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.

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 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.