I have to start by saying that as a parent of three school-aged children in the province of Ontario, that was an incredibly shameful display from our Minister of Education. For a speech that talked a lot about accountability, that is a person who takes zero accountability for what is happening in schools under his watch.

The minister says his philosophy of success is outcomes. Well, let’s talk about his record, the outcomes for students and for schools in the province of Ontario, because what I hear daily from parents, from students, from teachers and education workers, from trustees, is that things have never been so dire in the education system in Ontario.

We have children who are struggling with serious mental health challenges, who are being told that they need to wait for a social worker and aren’t getting to see one until the next school year. These are children who need help immediately, and nine out of 10 school principals say their school doesn’t have the support they need to help children’s mental health. In fact, half of schools have no access to mental health professionals at all, at a time of one of the greatest crises in student mental health in our province’s history.

Children who have special education needs aren’t even being kept safe, let alone being supported in their learning in school. We’ve had multiple children who have eloped from school, who are being put in incredibly dangerous situations. One student who is supposed to have one-on-one support all day long not only escaped from his school, but they didn’t know he was missing for 35 minutes, because his school is so strapped for staff to support children with special education needs that there was not somebody with that student. There was not somebody to pay attention for 35 minutes.

There are students who need support who are spending the entire day with the principal, going around from classroom to classroom, because the principal is the only person left in the school building to keep an eye on this child.

We have students who are experiencing violence on a daily basis, teachers and education workers who are experiencing life-altering injuries because of the level of violence, people who are being sent to school in Kevlar because the Minister of Education is failing to take action on violence in our schools.

We have 5,000 fewer educators in our classrooms than we did when this government came to power. That means larger class sizes for our children who are struggling with their academics coming out of the pandemic, and it also means more challenging working conditions for the teachers that we have left, because they’re trying to juggle a class of 34 or 38 students, some of whom have mental health challenges, some of whom have special education needs, none of whom are getting the supports that they need.

It’s not surprising, under these circumstances, that people are fleeing our education system. We have 46,000 teachers in the province of Ontario who are registered with the Ontario teachers’ college but are choosing not to work in our education system because of this minister and his policies. A quarter of our elementary schools, a third of our secondary schools have daily staff shortages, and the minister wants to talk about qualified teachers? We are so short on teachers that those positions are being filled with unqualified people every single day. Instead of showing teachers any respect for the work that they’re doing, the minister stood up and attacked our hard-working teachers once again. He can’t even show them the tiniest bit of respect for the hard work they do and the conditions that they work under every single day in the province of Ontario. Those are the minister’s outcomes. That is the minister’s record.

Apparently not satisfied with having done that to our education system, not satisfied with having done that to our children—my children, your children, everyone’s children across the province—the minister is cutting funding once again, for the sixth straight year.

To make matters worse, Speaker, he’s not even putting the full amount that he announced towards our kids in education. They announced a nice big number, and then, if you read the small print, it actually says $1.4 billion of that amount is not going to kids in classrooms; it’s going to the government’s priorities. As a result, we have $1,500 less per child in Ontario than if funding had just kept pace with inflation and enrolment growth since 2018.

But even 2018 funding levels wouldn’t be enough right now to address the incredibly serious challenges that we’re experiencing in Ontario. As I mentioned, we have these really high rates of violence, which are making students, teachers and education workers, principals afraid to go to school in some cases. And what’s this government spending on student safety? Fourteen cents per day per child—that’s really going to help address the situation, Speaker. That’s really going to make people feel safe in their schools. But it’s okay, because there’s a security camera that’s going to capture the violence that nobody’s doing anything about.

We have a student mental health crisis, but what’s the government spending on mental health care for students? Twenty-two cents per student per day, and that’s a cut from last year, because even this year’s inadequate funding was 27 cents per child per day. So we already have kids waiting more than a year—kids who have no mental health support whatsoever in their school this year—and the minister thinks that’s such a successful outcome that he’s cutting funding for next year. It’s absolutely crazy-making, Speaker, that we cannot provide supports for our children who are struggling in Ontario.

