L034b - Mon 28 Sep 1998 / Lun 28 Sep 1998 1
BACK TO SCHOOL ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LE RETOUR À L'ÉCOLE
BACK TO SCHOOL ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LE RETOUR À L'ÉCOLE
Report continued from volume A.
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House in committee of the whole.
BACK TO SCHOOL ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LE RETOUR À L'ÉCOLE
Consideration of Bill 62, An Act to resolve labour disputes between teachers' unions and school boards and to amend the Education Act with respect to instructional time / Projet de loi 62, Loi visant à régler les conflits de travail opposant des syndicats d'enseignants et des conseils scolaires et modifiant la Loi sur l'éducation en ce qui concerne les heures d'enseignement.
Hon Norman W. Sterling (Minister of the Environment, Government House Leader): Mr Chair, I would ask for unanimous consent of the committee to provide that at the end of the two hours allotted to us at this stage, you, the Chair, deem all amendments received to have been moved and that all divisions required shall be deferred until all remaining questions have been put and taken in succession. Therefore, my motion basically says that all of the amendments given to you will be deemed to have been moved. You will call them all and, I guess in our common language, all the votes will be stacked till the end.
The First Deputy Chair (Mr Bert Johnson): Is it agreed? Agreed.
Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): Mr Chair, I understand that it's my task at this point then to list the amendments. Is that what you'd like me to do at this point?
The First Deputy Chair: That's right.
Hon David Johnson: We do have an amendment to subsection 17(2) of the bill. Do you want me to read that amendment or do you just want me to list it?
Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): On a point of order, Mr Chair: We don't have the government amendments.
Hon David Johnson: They are being distributed as we speak.
Mr Wildman: By whom? I believe both opposition parties gave the government our amendments. We don't have yours.
Hon David Johnson: Who has the amendments?
The First Deputy Chair: Would you give me a minute and I'll find out. While we're getting these sorted out, can you give us the sections that you will be amending.
Hon David Johnson: You'll recollect that the reasons for these amendments all pertain to the fact that the government has agreed to sever the bill. Part II of the bill has come out. So all of the amendments, which total three in number, pertain to the fact that part II of the bill has been severed. There is a reference from the main part of the bill, from part I of the bill, into part II, so that obviously has to be dealt with. That is an amendment dealing with subsection 17(2) of the bill and that simply is there again because of the fact that part II of the bill has been taken away and there has to be an allowance for that.
I'll also say that sections 21 and 22 of the bill obviously now are part of the severed part. If you look in the bill as it was originally drafted, part II, which is being severed, includes sections 21 and 22. We have an amendment dealing with that, recommending that we vote against that, so that effectively severs those parts.
Finally, the last recommendation, an amendment that we have, concerns the long title. The long title is changed because part II has been severed out of the bill, so that reflects in the long title. Those are the three amendments which, as I understand it, are now being distributed, are they?
Mr Wildman: Yes.
Hon David Johnson: We have provided 14 copies in French and English. I guess all the members now have the copies.
Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): I want to outline our amendments. We have an amendment to move that the preamble of the bill be struck out, since the preamble is not relevant to the substance of the bill but is a political statement. Will that be placed first or last in the order of amendments?
The First Deputy Chair: Last.
Mrs McLeod: That's a given?
The First Deputy Chair: That's the rule.
Mrs McLeod: We will further move that subsection 10(1) of the bill be struck out and we will be moving a substitution to that section.
We will be moving that subsections 10(5), (6) and (7) be struck out.
We will be moving that subsections 12 (1) and (2) of the bill be struck out and we will be moving a substitution for those subsections.
We will be moving that subsection 14(6) be struck out.
We will be moving that section 17 of the bill be struck out in its entirety.
We will be moving that subsection 17(4) of the bill be struck out, should by any chance our previous amendment deleting the entire section not be supported.
We will further move that subsection 17(6) of the bill be struck out and we'll be moving a substitution, again assuming that our earlier motion which would delete all of section 17 would not have been approved by committee of the whole.
That would complete our amendments.
Mr Wildman: We have amendments to sections 10, 12, 17 and 18.
The first is to delete subsection 10(5).
We change wording to clause 12(1)(b).
We would remove 17. Failing the acceptance of that amendment, we would then move to delete subsections 17(3) and (6).
In section 18, we would move that subsection(3) be deleted.
The First Deputy Chair: Any questions or comments on sections 1 through 9?
Shall sections 1 through 9 carry?
All those in favour say "aye."
Mrs McLeod: On a point of order, Mr Chair: Even though we are not moving amendments to particular subsections, can we ask questions of clarification from the government on a particular subsection?
The First Deputy Chair: Yes, you can. I already asked for them and I'm now to the vote but -
Mrs McLeod: Is it too late for me then to ask one question of clarification on one section?
The First Deputy Chair: Yes.
Mrs McLeod: It's subsection (6), if I may ask the Minister of Education. It says, "The board may not alter terms or conditions of employment" -
The First Deputy Chair: I'm sorry. My answer to your question "Is it too late?" was, yes, it is.
Mrs McLeod: Oh.
The First Deputy Chair: Shall sections 1 through 9 carry?
All those in favour say "aye."
All those opposed say "nay."
In my opinion, the ayes have it. It is carried.
The first amendment is a Liberal motion, subsection 10(1).
Mrs McLeod: I move that subsection 10(1) of the bill be struck out and the following substituted:
"Terms of employment
"(1) Subject to subsections (2) and (3), until a new collective agreement is made with respect to a scheduled bargaining unit, the terms and conditions of employment that applied in respect of the members of the unit on December 31, 1997 continue to apply to them."
