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.

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.

Further debate?

I ask the member to withdraw her comment.

Further debate?

It’s a pleasure to rise today to speak to this opposition day motion.

The pandemic hit all of our communities hard, and it’s not news to any of us that students and school staff were among those hit the hardest. And while the pandemic seems to be mostly behind us, its impacts are definitely not.

Teachers and education workers deserve our continued gratitude for their service to our kids, but instead, once again, they feel like they’re grovelling to this government to get the supports they need.

Time and again, we’ve seen the government shortchange students. This government received significant COVID funding from the federal Liberal government, and as the opposition day motion mentions, they underspent that money by $600 million and underspent on education by $432 million. Let’s be clear, Speaker: That is money that school boards are now trying to make up for as they work to develop a balanced 2023-24 budget.

Let me remind the Premier and the education minister that Toronto and Peel were two of the areas hardest hit by the pandemic. When this government did not give them the money they needed to keep their staff and students safe—to lower class sizes—school boards like the TDSB did what they needed to do to respond. They were told to tap into their reserves to take the actions necessary to minimize risk to children, instead of getting the money they needed from this government. So they did. They dipped into their reserves to make class sizes smaller, to support our kids as well as the teachers and education workers who worked so hard to support and educate our kids during the toughest times of the pandemic.

According to TDSB’s letter from Chair Rachel Chernos Lin and ED Colleen Russell-Rawlins written to the Minister of Education on March 22, “The government and TPH’s health and safety directions were critical to maintaining the confidence of everyone we served during the health emergency. In following those directions, the TDSB incurred approximately $70.1 million in pandemic-related costs that were not covered by the Ministry of Education.”

Now, because of that, the TDSB faces a funding shortfall that could result in them cutting 485 positions. Those positions are for people who supported kids through the pandemic, who support them now, who are supporting them as they deal with the impacts of the pandemic on learning, which are not over.

Cutting positions for youth and social workers, counsellors and special education workers will hurt kids and families in Ontario, in Toronto, and in my riding of Don Valley West—especially those who are refugees and new immigrants to Canada, whose first language is not English, and many who have special needs.

Teachers, educators, researchers and families are telling this government that our children need more support to catch up from the learning loss they experienced. They need more support for mental health. Cutting that albeit temporary funding now that provides these supports is “reckless” according to the TDSB. Ontario school principals know this too and are calling for these additional supports to remain in place.

In a recent piece in the Toronto Star, Karen Littlewood, president of the OSSTF, quoted a People for Education report stating that more than 90% of Ontario school principals reported their students need greater access to mental health supports and services. And now this government is cutting it.

Our kids need the support of the education workers, and this government needs to step up and make sure teachers and education workers don’t leave our schools.

Balancing a budget by not spending on our kids’ education and mental health needs is not balanced. The potential cuts to 485 workers in TDSB when we’re still trying to recover and rebuild after the devastation that was COVID is not fiscally responsible. Students, parents, teachers and education workers had to weather the storm with insufficient support from their provincial government, and now that government continues to tell families who need their support that they’re going to pull it away.

Speaker, I’m proud to support this motion, and I thank the opposition for proposing it.

It’s my honour to rise today to speak in support of this motion. This motion would make school boards whole for the costs that were incurred as a result of COVID. It’s money that the government has—money that was allocated to the government for the relief of COVID—and yet this government is making a choice not to spend it. This official opposition day motion would make school boards whole, and I think it makes a great deal of sense, because that cost and that money would be invested into the education of students.

I want to start by thanking all the hard-working educators, all of the support staff and the administration.

Also, I’d like to thank all of the parents who, through their hard work and their dedication, have kept the education system together and kept their kids together.

As I look back, it did not have to be this way in Ontario. It should not have had to be this way in Ontario. The official opposition brought forward ideas and initiatives time and again for this Conservative government, to invest in smaller, safer classrooms, but this government claimed that there was nothing to worry about. They said that they were following the science—and, news flash, they weren’t, and children suffered as a result, because this government mishandled the pandemic.

Ontario had the longest school closures in North America, and it’s because this government refused to budge on their ideological adherence to larger class sizes. Had they followed the science, there would have been more supports for students; there would have been smaller, safer classrooms—and worse yet, they had the money to make sure that was possible, and they chose not to.

Now we see the impacts of Conservative short-sightedness. School boards were forced to do the heavy lifting that the Conservatives couldn’t do. Mental health needs are staggering, and violence is at an all-time high.

Education is an investment. It is not a cost. Children are worth the time, they’re worth the care, and they are a fiscally prudent investment.

It’s time for this government to stop failing our kids.

What concerns me most, as a former educator, is the funding for special education. Funding for special ed is arbitrary—and it’s very convenient for governments. It has been convenient for Liberals, and it has been convenient for Conservatives, because it lets them off the hook. It lets them spend less. It shows the level of care that this government has for students.

So I urge this government to do the right thing: to make sure that they are spending this money to alleviate the burden on school boards, so that this money can go to the kids who need it most.

I want to thank the member for bringing this motion forward, and I’m glad to support it.

Here’s what I’d like to say to the other side: In a few short months, thousands and thousands of children on the legacy autism program will be coming into our schools. And guess what? The schools don’t know they’re coming. Guess what else? There’s no money for them—no money, to add insult to injury.

The message that I’m hearing from this government is, “We’re making a historic investment,” which, by the way, happens every year in this province in every department—health, education, roads. We always spend more money, so it’s not historic. Next year will be history as well, by that count.

But their message in this budget, by what they’ve done with education, is that if you have a child with special needs that are not being met at school, you’re on your own. If your child is struggling with mental health, you’re on your own. If your child has somehow fallen behind, guess what, families? You’re on your own. They’re not making life easier for people; they’re making it harder.