As a result, while our kids are already not getting the supports they need to learn, to be safe, to be supported, school boards are being forced once again to make cuts this year. They have already cut to the bone. They have already laid off teachers, educational assistants, child and youth workers—the people who help our children learn and keep them safe every day. And now school boards are being told they’re going to need to make even more cuts this year.

We’re seeing school boards cutting incredibly important resources—resource teachers, for one, teachers who support children who have special needs. We’re seeing congregate classes cut. We’re seeing every single school board in the province running a deficit in special education, and now they’re going to have to cut even more supports for our children with special needs.

If this funding had just kept pace with inflation, we would have $3 billion more in our school system than what this government is putting in. At a moment when things are so dire, what would that $3 billion mean? What would $1,500 more per child mean in our education system? Well, every single school that I go to, I ask the principal, “If you could have one thing, what it would be?” And do you know what every single principal responds? More EAs.

For a school of 400 students, $1,500 per student would allow for the hiring of 10 more EAs. These are EAs who are currently running from crisis to crisis with a walkie-talkie trying to figure out which student needs help the most after the crisis has already erupted.

Imagine what a difference it would make for that school, for the levels of violence, for kids who are not having their learning needs supported, if a school had 10 more EAs? It would mean more social workers and mental health nurses so that when a child says, “I need help,” help is there and we’re not making them wait. It would mean more child and youth workers to help supervise lunchrooms and hallways and make sure that we’re actually intervening before things reach a crisis level. It would mean that every child in Ontario would have a better opportunity to go to school safely, to feel safe and supported at school and to receive the high-quality education that I would like to think we all believe children in Ontario deserve, except that the government’s actions demonstrate differently.

So I will conclude with a plea to the other members of the government. We have clearly heard that the Minister of Education is not going to support giving our children the resources and supports that they need for a high-quality education in the province of Ontario, but many of you are parents; many of you are hearing from your constituents what the outcomes of this minister’s policy are.

So stand with parents; stand with kids; stand with the future of Ontario and support this motion today.

Please be seated.

Further debate?

Further debate?

It’s an honour for me to rise today in support of education and in support of students. My background and the reason I entered this chamber is because I wanted to come here to support students with special needs who are not getting the supports that they require. It’s because of the Liberal government. They peddled the myth of inclusion but it was a way for them to cut the budget on the backs of kids and place kids into classrooms without support.

When students don’t get the supports they deserve, it affects that child and their future, it affects the whole classroom and it affects the community as a whole. Giving young people the best start in life should be our focus as legislators, and yet, the vote on today’s motion will show the priority of all the members across this chamber.

During pre-budget consultations, the finance committee heard from people across the province who have been raising alarm bells about the alarming rates of violence and mental health needs in education. Kids are struggling—deeply struggling—as a result of this government’s cuts and disinvestments. This government is just simply content to play the fiddle while the ship sinks. Kids are worth the investment, period.

The ETFO Thames Valley Teacher Local has shared statistics which London MPPs have shared with this government. The alarming rate of violence in our schools has shown that, in the month of October, there were 671 violent incidents across Thames Valley. In November, there were almost 700. The current daily average for violent incidents across Thames Valley from September to March of this year is 28.9 incidents per day in schools: almost 30 incidents of violence. These numbers only include reported violence of student on educator. They don’t include student on student or the vast amount of numbers which are unreported as a result of this.

At the finance committee, I had the opportunity to ask the minister why school violence is not mentioned even once in budget 2024. I also asked that question to the president of OECTA, René Jansen in de Wal. I would like to quote them. He stated, “We have been raising” school violence “at the highest levels for” a number of “years. The fact that it doesn’t show up” in budget 2024 “demonstrates that we have haven’t been heard....”