It's important to understand the significance of this amendment by understanding what is in the original bill. In the original bill, subsection 10(1) says, "Subject to subsections (2), (3) and (5), until a new collective agreement is made with respect to a scheduled bargaining unit, the terms and conditions of employment that applied in respect of the members of the unit at noon on September 25, 1998," which is of course the point in time at which the Minister of Education indicated that this legislation would be forthcoming, "including any changes made by the board as permitted by section 86 of the Labour Relations Act, 1995 and communicated to the bargaining agent or the members of the bargaining unit, continue to apply to them."
That may sound like legalese, but it's important to go back to the background paper which the ministry provided in presenting the original draft legislation, in which it was made absolutely clear that what this clause means is that the terms and conditions of salaries and benefits which would have existed on Friday, September 25, 1998, at noon, will continue to apply as teachers are back in the classrooms. Those salary and benefit conditions of the existing contracts will continue to apply during the period of arbitration, of course pending any arbitrator's award.
What is allowed under this clause is that the working conditions of teachers can be unilaterally altered by the board of education and those altered working conditions would be in effect during a period of arbitration. It's not as clear later on in the bill as to whether or not the arbitrator can alter those unilaterally changed working conditions. That perhaps is a point on which we can seek clarification when we get to the constraints on the arbitrator. But our concern with this particular section of the bill is that it quite clearly allows contract stripping in the area of working conditions, unilateral contract stripping on the part of boards of education. I think the government was being quite forthcoming in its backgrounder to make it clear that it was the working conditions which boards were going to be allowed to change.
This is unprecedented in back-to-work legislation. In the 10 situations in which the ERC has ruled on jeopardy and in which back-to-work legislation has been introduced in this House - and it is on only 10 occasions in the last 23 years under Bill 100 that they have had back-to-work legislation - in no situation has there been contract stripping as the terms and conditions under which the teachers go back into the classroom.
I don't know if the government was trying to give some acknowledgement of that by allowing existing salaries and benefits in the contracts to be the basis for teachers' return to the classroom under this legislation, but it's quite clear that there is a further stripping of contracts allowed in the change in working conditions.
I know that the government has tried to introduce contract stripping as a basis for return-to-work legislation before, specifically in the Lennox-Addington legislation. That was removed because the opposition parties refused to give unanimous consent to back-to-work legislation which included contract stripping. We feel equally strongly that contract stripping is not an appropriate basis on which to have the parties resume negotiation or indeed on which to prepare the ground for an arbitration. We are recommending with our amendment that the collective agreement, in all of its respects that were in place as of December 31, 1997, continue to apply. Obviously, those are the terms and conditions under which teachers have been teaching and working since the new boards came into effect on January 1, 1998. If the suggestion here is that there's a great deal of confusion - because I think in two cases of the scheduled boards affected by this legislation they are amalgamated boards and they would have had a number of different contracts coming into the amalgamation - I suggest that should not be a concern for the government for two reasons. One is that indeed those boards were amalgamated, took office, on January 1, 1998, and the teachers in those boards have been working with that disparity, presumably, in contracts from January 1, 1998. That's one reason for not feeling as though we have to somehow allow a contract stripping to have uniformity across an amalgamated board.
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The other reason is that the government has clearly recognized that there will continue to be some disparity in amalgamated boards in the salaries and benefits area since there is no new agreement; therefore, there has been no harmonization of salaries and benefits. The government's own legislation said that when it comes to salaries and benefits, the existing contract is the basis under which the teachers will go back into the classroom. They differentiate around working conditions only. I feel very strongly that that is not a legitimate area in which to differentiate. We cannot support contract stripping. We believe that in any fair arbitration, back-to-work legislation, employees would be returned on the basis of the existing contracts or agreements that had been worked out, and that is the substance of our amendment.
Mr Wildman: We would support the amendment. I just point out to the government, as my friend from Fort William did, that his predecessor as minister brought in legislation in the Lennox and Addington dispute which initially attempted to do what this does, and that is to allow the board, which had wanted to change the terms and conditions subsequent to the previous contract running out, to have that as the starting point for the arbitration rather than starting at the previous contract terms and conditions. At that point, while the opposition parties - my friend from Fort William and I - had indicated that we would not hold up that legislation, we made it very clear that if the government wished to have expeditious passage, we could not support that. The minister's predecessor withdrew that and said, "Fine, we will make the previous collective agreement terms and conditions the point at which we start in terms of an arbitration." That seemed far more reasonable, and I don't understand why we are now having to argue this matter again when I thought the ministry learned its lesson in the Lennox and Addington dispute.
Hon David Johnson: I simply point out that the clauses taken together - and I think they've been referenced by the previous two speakers - do provide protection in terms of the compensation and the benefits to the teachers in the sense that the bill before us tonight would protect the salary and the benefits at least at the level of the previous contract. If an interim contract or some sort of interim arrangement had been made, it must be respected, but at least at the level of the previous contract.
In terms of the employment conditions, the contracts have expired. Under the terms and conditions of the Labour Relations Act, the employer does have the right to set terms and conditions. What we are doing in this legislation is to freeze those terms and conditions at the level the employer has implemented as of last Friday so that no further changes could be made at this point. There is a certain protection in that for the teachers.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I think the amendment proposed by the Liberal education critic, the member for Fort William, is a supportable one. Her concern is shared by many of us, despite the assurances by the Minister of Education. I think her amendment would provide more comfort, not only for those of us in the House but for those who would face the consequences of this legislation.
What we're concerned about is unilateral contract stripping. When negotiation takes place, as you would know, there is give and take. One side may feel that it gains in a specific area and it may be prepared to give up in another area certain items. That's the essence of contract bargaining when you have that going on in negotiation. In this case, there's the appearance that that would not happen, of course, that unilaterally the board could impose conditions - we refer to that as contract stripping - which would be detrimental to one side in the negotiation process.
