I’d like to begin my remarks by thanking Ontario’s educators, school staff and parents for their incredible efforts to make the 2022-23 academic year a normal one for Ontario’s students.

I’d also like to thank the Leader of the Opposition for her remarks opening up the debate today. I’d also like to thank the education union representation that was here for the first three minutes of the leader’s speech, but I guess they’re off. But it was a really good speech; we should make sure that they get a transcript or a Hansard of it.

Thanks in part to our investments of over $3.2 billion, the kids are back in school, there have been no disruptions to learning this year, and students are enjoying the full school experience of sports, band, field trips and after-school clubs and activities.

Speaker, I mention our government’s incredible and nation-leading investments in school safety to provide some necessary context for today’s debate. Our government made these record investments because we know there’s a shortage of skilled labour in the economy, and we believe in the power of public education to prepare Ontario’s young people for the jobs of tomorrow.

As we pivot from a failed discovery math program and introduce evidence-based learning in math and STEM curriculum, training will need to be provided to teachers to make sure their pedagogy is meeting 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 staffing support in grade 9 math classrooms to ensure students are supported in their learning.

Ontario students are being well-positioned by having coding and financial literacy embedded in the curriculum that is in line with real-world needs, to ensure our students succeed in and outside of the classroom. Previous Liberal inaction for over a decade developed a disconnect with what math was being taught in the classroom and good-paying careers. These supports build upon the landmark math curriculum changes for grades 1 to 9 to help support continuity and better prepare students for more advanced math, to allow students to pursue any post-secondary, skilled trade, and STEM pathway that they choose.

Continued curriculum updates will focus on life and job skills by revising curriculum in language; science, technology, engineering and mathematics; and the skilled trades. This includes a new computer studies and revised technological education curriculum, beginning with the implementation of a new grade 10 computer studies course in September 2023 and revised grade 9 and grade 10 tech ed courses to be offered in September 2024.

Similarly, after a decade when the previous Liberal government, supported by members of the NDP, closed over 600 schools across the province, our government is investing $14 billion over a 10-year time frame to build new schools, improve existing facilities, and create new child care spaces. That includes $1.4 billion in capital funding for the 2022-23 academic year.

Since 2019, our government has invested over $2 billion in education capital projects, including 100 new schools, 88 school additions, and over 6,400 new licensed child care spaces.

Again, our government is investing in education infrastructure because we’re listening to the concerns of hard-working parents across the province and because we believe in the power of public education to prepare our young people for the job market of the future.

So when I hear my honourable colleagues from the opposition falsely accusing our government of making cuts and shortchanging school boards—

With all due respect, I would humbly suggest to my NDP friends that, while they’re entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts.

Speaker, here are the facts—the real facts: Our government has increased education funding every year since we took office in 2018. That includes an increase of $683.9 million to $26.6 billion for the 2022-23 school year. On a—

Interjections.

On a per pupil basis, we’re investing over $13,000 per student. That’s almost a $1,000 increase per student from 2017-18.

I wish I could cite the new education funding numbers for the 2023-24 academic year. Honestly, this debate feels a little bit like discussing Hamlet without actually mentioning the prince of Denmark. But rest assured, the new Grants for Student Needs and priorities and partnerships funding will be released soon, and I’m fairly certain they will once again reflect a steady increase in funding for public education.

Clearly, we are making record investments in public education, and we are delivering more funding to school boards than the previous Liberal government.

Let’s go back a minute and review a few more funding numbers from the 2022-23 academic year. You might be wondering, has our increased funding to school boards led to more front-line support for students? The answer is yes. Across the province, staffing by school boards has increased by nearly 8,000 individuals since 2017-18. That includes over 200 principals and vice-principals, over 900 teachers. and nearly 7,000 education workers.

Let’s talk about special education for a minute. This year, our government provided a $92.9-million increase to the GSN, for total special education funding of over $3.25 billion. That’s the highest amount ever provided in special education funding. And guess what? It’s nearly $386 million higher than what the previous government invested in 2017-18.

There is no question that the past few years under the pandemic have been an unsettling time for young people. Our government understood that from the very beginning, which is why we made sure to provide necessary mental health supports. We’re delivering $90 million in student mental health supports this academic year. To put that into context, that’s a 420% increase in funding since 2017-18, under the previous Liberal government. Let’s be clear: Mental health is health, and our government is serious about supporting Ontario’s young people.

Unfortunately, many students feel they have been set back by the pandemic, and they are unsure about their next steps in life. I’m proud to say that our government is meeting this challenge, with Ontario’s Plan to Catch Up, which includes the largest tutoring program in Ontario’s history. We invested $176 million to expand access to free school-based tutoring so that thousands of Ontario students are able to utilize learning resources in their communities, to help them succeed. Some of our other key investments in the plan to catch up include math action teams that have been deployed to underperforming school boards; new digital resources to support parents, students and educators; new universal screening for reading for all students in junior kindergarten to grade 2; and an extension of the historic tutoring support program, the only one of its kind in the nation.

