Last week, the Art Battle Toronto All-Stars competition took place in The Great Hall in my beautiful riding of Spadina–Fort York. The New York Post describes Art Battle as Iron Chef, but with paint. The whole evening is a blast. Music is pumping everyone up. The bar is open. The host, Tanya, stokes the crowd. Meanwhile, six artists are arrayed on stage in the middle of the room with a canvas and acrylic paints. When the battle starts artists have 20 minutes to complete a canvas while the audience walks in a mass circle and watches the progress.

Meanwhile, the event is being live-streamed while colour-commentators Morgan and Tyson provide the play-by-play and people vote online and bid on the pieces as they are being created. Kudos to the artists who, in this incredible pressure cooker, created phenomenal canvases. Kudos to the winner of the evening, Julie Amlin, and even more kudos to Simon Plashkes and Chris Pemberton, who held the first Art Battle tournament in Toronto 14 years ago and are now exporting it to Reno, Minnesota, Pawtucket, Pocatello, Mexico City, London, New York, Chicago and 50 other cities.

We’re all looking forward to the next Art Battle, coming on March 30 to Ottawa and then returning to The Great Hall in Toronto on April 25. Support local artists and have a blast. Come out to the Art Battle.

I just want to welcome to the House Michau van Speyk from the Ontario Autism Coalition. He celebrated his 28th birthday last week, so happy birthday, Michau.

This petition is from the Dewson Street Public School, which my children attended and which is represented by the honourable leader of the Ontario NDP.

“A petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from the Elementary Teachers of Toronto to Stop the Cuts and Invest in the Schools our Students Deserve.

“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 fully support this petition. I will affix my signature and pass to page Jonas to take to the table.

It’s an honour to rise today. The NDP have got a motion today, and all we’re asking the government to do is to cover the pandemic costs that were absorbed by school boards across the province. This will help to reduce the number of cuts that this government is going to be making to our schools and our staff over the next year. It’s very simple.

The Minister of Education was just boasting about the investment in HEPA filters and other things, and that was good, except there were two issues I take with what the government did in that area. The first was that the pandemic started in March 2020, and our schools were closed. Our students in Ontario had the longest closure, missed the most school days of any jurisdiction in North America. In January 2022, this government was boasting about a new investment in HEPA filters in our schools, so they could open classrooms. It took them a year and a half to make that investment in those HEPA filters that the minister was just boasting about just a few minutes ago. We need a government that’s actually going to invest in our students today.

The minister also has continuously boasted in the House about a $680-million increase in education funding from last year to this year, but the Financial Accountability Office, which is an independent office of the provincial government, says that they didn’t spend $430 million in the education budget. When you look at inflation, inflation over the last year was 5.4%; if they had increased education funding by the rate of inflation, it would have been a $1.5-billion increase, not a $680-million increase. So the amount that they increased did not account for inflation, and they didn’t actually spend the amount that they had been boasting about, that they budgeted for last year. The impact is that we have 8,000 more students in the province of Ontario—these are government figures—and 2,000 fewer education workers: 2,000 fewer teachers, education assistants, special-needs assistants and custodians.

I am deeply concerned about education. I was a high school teacher in the 1990s, and I continued teaching part-time after that. I was a school board trustee from 2010 to 2018. The reason that I am so passionate about our education system is that our publicly funded education systems are the foundation of our democracy and the foundation of our economic growth, and we need to support them.

And so when the government is putting out all these numbers and the numbers don’t actually equate with what’s happening in the classroom, then this is a problem, because spin is not going to educate our children. What’s going to educate our children are the teachers, the education assistants, the special needs assistants, the custodians, the secretaries and all of the staff, all of the workers, in our schools. That’s who is educating our children, and they are the ones who need to be supported.

But right now, the Toronto District School Board spent $70 million to ensure that their schools met the health guidelines provided by this government during the pandemic. That money was not reimbursed, and so they’re just asking the government to reimburse that $70 million in pandemic measures that the TDSB made. Instead, the TDSB is facing a $61-million shortfall in the next school year, 2023-24. The outcome of this will be—and this is the bottom line; this is where people will be able to judge whether the government is giving the full story or not. They are estimating that they’re going to have to cut 522 staff. And from what I’ve heard from the other side, from the government side during this debate, it sounds like they’re not going to support the motion to reimburse school boards for the pandemic measures. And the other thing that I’ve heard from them is they’re going to start attacking the school boards. Even though all of the funding is provided by this government to the school boards, they’re going to start attacking the school boards and saying, “Hey, you’ve got to manage your budgets better.” Well, the government insisted. They forced the TDSB to spend $70 million on pandemic measures and they didn’t reimburse them. That’s what this motion is about: reimbursing those pandemic measures.

At the TDSB, it will mean 65 teachers, 35 educational assistants, 35 child and youth workers, 40 school-based safety monitors. We are facing a crisis in our society coming out of this pandemic and this government is proposing to cut school-based safety monitors. The Toronto Catholic District School Board used $60 million in reserves during the pandemic, and next year they’re projecting a shortfall of somewhere around $35 million, and they are expecting to lay off at least 120 education workers. The impact of this is that we have larger classes; we have fewer resources; we have fewer staff to serve our students in our schools.

And the other thing—I don’t have much time left, but I just want to say, the government spins all these numbers out. Every time you ask them about something, they spin out the numbers. But my real concern is that their goal is to privatize our education system just like they’re privatizing our health care system. We spend $80 billion a year in Ontario on health care. We spend $34 billion a year in education. And there are a lot of corporations that look at that money and they think, “How can we possibly divert some of that into our pockets? How can we change these systems—these public, not-for-profit systems—into private, for-profit systems?” That’s what’s happening in our health care system, and it’s something that I think this government is doing in our education system as well. And I think it’s really, really unconscionable to be privatizing education when it is truly the foundation of our democracy and of our economic growth.