Two members now have mentioned the Lennox and Addington circumstance, where there was an attempt by a previous Minister of Education to include that in legislation and a withdrawal of that particular attempt by that minister, I think wisely, when he recognized that it would significantly slow down the process within this House and the return to the classroom would take significantly longer.
That isn't necessarily the case tonight, because there's an agreement that the legislation shall pass at a certain time this evening. But I certainly believe that the amendment by the member for Fort William would give the kind of comfort I would like to see so we don't have unilateral contract stripping taking place, particularly where there are amalgamated boards and there's not yet a collective agreement for the amalgamated board where you have two or three boards - most of the time it's two but there may be some where there are three or parts of three boards - put together and they have different provisions within their contract. I'm certainly very supportive of the amendment by the member for Fort William.
Mrs McLeod: I would point out to the minister that he's being disingenuous at best to suggest that we don't understand that the legislation you have before us is legal or that boards legally can change the terms and conditions of employment once they get beyond a particular period of time. That was also true in the Lennox-Addington situation, although they were negotiating under Bill 100. There was also a provision that the boards could unilaterally change the terms and conditions of the contract if it was beyond a particular period of time.
That's not the issue here, because under those circumstances, while the boards have the ability to unilaterally change the contract, the employees also have the ability to take strike action and to sustain a strike action. I think in some of the current situations the reason we have strike action is because boards have unilaterally altered the terms and conditions of employment at a given number of days after the expiration of the contract.
Minister, you know well that it is your legislation that has artificially created terms by which the contracts all expire at exactly the same date. All boards have been placed in a position of being able to alter every contract at exactly the same point in time because you have set a very arbitrary termination date for every contract between every employee group and every board of education in Ontario. I suggest to you that simply saying it is legal now for boards to be able to alter the terms and conditions of the contract is citing a condition which you made possible.
The other thing is that we're in a very different world. You're taking action. You are suspending the employees' right to take sanctions to defend against a board that unilaterally changes its terms and conditions of employment. You are now the player. You are responsible for the legislation we're debating today. It is legal for you to intervene. You can do anything you want by legislation, and you've demonstrated that repeatedly. It is legal for you to say, as you have in this legislation, that boards must take their teachers back into the classroom in these eight boards with exactly the same or at least no less of a salary and benefit package than they are currently working under as of Friday at noon. That's all legal.
It is equally legal for you to be able to say that the boards will also put teachers back into the classroom under the same working conditions that existed as of September 25. We contend that it should be as of December 31, since all boards had provisions, presumably the existing agreements under which teachers were teaching, from January 1 until your arbitrary cut-off date of Friday at noon.
Mr Wildman: In light of the minister's response a moment ago, since he said in essence that this not intended to allow for contract stripping but is to protect against it, could he elaborate on how that relates to subsection (5), which we will be dealing with in a moment and which clearly says, "a scheduled board may alter the terms and conditions of employment of members of a scheduled bargaining unit to the extent that the board considers it necessary to do so in order to be able to comply with the requirements of the Education Act and the regulations made under it." Surely this is leaving it to the unilateral interpretation of the board as to what is required to comply with the Education Act and allows the board to make changes unilaterally.
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Hon David Johnson: As I outlined before, the clauses in question, number one, as they pertain to salary and benefits, protect the situation that the teachers had in the previous contract. Whatever was in the previous contract must be in place through this period of time, save and except where some other arrangement has been made that would increase that amount, and the teachers would have every right to expect at least the salary and benefits.
The benefits, as you can see, are outlined on page 5 of the bill, subsection (4), which include life insurance, accidental death plan, extended health plan, dental plan and disability insurance plan.
The portion the member opposite is alluding to is under that, subsection (5), which indicates that the "board may alter the terms and conditions of employment of members of a scheduled bargaining unit to the extent that the board considers it necessary to do so in order to be able to comply with requirements of the Education Act and the regulations made under" that act, the Education Act.
It is clearly necessary that boards respond to and obey the Education Act. This bill indicates that the terms and conditions that the boards may have set as of September 25, from a contract which expired - the contracts have all expired. Other comments have been made here about the expiration of contracts and that these contracts have expired. Yes, they did expire in September. The boards and the unions knew that was happening. Bargaining has been taking place over many months. The bargaining process has not been as fruitful as we would like it to be. My hope and I know the hope of the government and I'm sure the hope of the opposition members as well was that through those many months earlier in the year the boards and the unions would have reached negotiated agreements acceptable to both the union and the board. But unfortunately that didn't happen.
I might say that there are at least partial agreements, if not full agreements, in about 30 or so of the boards, some at elementary and some at secondary. So it wasn't completely without success, but not to the degree we would wish. In the cases where there aren't agreements, the terms and conditions are frozen as of September 25.
Notwithstanding that, if those conditions that have been frozen lead to a lack of compliance with the Education Act - the Education Act is a very important act which obviously guides the education of our children, the operations of the board, and it's our view that the board should be able to come into compliance with that act. They shouldn't be able to go beyond that, but they should have the ability to come into compliance with the act.
If there is a concern that boards would act to go beyond that, then the resolution to that matter would be - I'm looking down to the table in front of me; they're not listening to me. If the board was to exceed what it needs to comply with the Education Act, the remedy for that matter would be either judicial review or the grievance arbitrator. I'm sure those two measures have proven successful for various unions in the past and that they would take the proper course of action to ensure that the board was only exercising the authority that was granted for it here, simply to comply with the Education Act but not to exceed the provisions within that same act.
The First Deputy Chair: Further comments or questions?
Mrs McLeod has moved an amendment to subsection 10(1). Is it the wish of the committee that this motion carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it.
The vote is deferred.
The next one is an NDP motion to subsection 10(5).
Mr Wildman: I move that subsection 10(5) of the act be deleted.