School violence is not in the budget. After we’ve done everything possible and after it’s been in the media, it still doesn’t make it in there. Karen Littlewood, the president of OSSTF, said, “There was a safety blitz that was initiated by the government last year ... we haven’t seen what the data is. We know what our members reported when the inspectors came to the schools, but we don’t know overall what the data was.” Why is it, in Ontario’s education system, that there has to be a freedom of information request to find out what students are seeing every single day within our schools?

This government would peddle poisonous ideas like teacher absenteeism when they are actually ignoring the fact that they are like the people who go out to dinner and skip out whenever it’s time to pick up the bill. There are statutory benefit increases of the Canada Pension Plan and employment insurance which school boards are legally responsible for providing, and yet this government would have them pick up the tab.

School boards routinely make up for special education underfunding that this government has ignored, and educators in my community are making do with as little as $100 per year for their classroom budgets.

It’s time your words matched your actions, government. Stand up for kids. Stand up for education. Invest in young people now for their brighter future tomorrow. Even better, you’ll be able to sleep at night—because I can’t imagine how any government member can look themselves in the mirror and say that they stand up for children if they don’t support the motion today.

The government has cut education funding by $1,500 per child since 2018, and we’ve heard colleagues of mine mention that these are the lowest levels of per student funding in over a decade. This translates into lost human beings in our classrooms—caring professionals to actually do the work of ensuring that every kid in Ontario has access to an equitable and inclusive education.

The Minister of Education pats himself on the back and says, “Well, I care about equity.” He threw some crumbs to some of our community members when he initiated the Afrocentric curriculum changes with regard to grades 7, 8, and 9, I believe it was, in 2025. But what happened with this program? Where are the human beings who are actually going to make sure that that curriculum is going to be deployed into our classrooms? There isn’t funding for those human beings.

I also want to draw to folks’ attention here students who are blind. This is an issue that was not on my radar, shamefully, but it’s an issue that David Lepofsky raised with me as early as this morning and also last week when I saw him at the CNIB lobby day. CNIB is located in my riding, and they’re always championing for kids who have visual challenges. I want to express what I learned, and that is that school boards across Ontario, all 72 of them, do not have enough TVIs, teachers for visually impaired students in classrooms. The government talks about wanting to increase literacy, wanting to increase mathematics. I agree with that. There’s nothing wrong with having an academically rigorous education in school. But as the AODA Alliance asked, how can blind students succeed in reading, writing and arithmetic if they cannot learn Braille and other core skills that only TVIs, teachers for visually impaired students, can teach them?

So when I think about the theory of intersectionality and that the cuts to education are impacting the most vulnerable students, students made marginalized, whether they’re Black students, whether they’re Indigenous students, whether they’re special-needs students, whether they’re queer, trans or non-binary students, who are systematically always being bullied, I’ve got to ask myself, how can the government care about equity and inclusion issues when he’s not putting the funding necessary into school boards so they can actually hire caring adults to ensure that equity is at the centre of our curriculum?

Whether it’s ensuring that students who are blind have access to learning Braille, whether it’s ensuring that the Minister of Education is actually listening to the community—Black communities across Ontario have been calling for Afrocentric education, not thrown in like rice in a few grades; we’ve been calling for this, from K to 12, for years. I’ve got hundreds of stacks of postcards from teachers and students that indicate the advocacy of Black teachers, of students, of parents, of organizations like the Ontario Black History Society.

So when the government sits and says we don’t listen to parents, it’s actually pretty offensive, because that’s all many of us are doing: listening to parents, listening to students.

We heard last week at the CNIB reception of a parent of a blind child who had to witness her kid isolated, unable to play with his peers, because of his limitations. Disability, race, gender: These are not limitations. We’ve got to create a society and create classrooms with the correct material conditions so that they can actually thrive. That means paying for the humans who we need to take care of our kids and to teach them, so that they can be leaders.

Thank you for the opportunity to rise in this House and speak to my honourable colleagues. As other members are aware, Speaker, I am a mother, and I was an advocate for improved mental health services before I was elected as the member of provincial Parliament for Burlington.

