I have a petition titled “Vulnerable Persons Alert.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas there is a gap in our current emergency alert system that needs to be addressed;

“Whereas a vulnerable persons alert would help ensure the safety of our loved ones in a situation where time is critical;

“Whereas several municipal councils, including, Brighton, Midland, Bonfield township, Cobourg and Mississauga and several others, have passed resolutions calling for a new emergency alert to protect our loved ones;

“Whereas over 90,000 people have signed an online petition calling for a ‘Draven Alert’ and over 6,000 people have signed an online petition calling for ‘Love’s Law’, for vulnerable people who go missing;

“Whereas this new alert would be an additional tool in the tool box for police forces to use to locate missing, vulnerable people locally and regionally;

“Whereas this bill is a common-sense proposal and non-partisan in nature, to help missing vulnerable persons find their way safely home;

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

“Support and pass Bill 74, Missing Persons Amendment Act, 2023.”

I wholeheartedly support this petition. I’m going to affix my name to it and give it to page bring it to page Keya to bring to the Clerk.

It’s my honour to present this stack of following petitions which are to stop the cuts and invest in the schools our students deserve. It reads:

“Whereas the Ford government cut funding to our schools by $800 dollars 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, will affix my signature to it and deliver it with page Jonas to the Clerks.

It’s a great honour for me to rise today in the House and introduce this petition, which is entitled as follows:

“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 dollars 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.”

Speaker, I’m honoured to sign this petition and I will be sending it with the great page Ethan from Ottawa Centre to the Clerks’ table.

I move that:

Whereas the independent Financial Accountability Office found that the government failed to allocate $600 million in COVID-19 response funds and underspent its education budget by $432 million in the 2022-2023 fiscal year; and

Whereas the funding provided to school boards has been inadequate to cover pandemic-related expenses; and

Whereas this has resulted in an estimated budget shortfall of at least $100 million for school boards across the province; and

Whereas school boards are proposing hundreds of staff layoffs due to this budget shortfall;

Therefore, the Legislative Assembly calls on the government to cover all pandemic-related expenditures for school boards, including the programs and infrastructure needed to support students following three years of learning disruption.

Speaker, on Thursday, this government failed students. Their budget failed education workers, and it failed parents. The Premier and members opposite failed Ontario’s public education system, and with that, they snatched away a bright and prosperous future from thousands, indeed, millions of kids across this province. This government gave us a budget with nothing meaningful for the public education system, its workers or its students.

It has been a really tough few years for schools. I think we all know that. The pandemic caused serious disruptions in learning. So many students across this province face learning difficulties and mental health challenges. But where was this government? They were missing in action—missing in action just when our kids needed them most. I was the education critic during the pandemic, so I know that school boards had to dip into their own reserves to meet expenses. The Premier and the education minister sat on $600 million in COVID-19 response funds. They underspent the education budget by $432 million in 2022-23.

And now that kids are finally back in school, we needed this government to ramp up those supports, not cut them down. But do you know what they did, Speaker? They took an axe to them. In fact, I’m going to quote Press Progress here. They say that the Premier made “a sneaky move to quietly cut education,” leaving school boards with a gaping hole of millions of dollars.

This government would have us believe that they’ve increased funding for schools. They’d really like us to believe that, but the truth is, they’ve shortchanged students, shortchanged teachers, shortchanged parents by $47 million.

Thanks to this government, more school boards are looking at funding shortfalls again this year. According to the independent Financial Accountability Office, this year alone there is a $400-million shortfall, and over the next six years that gap is going to grow by $6 billion. That’s $6 billion less for students, less for schools and for the workers who keep them running. This government is leaving kids without the supports they need to get back on track, and we all know what that means: It means cuts to staff, the education workers and teachers and educational assistants, the admin support our students and staff so desperately need. The repair backlog is going to continue to grow. It grew so much—a billion dollars under this government—poor ventilation, classrooms sweltering hot in warmer months and cold as ice in the winter, crumbling schools. It means no financial or human resource support to address the growing issue of violence in schools, no new investments in early childhood educators or mental health professionals. They say they plan to recruit more math coaches in schools, but they’re struggling to hire any educators whatsoever because they can’t compete when it comes to wages. And this means no new funding for base investments in education supports.