Despite what appeared to be a very reasonable explanation a moment ago from the minister, basically what he said at that point was that if there were a dispute and if one of the parties, in this case the members of the bargaining unit, believed that the board had gone further than was required to comply with the Education Act or its regulations, then the option was judicial review or a grievance arbitrator. Frankly, all that means to me is that we are going to end up with a whole lot of grievances and that you may have a number of court cases as well to resolve these problems.
It's our view that if we're going to go to binding arbitration within 30 days to begin and it's going to be completed within 90 days, the board should not be able to make changes. We should leave it to the parties. The board and the bargaining unit representing the teachers should go to the arbitration and make their presentations, make their proposals, and the arbitrator should decide what is reasonable, rather than allowing the board to unilaterally make changes that they might deem to comply with the Education Act and/or its regulations and then have a dispute about it that might lead to grievances or court cases. Just don't let them do it; let the arbitrator decide.
Mrs McLeod: We have a further motion, which I'll be moving in the next round, which would delete not only subsection (5) but the next two subsections, but I'll speak to my colleague's motion on subsection (5).
Again I have to say that the minister is being perhaps deliberately disingenuous on this in suggesting that the only thing the boards can do in their contract stripping is what would be necessary to respond and obey the law of the land, since the law of the land are the amendments to the Education Act, which is essentially Bill 160. I don't think I need to remind the minister that when we talk about the Education Act and the regulations made under it, unless I'm mistaken, the regulations made under it include the funding formula and the requirement that every board live within the limitations of the funding formula and that boards not run a deficit. I believe further that Bill 160 allows you as the minister, if you have any concerns about the board's ability to manage its finances, to step in and essentially take control of the board.
I know that trustees are facing a tremendous dilemma right now. They're facing the dilemma of not being able to reach what they would consider to be fair and reasonable settlements, to provide adequately for the students in their schools as they would see fit, and still live within the limitations of your funding formula. They also know that if they're not able to respond and obey, if I quote you once again, you are going to come in with your heavy hand and essentially replace the boards. Many trustees believe that this is what you've wanted to do all along and that really all of what we've seen in the name of so-called improvements to quality of education have been, first of all, about cost-cutting and, second, about preparing the ground for a situation in which you set boards up for failure and are able to step in and essentially replace the boards.
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Minister, you have to recognize that what's happening out there in the collective bargaining scenarios is that boards are looking at your funding formula, looking at the requirements of Bill 160 in terms of the 1,250 minutes of instructional time - and let's be clear, this is the working condition that we're all talking about - and saying, "We can't meet just the letter of your law with the 1,250 minutes and still live within your funding formula." There are huge inconsistencies between your funding formula as it affects a great many boards and the requirement under Bill 160. If you're following the actual collective bargaining situations in different boards at all, you will know that there are boards that are sitting down at the table and saying, "We have no choice but to go beyond the 1,250 minutes of instructional time. We have to schedule teachers to teach seven out of eight classes," which is beyond what your bill requires. Trustees are saying that they have no choice in that because if they don't schedule seven out of eight, they cannot afford to pay the bills because you're not giving them enough money to pay the rest of the bills.
In the boards where they are getting settlements, they are literally sitting down and going over the board budget, with your funding formula in hand, as much as they know about it, and they are looking at what other areas of classroom services can be reduced in order to allow the 1,250 minutes to be scheduled and still live within your funding formula.
Boards and teachers alike, regretfully perhaps, reluctantly, have accepted the letter of the law around the 1,250 minutes of instructional time. There may be some concerns about how that's to be implemented. You know - maybe you don't know. We asked the question at estimates repeatedly about how you could scheduled 1,250 minutes in a semestered school and kept getting the answer back, "Of course, you can." In fact, you can't. Boards don't know how to schedule it and they're probably going to have to move to non-semestered schools in order to accommodate this. But the greater and more immediate problem is what has to be cut out if you're actually going to have teachers teaching the 1,250 minutes and not something considerably in excess of that. That's the issue.
What subsection (5) speaks to then is the ability of boards to unilaterally - you're giving them a gift, in your mind presumably - unilaterally alter the working conditions which, under the terms of the Education Act and the regulations made under it, include meeting the requirement not to run a deficit. You're saying to boards: "Here's your way of doing it, folks. For at least the period in which the arbitrator is acting" - and we're not sure about what comes after - "you can put your teachers back teaching seven out of eight," well beyond the 1,250 that they are required by your bill to teach, "and you'll save enough money in that process in order to manage to run your programs without a deficit." That's exactly why you're putting this in here, Minister. At least, I hope that's the reason, because any other reason would be much more Machiavellian. It would be because you're trying to force the boards to mandate seven out of eight in the hopes that that's going to stay, and that's really what your goal has been all along.
Hon David Johnson: Just to respond to the member opposite, I will say that most taxpayers don't consider it Machiavellian that governments would balance their budgets. Whether it's local governments, provincial governments, federal government, school boards, Hydro commissions, whether it's any other government entity, I would suggest to you that the vast majority of the citizens of Ontario would consider it only prudent planning that indeed any of the above would actually balance their budgets. Indeed, there's a huge concern when any level of government runs a deficit, runs up debt over a period of time and has not got the ability to pay that off, or greatly jeopardizes future services by running up a particular debt.
I don't take any particular shame in saying to you that there are many aspects that we have put forward, quality aspects, but there is also the aspect requiring boards to plan for a balanced budget. That only makes good common sense. Frankly, this government that we represent here tonight, the provincial government, should do exactly the same thing. It should plan to balance the budget. I don't have any fear that at the appropriate point not only will we do that but that will be a legislated responsibility, as it is in many other governments, a requirement that the government plan to balance its budget.