As the member for Burlington, one of my proudest moments was just over a year ago, when our government made mental health literacy courses mandatory for grade 10 students, to help them recognize signs of stress and anxiety and tell them how to seek out help. On that day, Speaker, we also announced new learning materials for grade 7 and 8 students that will help them manage stress, recognize the signs and symptoms of a mental health concern, understand the relationship between mental health and mental illness, and counteract mental health stigma.

Speaker, I would not and could not support this government if I believed that either the Minister of Education or the Premier was not serious about addressing the challenges of student mental health. Needless to say, both the minister and the Premier understand that mental health is health, and that it is essential for student achievement and success.

Our government strongly believes in mentally healthy classrooms and learning environments, and in effective and responsive school mental health supports. That’s why the Ontario government is investing $117.65 million in student mental health supports for this coming year. I know my colleagues have heard this number several times today, but I think it’s worth repeating: $117.65 million, amounting to an increase of 577% since 2017-18, when the Liberals were last in power. So it amazes me, Speaker, that the NDP would claim that our government is somehow underfunding student mental health, and it appalls me that they would make this claim for political benefit. Our government listens to parents. We are strongly committed to providing improved student mental health supports and ensuring our schools are safe and welcoming learning centres for all students.

Just last month, Speaker, Ontario introduced the most comprehensive plan in Canada to reduce distractions in classrooms and improve the health of children by strengthening the rules around students caught using or carrying vapes or cigarettes in school, and cracking down on cellphone usage during class time. Parents were loud and clear: They don’t want their kids exposed to cigarettes or vaping products, and they want cellphones to be put away during class time. The experts told us that excessive cellphone usage has a negative impact on student mental health, as it can lead to depression and anxiety, and it can put students of risk of abuse, cyberbullying or invasion of privacy. We listened, and we took action.

Our government didn’t just strengthen the rules, Speaker; we are also investing $17.5 million in new wraparound supports, including:

—$15 million to provide supports for students at risk of addictive behaviours;

—$1 million to partner with School Mental Health Ontario to help parents and students learn to talk about the adverse effects of vaping and excessive cellphone usage; and

—$1.5 million to parent-involvement committees and students to run local prevention campaigns to help deter vaping and cellphone distractions.

In addition, Speaker, Ontario is now the first province in Canada to have a province-wide social media ban on school networks and devices. Speaker, we made that announcement because students deserve a school environment that is safe from distractions and peer pressures so students can focus on learning.

All students deserve the opportunity to achieve lifelong success, and the investments we are making in student mental health supports will ensure that help is available when students need it.

Further debate?

I appreciate the opportunity to rise and to speak on behalf of the great people of Toronto Centre.

As I was listening to the Minister of Education’s debate remarks, I couldn’t help but feel that if this chamber was actually filled with parents and students, what a tragedy it would be for them to come out to this House and to have the Minister of Education essentially vilify them. If you were a family, parents and students living in urban centres, that would hurt double as much, because he did take aim specifically at families and students living in urban centres, and specifically downtown Toronto.

As a parent from downtown Toronto, I can tell you that my worries are the same as every other parent in Ontario. I want to make sure that my kid and all children in Ontario have access to a high-quality public education. It’s absolutely critical for us to invest in education because that’s a great equalizer for every student, every child in this province.

It really goes to the heart of the values that this government believes in. Will you be investing in education to support our students? Will you be investing in the education system to ensure that teachers and administrators have the resources that they need in order for them to deliver the high-quality education that every student deserves?

The motion is actually very simple, Speaker. The motion is simply asking the government of Ontario to substantially increase the funding for public education in Ontario so that every child receives the high-quality education they deserve, regardless of their family’s income. What could be more Canadian in Ontario than that?

