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.

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.