In terms of the other quality aspects, though, that I think you allude to that Bill 160, for example, has introduced, the average class size cap is one that I'm particularly proud of, because over the years the reality has been that at the elementary level in particular the average class size has gone up each and every year through the period. As one example, look at the average class size across Ontario from 1991 to 1997. Each and every year, without exception, the average class size has risen in Ontario. We have put a cap on that to stop that so that can't happen, and I must say again that one of the contributing factors has been that the collective agreements that have been negotiated through that period of time contributed to the growth in the average class size across the province.
During that same period of time, 1991 to 1997, although not as continuously, the average class sizes at the secondary level have also increased so that we have the reality of both the elementary and secondary class sizes being higher in 1997 than they were in 1991. I'm pretty sure parents will unanimously say that if that happens year after year, then that cannot be good for the quality of education. If the larger class sizes get larger, the smaller class sizes get larger, the average class sizes get larger, all class sizes get larger, as has effectively happened in Ontario, then that is not good for education in the province. That's one of the requirements that we have put in, through Bill 160, the Education Act.
Another requirement is that the instructional days will be increased. The concern there was that our students in Ontario, particularly at the secondary level, did not have the advantage of the same number of instructional days as did students from other provinces where, on average, the number of instructional days exceeded those in Ontario by 10 a year. We have rectified that matter through Bill 160, and this again is a quality initiative.
These indeed, if they involve money, involve greater amounts of money. Because the average class size is capped, boards are having to reduce the class size, they're having to create smaller classes, more classes, and it's going to cost more money. But we are happy, through that funding formula that the member opposite alluded to, to provide those extra monies, because it is a quality initiative of this government that the average class size should not carry on growing, and indeed we have provided the money to fund it, as we do for the number of instructional days, which is important as well.
I'm pleased that these are initiatives that have come through, and they are important to this government.
Mr Bradley: The minister has raised some interesting matters regarding this particular amendment. I want to recall to him that the day he was bringing in his so-called final amendments to Bill 160 he was asked in the hallway - and I'm sure this is on tape so the minister can't escape this - how many teaching positions he thought would disappear in Ontario. My recollection was that his guesstimate was 7,500. What the minister was actually doing on that day was conceding that Bill 160 was all about withdrawing funding from the education system so that the effect would be approximately 7,500 fewer teaching positions. If we look at the funding formula that the minister came forward with, that is going to be borne out. I know he will say that there are some teachers who are leaving the system voluntarily, whether it's through retirement or for other reasons, and that there will be some new teachers replacing them, but netting it out, the minister's estimate on that day was in fact 7,500 teaching positions.
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The member for Fort William indicated that what appears to be happening is the government again trying to discredit a public institution so that it can come forward with a radical solution to the crisis or problem that it creates in the first place. A good example of that, together with education, would be in the hospital sector, where if you take enough money out of the hospital sector and they can't do their job properly, then it will militate in favour of people accepting what I call crackpot realism; that is, we must punish ourselves. Whether it's schools or hospitals, we must have fewer and we must punish ourselves for having had a quality system, whether it's health or it's education.
The only way in which boards of education faced with providing services to students in an area can balance the budget is by cutting expenditures in a specific area, expenditures which are designed ultimately to benefit the students in that system. They have no other option since you control the purse strings and you as a government have decided that you are not going to be providing what the boards of education and parents in the area would consider to be sufficient funds.
You mentioned the average class size. I had a telephone call from a teacher at Lakeport Secondary School in St Catharines who informed me that in the next semester he would have 41 students in a class. You like to give the impression out there that somehow we're going to have 22 students in every classroom. You almost in a whisper mention "average of 22 per classroom." What we're seeing is that where there are students with special needs, where there might be a class of nine or 10 or 11 students with special needs, that is going to be balanced off by classes such as this one in the next round, that is, the next semester, of 41 students. You can't blame the board of education for that.
Also, I must tell you that what you have done under this formula is remove others who have provided essential services to the education system, fired them out the door. The member for Algoma mentions those who are responsible for the cleaning of schools and how we've now decided that we're not going to do as much cleaning. There are people who were audiovisual technicians who were fired holus-bolus from boards of education, and other services which directly benefit students. But with your very careful and strict guidelines or envelopes you have prevented having funding provided for those particular groups.
You'll recall - because the minister mentioned this, I had to clarify this for the minister - that during the negotiations over Bill 160 that in fact the teachers' federations conceded to you that there would be more time in the classroom. They said they would extend the day. They said they would eliminate certain other times so you could meet that requirement. But what the government really wanted was fewer teaching positions, and that's why you didn't accept that. It was a very deft and appropriate move on the part of the federations at that time to say, "If you want this, here's how we can achieve it." But how you intend to achieve it is by eliminating teaching positions and having fewer teachers working with students in this province.
If your government would be simply honest and up front about it and say, "What we wanted to do was get rid of 7,500 teaching positions," I wouldn't agree with that, but at least I would give you marks for honesty and being up front instead of trying to fool people out there into trying to believe that there are going to be more teachers in the system and therefore more contact with the students.
I think the amendment that is proposed is a very reasonable amendment, and I hope the government, in the spirit of co-operation and recognizing the wisdom of the amendment, will be prepared to support it this evening.
Mr Wildman: I appreciate the comments of my friend from St Catharines. In response to the minister's comments in which he said that everyone would support the idea of balancing budgets, I just point out to him that this government, under Bill 160, has taken complete control over the budget away from the boards. Essentially, the government is now preventing boards from raising any tax revenue; the government has decided that is will control the total amount of money each board has. So it's a little bit unfair for the minister to stand here and say that all this requires is that boards be responsible and balance their budgets.
If the government, through its non-funding formula, its defunding formula, lowers the amount of money that a public district school board gets and then turns around and says, "You're responsible for balancing the budget," obviously what the government is saying to that board is, "This board needs to cut" - and not just administration. As I pointed out, it's cleaning the schools, for instance, or changing the terms and conditions in terms of how many students there are in a classroom or how many minutes the teacher will teach or how many classes the teacher will teach.