Without proper funding, schools are going to be forced to make really tough decisions, and they’re looking down the barrel right now of staff cuts and layoffs.

Here in Toronto, the Toronto District School Board is projecting the elimination of 522 staff positions, including 65 teachers, 35 special education workers, 35 child and youth workers, and 40 school-based safety monitors. I’ve got to tell you, Speaker, if I go to the doorstep and talk to parents in my community about that, they’re going to say, “What are they thinking?”

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is looking at cuts next year of between $9 million and $39 million.

Last year, school boards were already forced to make cuts due to underfunding. The Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board cut 65 support workers, including educational assistants. The Trillium Lakelands District School Board cut 77 educational workers, including EAs.

I’m going to say it again: All these cuts are resulting and will result in bad and worse, and worse still, outcomes for our kids and for the future of Ontario.

This government seems to have no issue finding public money when it comes to their insider friends, but when it comes to students in our province, they always seem to come up short.

School boards need the government’s support to give our kids a good education. It really is that simple. It’s a cliché for a reason that today’s youth are the future of tomorrow. What Ontario are we heading towards when we aren’t investing our highest dollars in students right now?

This government talks a lot, and they did in their budget, about the need to attract and recruit new workers, newcomers into Ontario. But how are we going to convince families to come to Ontario and to stay here if they see that we have a public education system in crisis? We talk a lot on both sides of this House about the situation in health care right now. The health care situation is absolutely a staffing crisis; it is a human resources crisis. But that’s what we’re seeing in education, as well.

I’m hearing from boards in the north who are saying that they can’t—small boards, and they’ve got 40-plus positions opened up for educational assistants. That means that our kids are not getting that support that they need—the kids who are struggling the most. We have kids in our public school system across this province still struggling with the challenges that they faced during the pandemic. We know that they’re having trouble, in many cases, catching up. We know that education workers are really struggling with the stress of the day-to-day work, because they face those struggles of those kids every day when they can’t help them. How heartbreaking is that? We’re hearing increasingly about boards going out and hiring unqualified staff because they can’t find qualified staff who will work for these wages in this situation.

There’s only one solution: You have to stop squirrelling away those dollars for a rainy day. The rainy day is here right now.

Speaker, this is why we put forward this motion today. I want to also acknowledge our amazing education critic, the member from Ottawa–Nepean, for her incredible work on this. That’s why we put this motion forward—to help our kids get back on track, to help all those families out there who are struggling.

I want to say to those families who are watching this today: We have got your back. We’re not going to let this government get away with this.

Do you know what they want to do, Speaker? Do you know where they want this to go? This government wants to do the same thing they’ve done with health care. They want to manufacture a crisis, where things get so bad that—what’s the solution? “Oh, yes, I’ve got this buddy over here. He’s got this plan. He’s got this private company that can come in and ride in and save the day.” They’re going to come up with some kind of voucher system. We’ve called it; I know it’s coming. That is not the answer. Look at the research. Look at what has happened around the world.

We have a public education system in this province that we are proud of. I moved to this province 30 years ago from Newfoundland. I stayed here and I raised my family here because we had a public education system that my kids could believe in, that I could believe in, that would be there when my kids were struggling, that would help lift them up when they fell down. We cannot afford to lose that system. We will be the laughingstock of the world.

This government needs to and should absolutely cover all pandemic-related costs for school boards. Parents across this province are looking at the Premier and they’re looking at the Minister of Education to step up; our children sure need them to.

I appreciate having the opportunity to stand and represent St. Paul’s community members who have signed, along with the Thorncliffe Park community—and it’s from ETFO.

“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 has 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 am deeply honoured to sign this petition.

