Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a very sobering report, warning governments to act now as the window is closing very quickly to prevent catastrophic levels of global warming. This is a final warning before it becomes too late to stop a 1.5-degree Celsius increase in temperatures.

The report identifies an increase in extreme weather events around the globe that are having a devastating impact on humanity. We are already seeing this in Ottawa West–Nepean, Speaker, where in the past six years, we have experienced two once-in-a-century floods, a tornado and an incredibly destructive derecho. All of these events destroyed homes and displaced residents. Just this winter, for the first time, we saw our beloved Rideau Canal fail to open, hurting many local businesses, and disappointing locals and tourists alike.

But the report also offered hope, Speaker. We can still address climate change, prevent the worst outcomes and secure a safer future for all of us if we act now. We have the tools and the knowledge of what needs to be done. What we need is the political willpower.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, the report is a “clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every time frame ... our world needs climate action on all fronts—everything, everywhere, all at once.”

We need this government to take that call seriously, Speaker. The solutions are there to reduce emissions, boost our economy, keep people safe and hand a better world to our children. Will they heed that call?

Our schools are facing significant cuts to the supports our children need next year, yet this government’s new budget continues to massively underspend on education. If the government had just kept up with inflation since 2018, they would be spending $2.5 billion more on education. That doesn’t even take into account the additional supports our kids need because of the pandemic.

Will the government finally invest in our children, reimburse school boards for their COVID expenses and provide the stable and adequate funding our children need?

The only thing historic about this government’s education spending, Speaker, is their inability to get the funding out the door.

Under this government, kids with accessibility needs are already not getting the support they need. And now the government is forcing thousands of kids with autism into school with no transition plans and no additional resources for schools, which means already inadequate supports are going to have to be stretched even further.

How are we going to keep these kids safe? How are we going to help them succeed? Where is the plan? And where are the resources to make sure that every child can thrive in our schools?

I’m pleased to rise today to present this petition to stop the cuts and invest in our schools, which our students deserve. I’d particularly like to thank the parents and community of Jack Miner Senior Public School, which was just one of many schools where these signatures were collected.

The petition reads:

“Whereas the Ford government cut funding to our schools by $800 per student during the pandemic period, and plans to cut an additional $6 billion to our schools over the next six years;

“Whereas these massive cuts have resulted in larger class sizes, reduced special education and mental health supports and resources for our students, and neglected and unsafe buildings;

“Whereas the Financial Accountability Office reported a $2.1-billion surplus in 2021-22, and surpluses growing to $8.5 billion in 2027-28, demonstrating there is more than enough money to fund a robust public education system;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to:

“—immediately reverse the cuts to our schools;

“—fix the inadequate education funding formula;

“—provide schools the funding to ensure the supports necessary to address the impacts of the pandemic on our students;

“—make the needed investments to provide smaller class sizes, increased levels of staffing to support our students’ special education, mental health, English language learner and wraparound supports needs, and safe and healthy buildings and classrooms.”

I wholeheartedly endorse this petition, Speaker, will add my name it to and send it to the table with page Paul.

I’m pleased to rise to this motion, put forward today by the leader of His Majesty’s loyal opposition, because this is such an important motion.

Our children have really borne the brunt of the past few years. They had three years of disrupted schooling in which this government refused at every turn to make it easier on our children. They didn’t want to invest in the smaller class sizes that would have allowed our schools to stay open safely, so our kids spent more time out of school than any other jurisdiction in North America. They gave COVID tests to private schools but left our publicly funded schools at the back of the line to access testing that would have allowed schools to avoid outbreaks and stay open. They wrote cheques to parents that covered, at best, an hour or two of tutoring instead of hiring more teachers and education workers to provide supports to all children in the classroom. Their total mental health funding works out to less than a quarter per child, per day, when our children are in crisis.

We all recognize that the pandemic required some extraordinary measures to protect kids, but this government refused to fully fund those measures, even though they received billions of dollars in COVID support funding from the federal government. They left school boards to pay out of their own pockets for those measures. We know from the financial statements of school boards last year that the government paid less than half of COVID-related operating expenses in Ontario. The year before that, at the height of the pandemic, the government still left school boards to pay 20% of COVID-related operating expenses.

Because of this situation, the Toronto District School Board had to pay $70 million out of their own reserves, and now they’re facing a deficit of $64 million for next year, with no reserves left to cover it. The Toronto Catholic District School Board had to pay $60 million out of their reserves, and now they’re facing a deficit of $25 million for next year. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board paid $10 million out of reserves and are now looking at having to make cuts of somewhere between $9 million and $39 million next year.

It is unbelievable to me, as a parent, that the government could have been so callous as to sit on millions of dollars rather than investing in protections and supports for our kids at a really critical moment.

And now, while the minister has been promising a normal, stable school year and talking about catching up on test scores, the government is still refusing to provide the funding that our schools need.