The government also goes around saying - and the minister alluded to this - that Bill 160 requires more time for teachers to be with students. In fact it means fewer teachers with more students; spending more time in front of the students, that's true, but it means less individual time per student for each teacher. The minister knows it. He won't admit it, but he knows it.
If you're talking about a semestered system - and many secondary schools across Ontario are semestered - the minister knows he's not talking about 25 more minutes a day; he's talking in many cases of an hour to 75 more minutes a day, teaching four out of four, not seven out of eight. He knows it, and he knows that's why, unfortunately, we have so few extracurricular activities this year, if any. If somebody is teaching four out of four, that individual doesn't have time to do any preparation during the day so will do it in the evenings, when that individual might have been carrying out rehearsals for the choir or the band or doing basketball or football practice.
If the government really believes this is simply to allow boards to comply with the Education Act, the government should be properly funding the boards so they can comply with average class sizes by hiring the number of teachers required to do it, instead of putting them in the contradictory situation of requiring them to have more teachers to meet the average class sizes but at the same time giving them a funding formula that requires them to have fewer teaching positions.
Hon David Johnson: On that last point, I assure the member for Algoma that the funding formula was created with the average class sizes in mind. The boards are funded for the average class size of 25 at the elementary and 22 at the secondary. That's the basis for the funding formula.
The member has commented on extracurricular activities. I consider it most unfortunate that in some boards the extracurricular activities have been reduced or curtailed or eliminated. The requirement of the government put forward through Bill 160 is simply that teachers be asked to spend four hours and 10 minutes in the classroom. Some boards are able to work this out. That four hours and 10 minutes, I might say, is less than the elementary teachers in Ontario spend in the classroom. That four hours and 10 minutes is less than the average time that the secondary teachers spend across the rest of Canada. Indeed, if I recollect properly, there are seven other provinces that spend more time in the classroom than that four hours and 10 minutes, yet extracurricular activities are pursued and are a way of life in the secondary schools of the other provinces.
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I guess the question is, if it works in the other provinces, why can't it work here in Ontario? Why can't the four hours and 10 minutes work here in the province of Ontario? That's a question I haven't heard answered yet at this point. That's simply what we're asking to do.
The member for Algoma has asked if we are giving boards the monies to run. I said in the House earlier today and I'll tell you again in the House at this time that there will be more money spent in the elementary and secondary school systems in this school year than has ever been spent before in the history of the province. There will be more money spent; there will be more money spent in the classroom per student.
Mrs McLeod: I don't think so.
Hon David Johnson: I can tell you that's the case. If the members opposite want to argue and debate in favour of administration and bureaucracy, if that's where the Liberal Party and the NDP think the money should be spent, then we have a difference of opinion. This government stands for putting the money into the classroom.
There will be more monies in the classroom and there will be more monies in general in the system in Ontario. The better part of $15 billion of taxpayers' money, money from all sources, will be spent going into the elementary and secondary systems this year. But part of that total picture will be the administration and bureaucracy, and that will be reduced. You know, I don't think there are going to be too many people in the province of Ontario who will shed a tear for that. Maybe the Liberals don't like to see less spending on bureaucracy and administration, maybe the NDP don't like to see the bureaucracy and the administration reduced, but I think most people in the province of Ontario will say: "Right on. Focus the money where it should be focused: in the classroom." That's where it's going to be.
There will be more money for teachers, more money for supply teachers, more money for textbooks, more money for the paraprofessionals to help - the speech pathologists, for example - more money for guidance and library teachers. All the expenditures in the classroom will be increased. But yes, I'm sorry to say there will be less money - I'm not really sorry to say it at all, but speaking to the opposition parties, who currently have a problem with this, there will be less money in administration and bureaucracy. I'll tell you once again that the overall spending will be greater. I'll say that here right now and you can quote me on that, and you can come back when you see the audited reports of the province of Ontario and tell me if I'm wrong, because I have that confidence.
The member for St Catharines mentioned the special needs. He said he knows a teacher who has a classroom of 41 students. My guess is that we all know teachers who have classrooms of 41 students. That's what we're trying to stop. The Liberal government did nothing about it and the NDP did nothing about it. We have taken the first step. The first step is to halt the growth. We have done that. We have capped the average class size. Is that the end of the story? I'll say it isn't, absolutely not. But it's the first step. Without the cap, that class size of 41 would probably have been 42 or 43. The large classes would be larger, the small classes would be larger. But we have halted that growth.
The member for St Catharines said: "How do they get their average class size? They calculate in the special needs class of eight or nine." The member of staff from education whispered to me, "That's not true." He said that the special needs classes are not considered in the calculation of the average class sizes. I said to the staff member: "It doesn't matter. I have said that till I'm blue in the face, that the special needs classes are not calculated in the calculation that creates the average class size." I told him: "I'll say it once again here today, but it won't matter. I can say it 100 times a day, but I'll get that thrown back at me even though it's not correct."
I'll say it once again. The special needs classes are not included in the calculation of the average class size. Now, if there is a special needs student in a regular class, obviously that's part of the calculation, yes. But the special education class of eight or nine students that the member for St Catharines was alluding to is not included. I'll say it once again. I'm going to look directly at the member for St Catharines because I know the member is a fair and reasonable person and he at least will not indicate that fact in the House. He will not say that back in the House again, my having looked him square in the eye and told him that. I'm counting on him because he's a fair and reasonable guy.
One last comment to the member for Fort William, which I forgot. She alluded to the fact that the province could step in and take over school boards under certain conditions. Those conditions would be, for example, if the school board was in default. Being a former Minister of Education, she would know that that has been a provision of the Municipal Act dating back to what, 1935 or thereabouts. That was a provision in the Municipal Act dating back to 1935. We took it out. We said, "Should that be in the Municipal Act?" Because it's an education matter that has to do with the default of school boards, it shouldn't be in the Municipal Act but in the Education Act. All we did was pull it out of the Municipal Act. It's the same stuff; we pulled it out of the Municipal Act and put it in the Education Act, but it's been in effect for over 60 years.