Thank you to every student, every education worker, every teacher, every parent who is making our schools the best that they possibly can be, under hard circumstances.

I’m passing it to Ryan for the table.

That concludes our petitions for this afternoon.

I recognize the Leader of the Opposition to lead off the debate.

Further debate?

Please withdraw that comment.

You don’t win a seat like this without a few friends.

I was talking to my good friend Kevin Yarde the other day. Kevin Yarde is not imaginary—despite the efforts of some parties around here.

To get back to the topic at hand, I really do think we need a few more minutes to drill down on our government’s support to the province’s school boards.

The Toronto District School Board and the Toronto Catholic District School Board have been in the news lately, asking for additional financial assistance.

Not surprisingly, our friends in the NDP have been busy spreading the narrative that these cuts are somehow the fault of this government when, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Would it surprise you to hear that the TDSB has enjoyed an increase of $38 million since the 2017-18 school year, even though its enrolment has fallen by 16,000 students? That’s right, Speaker: Funding for the TDSB went up at the same time that student enrolment went down substantially. This is the equivalent of removing the populations of the eight largest high schools in the city from the TDSB’s enrolment numbers. In fact, our government has increased per pupil funding in the TDSB by 6.2% since we were first elected in 2018. The same is true with the Toronto Catholic District School Board. The TCDSB—love the acronyms—has enjoyed an increase in funding of over $20.5 million since the 2017-18 school year, even though its enrolment decreased by 6,743 students during that period.

Let’s look at Hamilton for a moment. The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board has enjoyed—

Interjection.

The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board has enjoyed an increase of over $51.5 million in funding since the 2017-18 school year, and it has hired 228 additional staff since then. Similarly, the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board has seen an increase of over $30 million in funding since 2017-2018, and it has hired 132 additional staff since then.

Then there is Ottawa. My friends in the NDP might be surprised to hear that the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board has enjoyed an increase of over $88.8 million in funding since 2017-18. It has hired an additional 667 staff, including 268 teachers, since that year. Meanwhile, the Ottawa Catholic School Board has seen an increase of $82 million in funding since 2017-18, and it has hired 394 new staff, including 33 teachers, over the past few years.

I realize that our friends in the NDP want to blame our government for anything that goes wrong in this province. I get that they’ve got a job to do, and they may have trouble assigning agency to large organizations with authority for the many schools under their purview, but I think an important point needs to be made.

At the end of the day, school boards are responsible to the families they serve and to the taxpayers who ultimately pay their bills. If certain school boards have trouble balancing their books, even though our government has consistently increased their funding and their own student enrolments have decreased, maybe it’s time for a look in the mirror. Maybe it’s time for certain boards to carefully review their expenditures, find some efficiencies that make sense and that do not impact the delivery of education, and take ownership of their decisions.

Speaker, the NDP motion calls on the government to essentially bail out any school boards that are having trouble balancing their budgets. I’m sure my New Democrat friends have heard of the concept of moral hazard, but please allow me to dive a bit deeper. Bailing out school boards that are unable to balance their books would of course feel like a huge slap in the face to the boards that were actually able to live within their means with the funds that our government provided to them. Most importantly, one-time bailouts to troubled boards would signal to all school boards that they do not have to be responsible with the business of how they conduct themselves. The message a bailout sends is simple: “If you run into financial trouble, don’t worry, because the province will take care of it.” I’m sorry, but that’s unacceptable. To borrow a phrase, that dog don’t hunt.

Speaker, our government is focused like a laser beam on helping students prepare for the jobs of tomorrow. We strongly believe in the power of public education to deal with the province’s shortage of skilled labour, and we are providing real support to our school board partners to make that happen. We’re delivering the largest tutoring program in Ontario’s history, funding substantial student mental health supports, building new schools after decades of school closures, and modernizing the curriculum to ensure it does a better job of meeting the ever-changing needs of the labour market. I’m proud of our government’s education record. We’re getting the job done.

Thank you for your indulgence.

