I’m wondering if one of the parliamentary assistants could elaborate on some of the critical investments that have been made in the city of Ottawa. I know, having had a meeting with a lot of women on women’s economic empowerment on Friday and, of course, later in the afternoon, talking about critical investments into our nation’s capital—what other investments outside of the $3 million that were delivered to Invest Ottawa could we discuss today and talk about, in the second-largest city of the province of Ontario?

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.

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.

No, but they capped the hard workers at Carleton University who are on strike right now against this government. Let’s be very clear: That’s not what a friend does.

But I tell you what an actual friend does, Speaker. An actual friend goes to someone in crisis and lifts them up. That’s what I saw in this great province last November. I saw a purple tide of custodians, ECEs and EAs and library techs and receptionists that had enough of this government’s spin. There are some days when I’m in this cham-ber and I hear the education minister talk, and I think that member is going to spin so hard, he’s going to leave the ceiling of this building and end up somewhere on the Gardiner Expressway. It’s unbelievable.

If you believe the minister, Speaker, you would think that our education system is properly funded. But here’s what the member for Ottawa West–Nepean just told us earlier in this debate: We are losing 21 critical positions in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. So when they say, “We’re a friend of public education; we’re coming to help,” I think about the health care debates we’ve been having in this place. Friend to nurses: Have we heard that before? We know that in 2022, there were 158 emergency rooms that had to close because of the cuts of this government.

We have to reckon reality with rhetoric. We have to reckon the espoused friendship with that person’s actions in this place. Speaker, I want to tell this government through you, you are no friend of the education system if you stand in this place, talk about people wanting bailouts while you make their schools harder to work in and harder to study in. You are no friend.

I also want to say this, Speaker. I’ve had occasion to work with a dad of an autistic child back home. His son goes to high school. In the pandemic, the school that this young adult went to accommodated this son and was helping him figure out a way to explore that classroom, because there was a lot more space in the school because so many kids were at home learning virtually. There was a lot of hard work put into accommodating that child. Moreover, that dad, Steve, reached out to our children’s hospital to bring in specialized autism expertise to make that successful.

Guess where we’re at with Steve’s son now, Speaker? Last I heard, the school has said that because of interactions, now that everybody is back, now that there’s a lot of stimulus, now that it’s tougher for Steve’s son to get by in the school, that he is only entitled to two hours of high school a day—two hours. This minister talks about all the great work they’re doing for students with special needs, but for Steve’s son—two hours of education in the province of Ontario. You are no friend to that family. You are no friend to that son. Nor are you a friend to the thousands of kids in the legacy autism program who need as good an opportunity as everybody else.

Speaker, I don’t call them students with disabilities; I call them students with superpowers who have so much to offer and give. But you are not helping them. You are no friend to them. You are no friend to the staff if you make their workplaces hard to live in.

I encourage the folks watching this debate at home: Judge this government by how they vote. You’re not a friend to public education if you make education worse.