But the government is doing exactly the opposite. For six years they’ve had a chance to increase funding to ensure that education receives the resources to allow success in Ontario, and they’ve done exactly the opposite. They have been defunding education, less and less every single year. They’re leaning right in to shrinkflation, which means that your money is buying you less every year in households across Ontario, and the same thing is now happening in the government’s coffers. Classrooms are oversized—30, 31, 32, 34, 38 students in a classroom. Now put in five or six students with developmental delays, global delays, autism and you’ve got a recipe for disaster, which is why we are hearing from educators, principals, parents and students themselves that the rise of violence is across Ontario.

These are choices being made by the government, choices that can be reversed if the government prioritizes student education as they say they do. But we know they don’t, because if they did they would put their money where their mouths are. Otherwise, they’ll stand up and they will insult the opposition, they will vilify unions and teachers, as they have done so on and on again, because they’re scapegoating them for their failed government policies.

Speaker, I’m just going to end by sharing a story very quickly from Chelsea, who is a teacher of grade 8 students in my community. She wants the government to understand that teachers are drowning. They are not successful at this moment because they’ve been underfunded, and the burnout is high. As much as they love their job—and they do, Speaker—they can’t hold on forever. They’ll be forced to walk away if this government doesn’t reverse its course. The stakes are too high. I hope they consider.

I’m proud to rise today as someone who served on the Thames Valley District School Board as a trustee for 13 years. I was elected in 2000, at a time when public education was under attack by a former Conservative government, and today I am proud to be part of the official opposition caucus that is once again fighting for public education against a Conservative government that wants students to fail.

Speaker, this government does not understand the importance of a strong publicly funded education system. They don’t understand what happens to students and parents when education funding declines.

One of my favourite quotes about education is that it’s the great equalizer and the great escalator. It ensures that every child, regardless of their background, is able to participate and benefit from the education system, and it also ensures that kids get the support that they need to reach their full potential. But what we have seen under this government is a $1,500 decrease in per-student funding since 2018. OPSBA, the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, says in fact that this is the lowest per-student level of funding in 10 years.

What happens when education is underfunded, and especially at a time when community services are also being underfunded? It means that kids in our schools go without support. It means that kids with the highest needs, kids who are already marginalized, are hurt the most. It means violence is normalized in our schools. We’re seeing a spike in violent incidents that we haven’t seen before. It means teachers are leaving the profession. It means EA positions are not being filled, because the jobs don’t pay enough, the jobs are dangerous and the jobs are not respected by this government. It means shortages in administration.

Speaker, we need to see this government come forward with funding that is going to enable all of our kids to succeed. I call on this government: Support this motion. Invest in education, invest in our kids and invest in the future of our province.

Further debate?

It’s a pleasure—and an honour, actually—to be in this House fighting for public education today. Like my colleague, as a former trustee and former president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, public education is always worth fighting for. I will tell you that it made a substantive difference in my life. I would not be here today if I did not have a strong public education system to help me reach my potential.

What the Minister of Education doesn’t seem to understand is that learning conditions and environments are working conditions. The fact that he doesn’t seem to understand what’s actually happening in our system is truly concerning, I would say. For instance, in Waterloo region, there are huge concerns around the use of non-teachers working in classrooms, which has skyrocketed because schools can’t find enough supply teachers.

Five years ago, the Waterloo Catholic District School Board reported that around a hundred times a month they used non-teachers in their classrooms. Today, that number is 899 times every month—this is Patrick Etmanski, who is the president of the Waterloo Catholic teachers. They have said that this trend is so alarming, because students are often left without a teacher in the classroom. I can tell you, the failure to fill in our schools is changing the culture of the school. These are facts for the Minister of Education.

On the public side: “The Waterloo Region District School Board has had as many 600 days a month over the winter, and about 200-300 days a month ... when no teacher was available.” This is coming from Nathan Core, who heads the Waterloo region occasional teachers.

The fact that the minister was talking about these downtown NDP schools—my husband teaches in a rural high school in Wilmot. These kids are still struggling with a student transportation model that fails every single day. Getting students safely to schools is kind of important, Madam Speaker, and it’s not something that you do on the back burner, if you will.