You have a lot of friends.

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.

Further debate?

Further debate?

I’m very thankful to be able to stand today to speak to the Leader of the Opposition’s debate and to speak to the motion brought forward by the Leader of the Opposition. I appreciate all those who have had the opportunity to contribute.

I do want to begin by also acknowledging and thanking our hard-working education workers here in the province of Ontario, those who spend so much time investing in our students and in the children of this province. I know I express the gratitude on behalf of the government of Ontario and all members of the House for the work that they do. I had the great privilege of working closely with many over the years that I’ve been in this place and also in the four years that I served as parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Education, and I’m grateful for their leadership and the work that they do.

I know many are watching today, and I’m grateful to be able to rise in this House and to be able to address some of the issues that were raised, perhaps not correctly, by the members of the opposition in having this conversation about the important funding of our education system and our commitment to publicly funded education. I say, Speaker, that it is a pleasure for me to rise, because I think we need to combat widespread misinformation that is out there with regard to the subject of education funding here in the province of Ontario.

Speaker, when my volunteers and I went door-knocking during the last election campaign, we would encounter voters who accused our government of making cuts to education. When we would politely ask them to explain what they meant, they usually couldn’t—or perhaps they confused our government’s one-time investments in school safety during COVID with permanent funding and then incorrectly assumed that we were making cuts. For the sake of clarity, Speaker, I’m of course referring to the $3.2 billion in special COVID-19 resources that were provided to school boards since the start of the pandemic in 2020. Thanks to these investments, which include the major improvements to air quality and ventilation in our schools all across this province, Ontario’s classrooms are again safe for in-person learning, because of the historic investments made by this government, this Premier and this minister in our education system.

I can’t stress this enough, Speaker: Those COVID-19 resources were one-time investments specifically targeted for crucial investments at that time, and we made that abundantly clear to school boards. So Speaker, when my campaign volunteers and I would door-knock and we would speak with local residents, where they had heard about the alleged education cuts, they usually couldn’t remember actually or see where these alleged cuts were, because they had often been, unfortunately, misled by local Liberal or NDP candidates. We saw the local Liberal or NDP candidates—

It’s an honour to stand up today and speak to this motion and stand up for our public education system, stand up for the students, the families and the educators who make that system work, because we know that a high-quality public education system is vital to our quality of life. It’s vital to our economic prosperity. And it’s vital to democratic and civic participation.

It’s essential that we invest in our schools, in the staff and educators who teach and support students. Speaker, we all know that the pandemic had a tremendous negative impact on everyone in our society. But students bore the brunt of that impact. Due to the lack of investments and the fact that we had larger class sizes and repair backlogs in our buildings with inadequate ventilation, we had more days with our students out of school than any other jurisdiction in North America.

So we know that our students paid the price, and they’ve struggled. They’ve struggled with mental health challenges. They’ve struggled with learning gaps. They’ve struggled to maintain those social connections that are so vital to their quality of life.

I know the member from Brampton North, our friend over here, threw out some statistics and numbers in his talk, but here’s the bottom line: School boards were forced to dig into their reserve funds, funds that are set aside for capital improvements to invest in improving and upgrading their schools, because the government funded less than half of the COVID-related expenses the school boards faced. Quite frankly, the government failed to allocate $600 million to support COVID-related expenses. No wonder so many school boards across the province now are struggling to fund the things that our students need.

Speaker, I want to just say that the people who have been filling those needs and covering those gaps and managing the shortfalls are the educators and the support staff in our schools. But they’ve had to do it under tremendous pressure, without the kinds of supports they need, and so I want to thank those teachers and education staff.