Again I say to the member for Fort William, having looked her straight in the eye and reiterated that fact, I'm sure she will recollect that and in future debates in the House will be aware that that's the situation with regard to taking over school boards that are in default.
Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-Walkerville): I'm pleased to have an opportunity to address this amendment put by the third party and speak in favour of it.
The minister said their government will spend more on classroom education than any government in the past. The minister will be aware that the per student spending will have declined, spending as a percentage of gross provincial product will have declined and classroom spending as a percentage of education spending will have declined in each year of your administration, in each and every year.
Earlier today, the minister spoke about looking at doing literacy tests for high school students who are graduating. I think it would be a good idea for the government to take that test, because the notion of a capped average is an oxymoron. Averages are by definition moving, and to use that kind of imprecise English, I would suggest to the minister, is not misleading but it certainly camouflages the reality. The reality is that you have not capped class sizes. You have not and will not over the course of time reduce the average class sizes. What you have reduced, by your own admission, is the number of teachers.
The other point that needs to be borne in mind is that the amount of time a teacher has available for students is declining and will have declined in each year of your administration because classroom spending is not your priority. Cutting is your priority. Tax cuts are your priority. Multi-million dollar advertising campaigns are your priority.
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I'm sure people across Ontario received those nice foldouts that you can put up on your wall that have absolutely no bearing on good quality education and have everything to do with top-grade propaganda. It's a shame you didn't take the million dollars you've wasted this year and the million dollars you wasted last year and put it into the purchase of new textbooks. That way it would have raised the average amount you spent on students to some kind of respectable limit. You spent less that $30 per student on textbooks and are trying to camouflage that as some kind of major initiative - this after two successive years of capital cuts, cuts to your budget.
The minister has talked about administrative efficiencies. I met with our directors of education over the summer and I met with our teachers' federations. I would submit to the minister that subsection 10(1) and this section, taken together, are going to be an administrative nightmare. What do you do in situations where boards in some instances will be dealing with two and three collective agreements under the same roof, where you'll have a teacher in one classroom making one wage and a teacher in another classroom making another wage? I submit, Minister, that you'll be spending a lot more on lawyers, on accountants, on bargaining, on all kinds of non-essential items that the Tory consultants will be very happy about.
I suggest that 10(5) is a very clear attempt to strip collective agreements, because you have cornered school boards. Not only have you not increased administrative efficiencies, but from what I have been told, administrative inefficiencies and overhead will rise. Where's the money going to come from for all that? It's going to come out of kids, it's going to come out of classroom education.
Subsections 10(1) and (5) of this bill, taken together, in my view reflect the reality that this government's expenditure on classroom education as a percentage of expenditures in education has gone down in each year of its mandate. It reflects the reality that there will be less teaching time available for every student. It does not account for growth in the student populations and will do nothing to ensure that those areas of the province that aren't doing as well on standardized tests improve over time.
This is a blatant attempt by the government to get itself out of yet another mess it has created. What they propose to do is to allow, for the period the arbitrator is in place - up to 120 days, as I understand the legislation - collective agreements to be stripped. That's an inappropriate response and I think the minister ought to set the record straight with respect to what the real effect of his cuts on the education system has been. This minister and his predecessor in four successive budget years have reduced the amount of money available, no matter how you measure it. You can play games around absolutes versus percentages, but no matter how you cut it and no matter what you compare it to, this jurisdiction lags and falls behind continually.
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I'd like to join the debate at this point to say some things about the current situation. I was moved to do so by some mail I've received in the last few days but also by the minister's comments tonight.
Unlike my friend from Fort William, I have been a Minister of Education, and I have some sympathy for the situation in which the current minister finds himself. But I have to say, Minister, that I've been watching with some interest over the last number of days and weeks as the current situation has evolved, and I was struck by some comments you made earlier tonight, a very Clintonian use of data and language.
I've been through most of the schools in my electoral district in the last couple of weeks. Broadly speaking, my county ought to benefit by your funding formula. I'm told by my public and separate boards that we're neutral to slightly positive in global terms. But the problem is that the devil is in the detail. When I was at Opeongo High School in rural Renfrew county last week, I was having caretakers telling me about the problems they were having because of the rigidity of that formula. I had 300 students talk to me about their concern about the loss of their extracurricular opportunities. I had teachers, some of whom have been lifetime supporters of the Progressive Conservative Party, telling me that they were furious at the persistent and pernicious attacks led by Mike Harris on their profession. They had heard his speech to the banquet of the Toronto chamber of commerce last Tuesday night, a premeditated assault by the Premier yet again on the integrity of the teaching profession. Some of my Tory friends say, "Oh, that's not what he intended." Let me tell you, the people of Ontario who heard the press reports of that speech heard it as part of a pattern. Not for the first time have Mike Harris and friends gone out of their way to put gasoline on a fire.
The minister said a moment ago, "You know, we're putting more money into the schools," and he made some passing reference to textbooks. CBC television news reported tonight very authoritatively on the subject of the textbook story, and I'm sure you'll be seeing that tomorrow. My colleague from Fort William was saying months ago that there was something amiss with the plan, and CBC news reports tonight that there is a lot amiss with the plan. Apparently school boards have been stiffed by the Ministry of Education to the tune of 25% in some cases for the textbooks. It was a very clear report tonight by Robin Smythe, chapter and verse, of school boards that were getting stiffed with -
Interjection: I'm sure it was wrong.