Further debate?

It’s an honour to rise in the House, as always, to speak on behalf of the good people of Toronto Centre. I’m here to speak in favour of this motion for school board funding.

I want to start by recognizing the hard-working, exceptional teachers that we have in Ontario. They’re simply the very best. I’ve had the benefit myself of being educated here, and I hope that the next generation can have the same opportunities that I’ve had.

By Toronto Centre standards, Speaker, my story is not uncommon. I learned to speak English at Sprucecourt Public School. Public education was taught to me, as well as life skills. Public education built my confidence. It actually gave me the opportunities that I have today, and I’m so grateful for it.

But decades of education cuts mean our youngest will not have the same opportunities. We can see those opportunities eroding and slipping away as we speak. At the core of this debate, which is so painfully hard for me to understand, is, why can’t the government understand what they are doing? It’s a very simple question that has to be answered. Does this government want the young people of Ontario to have the same chances today that we did to make it into this House?

This motion is important, Speaker, because I don’t see this government answering “yes” to that question. They’re not delivering real, sustainable solutions in last week’s budget. Worse, this government’s recent budget is cutting COVID learning recovery funds. The Toronto District School Board has requested $150 million from this government to ensure that students are properly supported, a request that last week’s budget has completely ignored.

At the Toronto District School Board, 522 staffing positions will be lost, including 65 teachers, out of which 45 fewer elementary teachers will be helping our youngest learners succeed and adjust to school. This also means 200 fewer lunchroom supervisors to help keep our kids safe from bullying during lunchtime. This also means 35 fewer child and youth workers supporting our students. This is all happening while violence is on the rise, and this also means that we have 40 fewer school-based safety monitors. This is entirely going in the wrong direction.

I specifically want to touch upon safety issues. It is an issue that has been dominating conversations I’ve had with many of the parents in my community. Lunchroom supervisors and safety monitors protect students at risk of bullying. We all know that. We’ve been there. Our students are there. Our children are there. Safety monitors prevent students from joining gangs. They actually touch base with them while they’re in the school. They develop supports. They allow them to have alternative conversations and they help them respond to violence in different manners. Losing those preventive supports would embody the expression of penny-wise and pound-foolish.

These supports keep kids in school. They ensure our youngest community members feel safe to go to school. They keep young people out of the criminal justice system. They prevent extraordinary expense in the future. In all my conversations with the parents, the education workers, the teachers as well as the students in Toronto Centre, I’ve never heard them once say—never once have they ever said—that there is enough support at their school.

But what exactly is this government proposing? Well, my community is doubtful that the government has any solutions for them. At a recent Church Street public school meeting, I met with parents as well as students as well as TDSB leadership. They were asking for support around having more education workers and special needs workers. They recognized that the classroom sizes were too big; TDSB leadership admitted to that. But they also agreed with the parents that although education workers were needed, they couldn’t provide them. They could not provide the supports that their students as well as the children of those families needed to be successful. Everyone walked away from that meeting demoralized, knowing that they were stuck.

Speaker, after hearing from Church Street public school parents and students, I then spoke to Nelson Mandela Public School as well as Lord Dufferin public school parents. I spent so many hours at Tim Hortons, pouring over the coffee cups, listening to their stories about what they were struggling with and experiencing. It was heartbreaking. They told me stories about violence in their communities in Regent Park that is coming back over and over again. They know the solutions are there, but they’re not getting any support or help. They’ve identified violence in the classrooms, violence in the hallways, violence in the lunchrooms, violence in the schoolyards. They want help. They’re begging, asking, pleading. They can’t get a response. And all we get from this government is just an excuse: “We’ve done enough. You should be grateful. You’re mismanaging the funds. You’re running a deficit. You should not be in charge of your school budget.” All of that is setting the ground for what is yet to come, which is going to be worse.

This government has school boards facing record deficits. They blame those boards. They blame those school boards for bloated classrooms. They blame those school boards for crumbling schools. They blame those school boards for not having adequate supports in the classrooms to provide high-quality education so that students can be successful.

This government likes to talk about facts. These are the facts: This government has cut funding to our schools by $800 per student. This government is planning to cut $6 billion to our schools over the next six years. The Financial Accountability Office has caught this government underspending $2.1 billion in the 2021-22 budget. Those are the facts. If we’re going to talk about facts, then you might as well lay them all on the table.

Ontario students, parents and education workers just survived a historic global health emergency. They cannot get through to the other end without additional supports, and by them asking for supports, what they desperately need and deserve—no response is coming from this government.

Now is not the time to forget these essential workers, these heroes. Now is the time to build back better, as the government likes to say. Now is the time for you to vote in favour of this motion.

I’m very happy to be rising for this motion this afternoon. I would like to believe, when I hear the government members talk and talk about themselves being friends of education, that they know what a friend actually does. We on this side of the House don’t judge our friends by what they say; we judge our friends by what they do.

Let me tell you something that’s happening in our community at home right now in Ottawa Centre, Speaker, because I want to believe that some of the great kids in our high schools right now will go on one day to post-secondary education, and some of those kids might choose Carleton University. But guess what? Carleton University is on strike today. And do you know why Carleton University is on strike today? They’re not on strike against that university administration; they’re on strike against Bill 124, legislated by this government, which arbitrarily capped wages at 1% for the last three years. Did they cap their own salaries? Did they? Did they cap the salaries of their deputy ministers, who they pay handsomely to drive their policy? Do they cap any special interest group favouring the Conservative Party at any single point? Do they cap them?

Interjection: No.

Further debate?