I also want to remind everybody here that those teachers and support staff have gone above and beyond the call of duty, pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. I think we can all be grateful, prior to the pandemic, when we were having educational days of action in our schools, that it was teachers and educators and support staff who were walking the picket lines, saying no to larger class sizes and no to mandatory online learning. I think the pandemic highlighted for us that—I don’t think anyone wants mandatory online learning, so thank goodness educators stood up and said no to that prior to the pandemic. And I think the pandemic has highlighted the need for smaller class sizes, not larger class sizes. Sometimes when people attack education unions and say, “Hey, why are you disrupting our schools?”—it’s oftentimes, most of the time, because they’re fighting to improve our quality of education, and thank goodness, prior to the pandemic, that’s exactly what happened.

Now that we’ve made it through the pandemic, we need the government to step up and actually flow the money that our schools need. We need to make sure that we make the investments in smaller class sizes, that we have enough educational assistants and mental health supports, because the inadequacy of those has real-world consequences.

I just want to tell a few stories, because I think parents’ and students’ stories need to be told, Speaker. I can tell you, I did a round table with a group of parents who have children with special needs. Each and every one of them talked about how many times they’re called to the school to take their child home because the school does not have the adequate staff to serve their child’s needs, and then sometimes the lack of staff actually leads to danger for their students’ safety. And then the disruptions that are caused from that lack of teachers, educational assistants and adequate staff creates disruption that affects the learning of all the students in that classroom. The struggles that those parents and those students go through, the increased violence that it leads to, the fact that we have educational assistants now wearing Kevlar in our schools to protect themselves—I don’t think enough people in the public understand what’s happening in our schools due to lack of staffing, resources and the real-world consequences it has on people. So to me, I just don’t understand how the government failed to spend $435 million that they allocated for education that didn’t actually get spent given the clear needs in our schools.

And I don’t understand how the budget failed to actually address the $16.8-billion repair backlog that exists right now across the province in our public education system. Students are hot in the summer, cold in the winter. The ventilation systems are inadequate. There’s nothing in the budget to address those needs.

The least the government could do in order to make sure that our students receive the quality of education they need and deserve is to pay the pandemic-related costs those schools experienced, Speaker. That’s why I’ll be voting for this motion.

Please withdraw the comment.

Withdrawn, Speaker.

For the sake of clarity, the lack of accurate information that was shared in my constituency by members of other political parties unfortunately led to a great deal of confusion when I would be speaking with our hard-working education workers at the doors. So I’m going to speak a little bit about the substantial investments that have been made in our education system, to clear the air and make sure that the cold, hard facts are on the table and that we see all the people in this chamber and those watching understand the substantial amounts of funding that have been allocated, the historic investments, and the rapid increases in that funding for the people of Ontario.

Thanks to the investments, which included major improvements to air quality and ventilation in schools all over the province, we’ve seen that Ontario’s classrooms are truly safe for in-person learning. I think that the Premier and the minister’s goal of ensuring that students stay in class all year we’re seeing has been a reality. We’ve seen students able to learn safely and with the supports that they need.

Now I can’t stress enough, Speaker, that it always is frustrating when I see people from other political parties sometimes mischaracterize or accuse us of an action that may not have actually occurred, but during my time, Speaker, I want to walk through some of our government’s investments in education and why we’re making them.

I want to say, Speaker, I was a little bit baffled when I first read this motion, because I know for a fact that our government has a great track record when it comes to education funding. I know that the Leader of the Opposition previously served as her party’s education critic, so I can only assume that she has some unfinished business on that file or perhaps she’s looking to try to get back at the minister for all the times that he responded to her questions with the facts about what was happening in our funding of the education system.

Now here’s a key fact, Speaker: Our government has increased the Ministry of Education’s investments every single year since we came to office. This includes a $2.3-billion increase in this year’s education funding, to a total of $34.7 billion for 2023-24. I can actually remember when I first became the parliamentary assistant for the education ministry. I remember the then Minister of Education announced when the threshold crossed $30 billion. I remember when we saw for the first time an education funding allocation that crossed $30 billion. I remember that we were commenting about how historic that was, the first government to ever allocate $30 billion, and now we’re at $34.7 billion. I don’t know about you, Speaker, but that sounds like a lot of money ensuring that we’re representing the single largest investment in Ontario’s history in the education system.