This is what we’re hearing from teachers who are in the classroom, who have the lived experience of what’s actually happening in our education system. I would encourage the Minister of Education to actually get into a public school, Madam Speaker. This is what they say: “The job has changed in such a way that teachers are leaving the profession in numbers that we’ve never seen before.” It has never been this bad in this province on the education file.

I mean, you’ve been very systematic about undermining health care. Now, the post-secondary education is undermined. Child care—what a mess on the child care file. But we’re actually reporting what’s happening in public education schools. This deserves the government’s attention. The fact that the minister refuses to acknowledge that qualified, trained staff keep students safe is also very alarming for us.

I want to say that we have seen past Conservative governments systematically undermine public education. We are still feeling the effects of the Mike Harris government removing shops and the industrial studies programs as we face a skilled worker shortage in Ontario.

So we know where we stand. These are targeted resources—targeted, trained staff that improve the quality of the education system in Ontario. You will never do it unless you have the confidence and the belief in the very people in the system and, clearly, this Minister of Education does not.

I rise not just to defend our education experts and teachers in Niagara, not only to echo the concerns from so many parents, but to sound an alarm about the risks of underfunding education in Ontario, especially in the Niagara region.

Since 2018, the ministry has stripped away $1,500 per child from our schools. Across Niagara, I’ve heard from so many of our amazing teachers who have to dip more and more into their own funds to support their students.

I come from a family of educators, and I know that in Niagara, we have some of the best teachers and some of the best EAs in Ontario. However, this is the legacy of this government: Educators must get used to doing less with less. Our most vulnerable students suffer disproportionately. Special-needs children are sent home because we lack the resources to support them. Parents who are already burdened are scrambling to fill the gaps that the government has abandoned.

So what solution does the Ford government propose? A superficial ban on cellphones in classrooms, the classic bait-and-switch distraction from the real issue: considerable and suffocating underfunding of education.

An education leader and a teacher in Niagara, Jennifer McArthur, hits the nail right on the head when she says, “This focus on cellphone bans is a mere distraction from the escalating violence in our classrooms and the desperate need for mental health supports. It’s another glaring example of how out of touch the Ford government is with the realities of modern education. They sidestep real issues, offering token policies instead of substantive dialogue and effective solutions.”

And this is the harsh reality: While the Ford government gets you to focus on small policy tweaks, over 40,000 qualified teachers in Ontario are walking away from the profession, driven out by real issues related to funding shortfalls. Nine out of 10 principals declared a crisis in mental health support, yet what is the government’s answer? More security cameras? Come on. A focus on security, not actual funding for mental health or educators? This narrative of neglect, less funding and more distractions cannot continue. This is exactly why we need sweeping changes.

The government of Ontario should substantially increase the funding for public education in Ontario, so that every child receives the high-quality education they deserve, regardless of their family income. The time for excuses, the time for deflections and the patchwork of Band-Aids is over. It is time for this government to step up, to take the responsibility and to right the wrongs. The children in Niagara and in Ontario and the educators that teach them deserve much, much better.

Further debate?

Actually, I want to stay on this and talk about something that the minister said: That basically, on this side of the House, we don’t care about education or our kids. I think that was a terrible comment, quite frankly.

I have three beautiful daughters. I have a lovely wife. My wife was a teacher for 30 years. My daughter Tara-Lynn works with special-needs kids in the Catholic school board—very, very challenging, particularly with the underfunding. EAs are understaffed. My daughter, who I just messaged just now, works at St. Nick’s in St. Catharines. It’s a very low—the parents make very little money; you know what I’m saying.

Interjection: Low-income.

And do you know what? That’s my daughters. So to stand up and say I don’t care about education is a lie, and you guys shouldn’t lie in this House like that. It is unbelievable that he said that today. I am extremely upset about it, because I know what my daughters and my wife do. Do you know what they—

But I’ll tell you what my wife and my daughters do when they go out on a Saturday night for a social. Do you know what they do? If you’re going to give them anything, they’re the most boring people to be married to, because all they do is talk about their kids, because they love little Johnny. They want it better for little Johnny. They want to make sure he gets an education. How many times have my wife or my daughters taken a sandwich to school, or an apple, because there are kids there that don’t have that opportunity to have a sandwich? We know, with our cuts to our nutrition programs. So when you stand up, it’s not accurate, and I’m really upset about that.