The minister likes to claim that he’s providing historic funding levels, but the only thing historic about this government’s funding is the government’s failure to actually get promised money out the door. The reality is that the government is providing $2.5 billion less in funding than they would have if education funding had just kept pace with inflation over the past five years—and that’s just to maintain the system; that’s not to provide any additional supports to kids who have been hit hard for the past three years. The minister can’t even get the money he has committed out the door. The government is underspending its education budget by $432 million this year alone, and so, instead of getting more supports, like they deserve, our children are going into next year with even fewer supports. We already have far too many kids who have experienced learning loss in crowded classrooms, where they can’t get the help they need because the teacher is trying to teach too many kids at once who are all over the map in terms of their learning level and needs.

Laura Neville is just one of many parents in Ottawa West–Nepean who have reached out to me about class sizes. Her son attends D. Roy Kennedy Public School, where his grade 6 class is now up to 35 students. Parents are receiving regular updates at D. Roy Kennedy informing them that students are being added to classes that are already overcrowded. The parents all really appreciate the grade 6 teacher, Mrs. Bowker, but they recognize that Mrs. Bowker is being put in an impossible position, trying to support 35 students who are in very different places in their learning and abilities. The students are being forced to learn in a classroom that is busy, noisy and cramped, because it wasn’t built for 35 students. In fact, the room is too small for 35 desks, so students are crammed together at small tables just to be able to physically fit in the room. Kids with IEPs can’t get the support they need—because how many kids can you provide individualized support to when you have that may children in one classroom?

Our kids’ mental health is really struggling too. I’m sure there’s not a parent in Ontario who is not feeling this. I have three kids, and all three have needed mental health support in the past few years, which has given us an experience of what the system is like. In December, we were referred to the school social worker for one of my children. That meeting finally happened at the beginning of March, and it was a meeting basically to tell us that there are no supports available through the school and we’re on our own to find some.

When I spoke to the Ontario Association of Social Workers earlier this month, they told me that social workers with their own practice are getting heartbreaking requests every single week for young children who are depressed, anxious, sad, not engaging normally in school, and their parents are desperate for help because they are being left totally on their own to find support. These social workers don’t have room to take on new clients because of the high level of demand. They say that putting supports in schools would be a more effective way of addressing the demand because they’d be able to intervene earlier and offer group supports.

According to a recent report from People for Education, 59% of students in Ontario report being depressed about the future; 91% of principals said their schools need mental health support, but less than one in 10 schools has access to a regularly scheduled mental health professional. Half of schools have no mental health resources at all. That’s how badly this government is shortchanging our kids. And yet, the Minister of Health wants us to believe that providing less than a quarter a day per child after this incredibly disruptive global pandemic is somehow a major achievement worthy of a gold star. Parents aren’t falling for it. They are giving this government’s record a big red F.

The government is also failing kids with accessibility needs. There aren’t enough EAs to support every kid who needs one. Too many kids are being told they can’t come to school because there’s no one there to help them. Too many parents are sitting outside their child’s school to provide help because there’s no EA available. Too many EAs are running down the hall with walkie-talkies trying to determine which of the five children they are expected to support needs them the most right now. And in the middle of this situation, the government is transitioning the autism legacy kids into schools without a single dollar of additional support—thousands of kids with accessibility needs joining our schools, and no additional money for EAs or for special class placements. This government is setting these kids up to fail, just like it is already failing the many children with disabilities already in our schools.

This is the inevitable outcome of the government’s underfunding. It means cuts to supports instead of more support. It means fewer teachers and larger class sizes. It means fewer EAs, fewer child and youth workers. It means fewer safety monitors in schools at a moment when violence is increasing because of the mental health crisis and because of staffing shortages.

We don’t know yet what all the cuts will be, but we already know some of the damage this government is doing to our students next year. There will be 522 positions lost at the Toronto District School Board, including 65 teachers, 35 special education workers, 35 child and youth workers, and 40 school-based safety monitors. The Toronto Catholic District School Board is looking at the loss of 120 positions. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, which will be discussing academic staff positions tomorrow night, is facing the loss of many of its support teacher positions, who provide assistance to students who are struggling.

The minister says he wants to address reading and math competency. Well, students in Ottawa are losing seven literacy and numeracy support teachers and coaches, along with another six learning support teachers. Blind, deaf, low-vision and hard-of-hearing students are losing a teacher.

CUPE is warning that across the province, we are about to lose 7,000 education workers supporting our kids day in and day out.

What’s frustrating is that all of these cuts are avoidable. The mental health crisis is solvable. We can provide our children with the supports they need. We can give them smaller class sizes.

We need the government to reimburse school boards for their COVID-related expenses, and we need them to provide adequate and stable funding so that schools can provide children the supports they need, delivered in the classroom by caring adults.

Nous voyons les effets du sous-financement systématique de notre système d’éducation par ce gouvernement : les coupures que les conseils scolaires doivent mettre en place à un moment où nos enfants ont besoin de plus de soutien, le manque d’aide pour la santé mentale, la pénurie des soutiens pour des enfants qui ont des besoins d’accessibilité. Mais les solutions existent. Il faut que le gouvernement rembourse les conseils scolaires pour leurs dépenses liées à la COVID-19 et que le gouvernement donne un financement adéquat et stable à notre système d’éducation.

I hope the government will consider who they are harming with their ideological agenda and will provide the necessary funding so that our kids can finally get the support they need.