This massive investment actually stands for a 27% increase from the education year prior to our government forming office, a 27% increase over the past five years. I’d like to thank this entire House for supporting those investments, especially the members on this side. Unfortunately, we saw members of the opposition vote against those investments in the past. But I’m confident that with the historic amounts being brought onto the table in this 2023 budget, we should see the opposition perhaps come to their senses and support these investments in our local schools.

A 27% increase in education base funding in a five-year period, and yet we still hear from the opposition about cuts—I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a by-product of the discovery math days, but I don’t know where they’re coming to this conclusion, because the facts speak for themselves. We spent billions and billions of new dollars in education to ensure that each and every student is receiving a world-class education system here in the province of Ontario.

And we could look at this a different way. We could look at it on a per-pupil funding basis. Speaker, our government is providing over $13,000 per student, $1,000 more per student than when the previous government was here in this House. Yes, the money we provided to school boards has been going to front-line funding positions. Since 2017-18, we’ve seen that front-line education staffing has increased by roughly 8,000 positions since our government came to office. That includes hundreds of principals and vice-principals, over 900 teachers and 7,000 education workers.

Interjections.

Additionally, it’s not just about the staffing, as much as we know that staffing is very, very important. We saw for many years the former Liberal government—when the NDP held the balance of power, we saw a government that closed hundreds of schools—

Interjection: What?

But our government now is investing $14 billion over 10 years in building new schools. I have to say, this is one of the aspects that I always really enjoyed in my time working with the Minister of Education, visiting different communities across this riding. I remember going to an eastern Ontario visit. I think we announced 11 schools in the space of a week, just going through communities who hadn’t seen meaningful investments in their local education systems under previous governments—and the gratitude and the thankfulness that I saw on the faces of the children and also expressed by those hard-working education workers, who saw that our government was taking infrastructure renewal seriously and building the new schools that were needed in every corner of this riding.

And it’s not just new schools. It’s building new child care spaces for hardworking families. Since 2019, we’ve invested over $2 billion into 100 new schools, 88 additions and 6,410 new licensed child care spaces. These are pretty significant investments, Speaker, and yet we seem to see once again this opposition motion claiming that our government is providing school boards with a so-called inadequate amount of funding—again, billions of dollars in new funding. But of course it’s never enough for the opposition.

The opposition motion also irresponsibly calls upon the Ontario government to provide an undisclosed amount of money to school boards to cover their budget shortfalls. They don’t say how much. They just say, “Give it all. Give the money away. Give it away.” But the amount of money is undisclosed, Speaker, because you can bet the farm that it would be an astronomically high number if we went down that road.

Incentives do matter. If our government was foolish enough to take the NDP’s advice and bail out school boards facing deficits, we would see that frankly, the boards had no reason to act responsibly. Every school board in the province would clamour for more funding, trying to make sure that they spent every red cent to get more funding from the provincial government. But we know that incentives matter, and we are taking a responsible approach.

In a nutshell, the NDP motion completely misdiagnoses the state of education funding in Ontario. It proposes a so-called solution that would, frankly, do more harm than good.

Now, just as an aside, Speaker, I am amazed that the NDP can so completely mischaracterize our government’s record on education funding with this incredibly accusatory tone and then turn around and attempt to take zero accountability for their time in government. Ontario’s first and only NDP government froze salaries for public sector workers; meanwhile, under our education deal, we see workers receiving a cumulative 15.8% raise, after this NDP, when they were in government, froze workers’ salaries. And we’ve seen that they ripped up signed contracts. They not only didn’t act in good faith when they were in negotiations; they ripped up signed contracts and ordered teachers, doctors, nurses and other public servants to work 12 days a year for free. It doesn’t sound like the NDP have a record to stand on, and not surprisingly, we did see that this resulted in some of the worst labour unrest in Ontario’s history.