The last thing that I’m going to talk about, because my time probably ran out—I don’t get a lot of time to talk—is they talk about how on side of the House, we’re not standing up for bringing retirees back into schools. Why don’t you hire more teachers who are coming out, who need a job? The reason why they’re retiring—the reason my wife retired is she’s tired. She’s exhausted. For her, it was not easy going to school every day. She decided to retire to take care of her family—her mom and her dad.

You say, “Well, they only care about seniority.” Yes, you’re darn right we care about seniority. I support unions; he said he doesn’t. He thinks that they should be able to pick and choose who they want. The reason why you join a union is because you want to have seniority rights. So that was wrong.

The last thing I’ll talk about—that was supposed to be the last thing. This is the last thing. How many remember, two years ago, when they attacked the workers and the EAs with the “notwithstanding” clause? How many remember that?

It’s an honour to be able to stand today and talk about increasing the funding for education.

Last constituency week, I went to visit a public school. We all like to visit schools. I’m not going to mention where this school was; it certainly wasn’t in downtown Toronto. We had a half-hour discussion with the kids about them. It was a grade 5 and 6. They were talking about things like evacuations of classrooms when someone got violent. They were talking about how they didn’t feel safe in the washroom.

When they realized that I stood here and that I could talk to the Minister of Education, I asked the kids, “If there’s one thing that I could ask the Minister of Education, what would it be?” And one little girl put up her hand and she said, “A fan”—a fan, because there’s only one window, and she went and she showed the window—“and sometimes, like, it’s so hot in here that we can’t work.” A fan.

They’re trying to say that we’ve got adequate funding in our public school system and they’re down to the point of a grade 5 kid—her class needs a fan. There are serious problems. We need to fix them.

C’est important de comprendre que, dans les écoles francophones, le manque de ressources veut dire que si tu as un enfant avec des besoins spéciaux, on va te dire : « Inscris-le pas dans une école francophone. Envoie-le dans une école anglophone, parce qu’ils ont plus de chance d’avoir les ressources dont ils ont besoin pour s’occuper de tes enfants. »

Les enfants francophones ont droit à une éducation en français. Mais quand le gouvernement refuse de financer nos écoles de façon appropriée, ça veut dire que nos enfants, nos francophones, n’auront pas la chance d’aller dans une école française.

Ça, c’est sur vos épaules. On peut changer ça aujourd’hui en passant la motion que ma chef a mise de l’avant.

I would just like to highlight I will be sharing my time with the member for Mississauga–Malton, as well as the member for Oakville. Madam Speaker, I’m pleased to be here before you to discuss Bill 180, Building a Better Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2024.

Madam Speaker, our government is always keeping the needs of Ontarians firmly in sight. Every day across the province, people are headed to their place of work or the businesses they own. Patients are headed to their health clinic. Students are headed to their classrooms. Young families are headed to daycares or their play dates. Seniors are headed to meet their friends at the park for some exercise and some socializing. It is these people, Madam Speaker, who we keep in our sights and for whom we’ve prepared our 2024 budget and the measures found in Bill 180. That’s because they’re going about their lives despite the challenges of our times.

Despite a challenging global economic situation, our government is moving forward with our plan and building a better Ontario for them. People in governments around the world today are seeing and coping with high interest rates and global instability. Like people everywhere, governments have to make plans and decisions in light of these rates and this instability.

I stand before you today and say that, with this reality in mind, our government remains on a path to build for the long term while keeping costs down now for Ontarians. This is reflected in our budget with our proposal to extend the gas and fuel tax cuts to continue helping families and businesses when the cost of living is simply too high.