Many parents have invested in their own tutoring supports for their children, which is one reason we announced the availability of catch-up payments for families last year. Our government was elected to make life more affordable for Ontario families, and we’re delivering on that promise. During the pandemic, we provided over $1.6 billion in direct payments to parents through three dedicated support programs to help families cover the costs of child care and at-home learning created by the pandemic. Well, we are going further by investing $365 million in direct financial relief to parents who could use some support in uncertain times to help their kids catch up. Through this program, parents with school-age children up to 18 years old will receive $200 per child. That’s $200 per child going back into parents’ pockets so they can use that for their families. And parents with school-age children with special education needs up to 21 years old will receive $250 per child.

Applications for catch-up payments will remain open until March 31, which, of course, is a few short days from now. If any eligible parents watching at home have not yet signed up for catch-up payments, I strongly encourage them to do so before this Friday.

Time and time again, our party, our government, has supported parents in affording school supplies and tutoring supports to best position their children to catch up on their learning. As life returns to normal, we remain focused on helping students catch up in their studies, and we will continue to put money back into the pockets of hard-working parents, where it belongs.

I know I’m going to sound like a broken vinyl record, but I’ll say it anyway: Our government made these investments because we believe in public education and we believe in the power of public education to prepare Ontario’s young people for the labour market.

I believe the facts that I have provided offer a strong defence of our government’s record on education funding, but I’m going to provide my NDP friends and my PC Party friends with a few more numbers.

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.

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.

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 am proud to be here today, standing up in support of our motion to ask the Ontario government to fund school boards for pandemic-related COVID expenses. It is extremely important.

Our kids and parents have just gone through an incredibly hard three years. The impact of those three years is being felt today. I see this. I am a parent of two children who go to the Toronto District School Board system. I regularly communicate with parents, principals, teachers and students about their experience at schools and what they’re seeing and experiencing. What is very clear is that learning outcomes for math, STEM, reading, writing—we’re behind. When it comes to mental health, behavioural issues, violence, we are also falling behind. Our kids are struggling.

That is especially true for children with special needs. We regularly work with parents who have kids with autism who are in the school board system, and they are having huge difficulties getting access to school, being able to stay in school for the entire school day and have the additional supports they need—the educational assistants they need—to ensure their kid can be the best that they can be.

It has been a very, very hard few years, and it’s been good to hear my colleagues remind me and other parents that compared to every other school system in North America, our schools were closed the longest. It’s hard to think back at that time, raising two children during the pandemic and thinking about how many days my partner and I got up in the morning and thought: How are we going to get through today and work full-time and teach our kids?—knowing that there are over a million families in Ontario who are experiencing what we were experiencing, and many of them are not as lucky as us. It’s been a hard few years.

And so you would expect this government at this time to acknowledge and recognize that parents and teachers and students have had a hard time and invest in our schools. But that is not what we saw in this budget. What we saw in this budget is cuts. There are a lot of fancy numbers when you look at it, but when you actually look at what the school boards are showing us right now—because I’ve gone through the Toronto District School Board’s estimates for next year and they’ve been very clear about what they’re seeing. What they are projecting is a loss of 522 staffing positions. That is what they are projecting will be cut: lunchroom supervisors, elementary schoolteachers, secondary schoolteachers, social workers, child and youth workers, caretakers. That is what is going to be cut.

The TDSB is early in its budgeting process compared to other school boards, but now we are also seeing other school boards come out with their numbers as well, and they are seeing the same thing. The Toronto Catholic District School Board is looking at cuts: 122 staffing positions. The Ottawa-Carleton school board is also looking at cuts. And we will be seeing that again and again and again as school boards get closer to finalizing their budgeting process. This is not the direction that we should be going when we’re talking about school boards and the fundamental human rights that our kids have to a good education. This is not the direction that we will be going.

What I fear—and this has been mentioned earlier—is that the government is looking at doing what they did with health care and they’re looking at doing the same thing with education, where they create a crisis, where they cut, and as a result, people are motivated to go to the private system because they want a better alternative, when a better solution is to invest in the education system that we have. That is what we are calling on you to do today, starting with this very pragmatic motion, which is to cover pandemic-related expenses that school boards experienced in the past, that they had to cover, and the pandemic-related experiences that they are looking at continuing to deal with this year.

I support this motion; I urge you to vote for it. I will also be working with parents, with educators and with the school systems to ensure that this government treats school boards and students and teachers with the respect that they deserve, and that will translate into funding so that our kids can get the education they deserve.