When I read the motion we’re debating, it reminded me: It’s easy. I remember being in opposition, and it’s easy for the opposition members to criticize. Perhaps some of them haven’t been here that long, but I know others who have been in opposition for a great deal of time and have spent, I think, their entire political careers in opposition—and I think that is more than likely where they will stay. But it’s easy for them in opposition to demand our government hand over undisclosed amounts of additional funding to school boards.

The reality is this governing is far more difficult, because we know that governing entails accountability; it entails responsibility; it entails being good stewards. And when they were given the opportunity to govern, unfortunately, we saw that the NDP made some terrible decisions. Of course, I wish they hadn’t—I’m sure they wish they hadn’t—and I know the people of this province wish that they had not made those decisions. But unfortunately, it seems to be they haven’t learned their lesson. We often hear the opposition members smugly try to tell us, “Well, Bob Rae is a Liberal,” and pretend none of it ever happened. Well, Speaker, it’s the NDP record, and I think they have to stand behind their record.

I would now like to take a little bit of time in the time that I have left—and I know we’re running a little bit close, but I do want to walk through a little bit of this government’s achievements so far on the education file, because I think they’re substantial and important for education workers to understand. Our government strongly supports public education here in the province of Ontario. We know that it has a critically important role to play in the years to come. Ontario is facing the largest shortage of skilled labour in generations.

The Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development recently said it best: “Our government is taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to attract and train the next generation of skilled trades workers for better jobs and bigger paycheques for themselves and their families.” There are currently over 100,000 unfilled skilled trades jobs across the province, and it’s projected that by 2026 approximately one in five job openings in Ontario will be in a skilled-trades-related field.

Ever since our government was first elected, we have taken action to update the province’s curriculum and ensure that it does a better job of reflecting the changing needs of the labour market. For over a decade, we saw previous generations of students lacking math, financial literacy and numeracy skills.

I’m proud to tell this chamber that the government made some incredible progress over the last five years. We have new curriculums that emphasize relevance in today’s job market, with an emphasis on practical life skills, learning more about interest, debt, savings, personal budgeting and price comparisons—things that really matter to people when they’re living in the real world—as well as helping students prepare for the jobs of tomorrow by introducing students to how to apply coding skills, to better understand complex mathematics and how to make predictions.

As we pivot from a failed discovery math program and introduce evidence-based learning and math and STEM curriculum, training will need to be provided to ensure that teachers have the pedagogical training to meet the highest standards. To achieve this, Ontario is providing $30 million to double the number of school math coaches, beginning this September, as well as providing additional staff support—

Interjections.

They need school math tutors over there.

Absolutely—double the amount of school math coaches.

But we’re not stopping there; we’re expanding online learning opportunities provided by TVO and TFO that will provide resources for both students and teachers, available wherever there are.

Another item announced in last week’s fantastic budget, brought forward by the Minister of Finance, was that Ontario is expanding resources and partnerships so that more students will have hands-on learning experiences to further their financial literacy learning and growth. We will be releasing self-directed learning modules that provide senior students with further opportunities to explore how financial literacy helps them transition to post-secondary pathways and compete in a rapidly changing economy. Foundational knowledge such as financial literacy prepares Ontario’s students for success by giving them the basics that they need to pursue a career in STEM, the skilled trades or entrepreneurship.

A new initiative that was also brought forward in last week’s budget that deserves a bit more of a spotlight is the expansion of the co-op program for special education students. We believe that every child in Ontario, especially those with intellectual and physical disabilities, should be able to graduate from school, access a job and live a life of dignity and respect. It’s why our government is expanding placements in co-op to allow these students to get the hands-on learning experience that they deserve. Educational assistants will provide individualized supports to students with disabilities, to help them be successful in all areas of their learning, including co-operative education.

Another landmark initiative brought forward in last week’s budget is the $25-million fund to screen every student from senior kindergarten to grade 2 on their reading competencies and provide targeted supports for those who really need it. We know that early interventions are crucial. This will be the most comprehensive program of its type in our country—yet another way that the Ministry of Education and the public school system here in Ontario lead the charge in our country.