It is also reflected in our work to support our historic and vital investments in infrastructure across the province through the Building Ontario Fund. It is reflected in our changes to the Liquor Tax Act to help supply and support Ontario’s world-class winery sector.

It’s always a good thing to get up in the people’s House and talk about public education.

This is the question I want to ask in the three minutes I have this afternoon: I wonder how often the minister over there thinks about the people we are losing every day in our public schools. And I’m not just talking about the staff who may decide to leave. I’m talking about the kids who are excluded from class. I’m talking about the kids who feel like they don’t belong in our schools. And why? Because they need more support.

What’s on the chopping block right now back home? Special education.

Albert Einstein, high-school dropout—how many other wonderful minds, even if they aren’t geniuses of that calibre, are we prepared to lose because this minister can’t figure out what inflation means? This minister can’t figure out that the amount of money you spend in 2018 is not what you need to spend now to at least keep things moving. It’s a wilful refusal.

The question, again, I will ask rhetorically now is, who are we losing as this minister decides to throttle the funds of public education?

I will submit to you, Speaker, we are losing autistic kids, we’re losing dyslexic kids, we’re losing kids with anxiety disorders—kids who are brilliant, compassionate, wonderful people, who need help at that stage of their life. We stand at risk of losing them.

My friend from Thunder Bay–Superior North has the role now, but when I had the honour of being the disabilities critic in this province, the amount of disabled adults I talked to who had interacted with the corrections system, who had a hard time holding down work because they felt like they weren’t smart enough and they were told and they felt like they weren’t worth anything—the staff in our public school system stand ready and stand prepared to help those kids, but they can’t do it at a ratio of 24 to 1, or in JK, like 32 to 1, when half the class are on individual education programs. It’s an impossible task.

If one actually is a Conservative, I would like to say that an important thing you’re concerned about is waste. So how many kids and how many people in our system are we wasting wilfully because we refuse to invest in them?

We’ve got $600 million for a parking garage for a spa, or we have billions in potential money that we hand over to real estate speculators and real estate investment trusts, but we do not have money for disabled kids, and we do not have money for the staff who are prepared to help them.

Who are we losing? That’s my question this afternoon.

If we vote for this motion and we say as a House that public education requires investment kept up with inflation, then we are speaking the honest truth and putting our faith in the staff and the kids who deserve our help.

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for putting this on the floor.

I will try to be brief.

We heard a lot of very audacious comments this morning, where we heard that funding has increased, when, in fact, it has decreased. And then, at some point, the minister said, ‘Well, actually, no, we do have less funding, but we’re expecting more, we want more for less,” which, of course, means that no, you did not increase funding; you’ve decreased funding. Did you increase staff? No, you have decreased staff.

There’s constant magic with numbers from this minister in particular. People need to look at actually how those numbers play out in the individual schools and individual classrooms, because teachers are suffering, kids are suffering. Everybody I hear from, whether it’s the board, administrators, teachers, parents, students, they’re all frustrated. Classroom sizes are too big.

I want to think about the great Cindy Blackstock, who always says you show what you care about by where you put your money. The money is not being put in public education. I would love to see the mandate letter for this minister because, again, the people I know working throughout the system—and I have taught in the system and I have taught in the faculty of education. I do know something about pedagogy, and I believe this minister has no idea. What’s in the mandate letter? I would really like to know what’s in the mandate letter.

I know I need to be very brief. The transportation funding: There’s a lot of magic with numbers there, because it says it’s increased, but actually something else was put into that portfolio, so it’s not comparable anymore. Students in my region are going to be walking very long distances on roads with no sidewalks, in 30-degree-below-zero weather, on streets that aren’t plowed, and when there are sidewalks, half the time they’re not plowed either. It is not safe. Children are having to cross the Trans-Canada Highway in order to walk to school. It is not acceptable.

It’s time for me to stop, so I will just say I completely support this motion. It’s time that the government acknowledge that they’ve been steadfastly cutting funding to education.