prepared for their future. No matter when they go through high school or when they graduate from high school, they need very well-trained reading, math and science for their future.

We heard the MPP from St. Catharines just say that our priorities in bringing forward this legislation are curious. I think that was her word. I don’t understand what is curious about student achievement and going back to basics, making sure kids can succeed and get good outcomes. So I’d like to ask the member if he thinks those are good priorities.

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.

It’s time for further debate.

I will recognize the member from Eglinton–Lawrence.

I recognize the member from Barrie–Innisfil.

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.

It is clear that since this government came into power, there is now $1,200 less money per student than there was when they took power in 2018. There are now four less teachers per 1,000 students in secondary school than when they took power in 2018. They are, through this bill, improving: one new teacher for 2,850 kids for help in reading and one new teacher for 6,650 kids in math.

You gave the example of your nephew, who needed more support in order to be successful. He was lucky enough that his parents were wealthy. What do you figure will happen to all of the kids like your nephew who need extra help?

The minister started out with a quote from the NDP government, made back, about the accountability for school boards.

We have a task force that was set up by the Liberals in 2009, which the member across the floor sat on, and the recommendations that came out of these are exactly the recommendations that are here: “The ministry should monitor the implementation of plans for improving student” success “and, where necessary, investigate and make further recommendations to bring the board into compliance with expectations for student achievement.” That is from the task force that the member across sat on.

Again, “The minister should establish a minimum code of conduct for trustees, in consultation with trustees or their representative associations.”

So my question to the member: Why do you disagree with these implementations?

Thank you to the member for Thunder Bay–Superior North for her presentation. I took note that, at least in what I could capture, twice in there was a notation about blaming teachers. This is not at all about blaming teachers. This is a bill about accountability, not blaming teachers. Why doesn’t the opposition believe in accountability for anybody in our education system?

At the end of the day, Speaker, this bill will, if passed, ensure educators are equipped with updated knowledge. The member also spoke about what’s out of the teacher’s role. Well, we’re going to ensure that they have updated knowledge and abilities to best serve our students for the best student outcomes. Why doesn’t the member opposite believe in that?

I’d like to thank the member from Thunder Bay–Superior North for her presentation and also speaking to her expertise in the field of education. Myself, I am also a trained educator.

When we hear this government use terms like “back to basics,” it really does betray an ignorance about education itself. When discussing special education learners or, really, education at large, often the analogy is used of animals: You can’t teach a fish to climb a ladder nor can you teach a giraffe to swim. But there is the concept of Gardner’s intelligences, whereby each student learns in very different ways, whether a visual learner, an auditory learner, a kinesthetic learner.

What concern me the most were member’s comments and the government’s discussion about ideological sameness across boards. Is this similar to the notion of disrespecting individual learners and expecting sameness based on ideology rather than reality?

“All students”—I’m quoting the member opposite—“deserve the opportunity to learn to their fullest capacity.” I couldn’t agree more as a mother of a special-needs child, as is my friend from Newmarket–Aurora. We certainly care about these things. This government has actually increased funding for special needs in schools by about $100 million every year since we have been in office—every year. But parents come to me and they say “Where is the money going?” I don’t know. We don’t know, in fact.

What this bill is trying to do is to say, “We need you to report, school boards, what you’re spend spending that money on.” Because I’ve had teachers and parents tell me that when school boards need money, the first place they take it from is the special-needs funding envelope. I support this legislation because I want children with special needs to have the advantage of that money.