Teacher-led reading assessments will also ensure that students who are struggling with reading at a young age are identified early, to allow appropriate supports to be put in place sooner, supporting long-term reading success. The investment will provide kindergarten-to-grade 3 educators—around 30,000 different educators in this province—training in the science of reading, representing a significant shifts from the discovery math reading program that we saw under the former Liberal government.

Our government has been clear: We are committed to investing in access to all learning recovery resources, to ensure success for all students. Our government is strongly committed to supporting public education in the province of Ontario, and it shows that we are providing students with the resources that they need.

We’re on the right track. We’re reforming the curriculum to address the shortage of skilled labour here in the province, and we’re investing more than ever before to get students on track—learning, growing and thriving in classrooms, with a greater focus on reading, writing, math and technical education, to prepare our students for the jobs not just of today but of tomorrow.

The bottom line is this: Despite the mischaracterizations of our government’s funding, we strongly believe in our public education system, have demonstrated that with the real dollars to back up that commitment, and our funding to school boards has gone up, not down.

The Conservative government has been gaslighting our school boards. They’re denying to admit—

Interjections.

I would first like to thank every student, every teacher, every education worker and staff in St. Paul’s, and our school board trustees, who have been doing the best they can on a shoestring budget for years—not to mention the last few years. The government has heard their voices; they have heard their cries for help to make our schools safer, to sustain the mental health of our students and the caring adults who take care of them. And the government has refused to act on those cries for help.

Throughout the pandemic, Ontario students were victims of school closures lasting longer than anywhere else in North America. That was on this Conservative government. And this was not without consequences; we’re seeing them play out today, as a mental health crisis is gripping our public education system.

Our provincial goals towards equity and inclusion and a sustainable future for this province are more and more at risk every day this Conservative government fails to invest in the next generation of learners and leaders. Students and children cannot be made pawns by this Conservative government’s endless austerity narrative, but that’s exactly what is happening.

The TDSB, one of the boards that oversees schools in my riding of St. Paul’s, is facing a deficit of more than $61 million in the upcoming year. This is the result of this government downloading responsibility onto boards to keep children safe through the pandemic without the funding to help them do so; without the funding to help them keep class sizes lower; without the funding to ensure that every school had the cleanest air possible to keep our kids safe, to help stop the spread of COVID; without the funding—in one of our schools—to provide our schools with hand sanitizer. I remember the parents who were fundraising for hand sanitizer. The TDSB was forced to dip into their limited resources, incurring approximately $70.1 million in pandemic-related costs that were not covered by this Conservative government. And please make no mistake, Speaker: Those pandemic-related costs are still here today because we’re still dealing with COVID and our schools still need support.

According to a letter written to the Minister of Education by the chair, Rachel Chernos Lin, and director, Colleen Russell-Rawlins, of the TDSB, asking for what we’re echoing today—to reimburse the school boards across Ontario for stepping up and doing what it takes to keep students safe. Without this reimbursement from the Conservative government, the $61-million deficit means the TDSB is projecting the elimination of 522 staff positions, including 65 teachers, 35 special education workers, 35 child and youth workers, and 40 school-based safety monitors. What that means is less than the quality of education that we know as Ontarians we should be providing within our public education system.

This is at a time when 91% of school principals across this province have said they need more support for students’ mental health and well-being, according to a report from People for Education, a non-profit located in my riding. The same report showed that just 9% of schools have regularly scheduled access to a mental health and addictions specialist or nurse, and 46% have no access at all.

Let me say, Speaker, it simply isn’t fair to have one social worker or one psychologist flying across the city in five, 10 or more schools. We need school-based supports.

The rise in violence in Toronto schools has this school year on track to be the worst since the Toronto District School Board began collecting data in 2000. And make no mistake, Speaker: Police in schools is not the answer. The answer is having trained mental health care professionals to help end the violence.

Please reimburse our schools so they can get back on track, helping to keep our students safe.