Mr Conway: My friend says it's all wrong. You can tell the people of Ontario how it's wrong. The point I'm getting at is whether it's textbooks, whether it's students, whether it's -
Interjections.
Mr Conway: You see, they don't like this because it's not part of the propaganda campaign. As long as you've got $6.5 million worth of the taxpayers' money to go over the heads of everybody else through television and the daily press, of course you can set the agenda and people don't talk back - $6.5 million about all the things you're doing.
There are school boards in this province that are being consolidated, and I'll tell you there'll be more than a few school boards that for this year and a few years to come are actually going to be spending more money pensioning off a variety of people made redundant by your legislation. The fact of the matter is that it will be several years down the road before you start to see the so-called savings that you're already broadcasting. I'm sure some of my friends opposite know the stories because I have heard a number of them. It would make sense. Any of you who have ever been through a significant reorganization know exactly what happens. You've got five school boards that become two, you've got four that become two. You've got to pension people off, you've got buyouts, you've got a variety of other forces at work that cost you money in the early going. We'll never get a true audit of that, but the fact of the matter is that in the early going you will be spending money to pension people off to get to the point you want to be down the road.
I've had over the last few days teachers, and I'm going to mention a couple because they were apoplectic: Mrs Donna McHutcheon from Noik Drive in Pembroke phoned me the other day, and she was infuriated that her tax money is being taken and spent to the tune of $6.5 million to campaign against herself and her profession. She finds that deeply offensive, as she should.
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Let's not kid ourselves. That's what we're all about in this. This is the war that Mike Harris and his ideological right-wingers have wanted for years. The war has come. In this case hundreds of thousands of students are at issue, and I think the House as a body has got to feel some very real sympathy and regard for those people. None of us will be disappointed that those students are going to be back in class as soon as possible. But I say to the warmongers, to the ideologues, that this war which was so easy to start will, like a fire in a pine bush, burn on well past your tenure in this place if we're not careful.
Yes, it's a hell of a lot easier to start a war than to end a war, and this is for many of us, particularly those of us who grew up with an understanding of how important public education is to a free and democratic society - I have the benefit of living in eastern Ontario, so we get the revealed wisdom of the new right daily from the editorial pages of the Ottawa Citizen where people like Dan Gardner, who spent time advising this Minister of Education in the early part of his mandate, opine daily as to what the new world order is, and it's very clear that a part of this plan is to attack and undermine the integrity of public education. It couldn't be clearer. How else would you interpret some of what has been happening here? You go out and systematically trash teachers in the public school system. Of course it's not perfect. If you want to find out just how imperfect it is, go to the library and read Hilda Neatby's famous treatise about the state of public schooling in the 1940s.
Every generation can make a damning indictment of the public schools, and of course we have an obligation to make them better, but we are not going to make the system better if you or anyone else thinks that a consistent, persistent and pernicious attack on the system itself and the 120,000 teachers in those classrooms is going to be part of a constructive solution. Think about it. You've got one minister and 120,000 teachers.
I will give the government credit. A number of the initiatives undertaken in the area of curriculum reform are right and proper steps, and they should be supported by all sensible, thinking people - I certainly support them - but you must understand that if those initiatives are going to be effectively implemented, it is only going to be with the support and the willingness and the involvement of the teachers. Are there some bad teachers? Yes, just like there are bad politicians like Andy Thompson.
Interjections.
Mr Conway: Let me be very bipartisan. I say this very seriously.
Mr Bruce Smith (Middlesex): A leader of your party.
Mr Conway: He is a former leader, and he's a disgrace to my party. Because the political establishment couldn't do anything about him, look at the price they're now paying.
But I say to this minister and to this government, if you think for one moment that you have a hope in hell of any constructive engagement and implementation of your new policy if, as and when, or if as you continue to attack the teachers, you'd better think twice, you'd better think thrice, because it's not going to happen. All I know is that in Renfrew, when I'm at the Cobden public school or at Fellowes High School or at Bishop Smith school, which schools I was in last week, if there's something wonderful and magical happening, they do not sense it. The schools are not as clean as they used to be, because of the funding formula, because there has been a sharp and deep reduction in our public school boards for the support. We've got school administrators and principals, some of them long-time supporters of your party, who are looking at this and seeing a massive centralization the likes of which they have not seen in 30 years, and this from a government that talks about power to the people.
Bill 160 and Bill 62 are about power to the Mowat Block, power to the centre. Some of us like Danford and I represent large rural areas, and if there is going to be a sensible administration of the new policy, there has got to be sufficient flexibility for people in places like Combermere and Maynooth and Chalk River and Killaloe to make good and sensible local decisions. The bean-counters you've got working on this project are looking at the grand plan and assuming that if you had everybody in a group of 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000, a lot of economies of scale would be possible. They're right, but in Ontario north of Highway 7 it doesn't work like this. These rural and small-town and small-city schools require flexibility that is not in the act, Bill 160 or this provision, quite frankly. It is so alluring to say, "Oh, we just want an extra 20 minutes." A-plus to the propagandists who come up with that.
It's like the assessment business; it's revenue-neutral. Unlike some, I'm prepared to say that broadly speaking it probably is, but just tell that to people in the small business sector who are finding out that to make the big discounts for the financial services and the national chains possible, their big benefit, you have to transfer the whopping tax increase to small and medium-sized business. Yes, overall it is revenue-neutral, but the big banks get a big break and the mom-and-pop operations in places like the Pembroke Mall get a kick where it really hurts. But is it revenue-neutral? Probably.
When we talk about the extra 20 or 25 minutes, the propaganda is very alluring, except the devil is in the detail. To make this work, you're going to have to understand that you're going to have to organize schools, not just in Woodstock but in Norwich and in Salford and a number of other small and medium-sized places, and the principal is going to want to have some flexibility that he or she simply does not have in this legislation.
I saw in the Globe and Mail the other day a story about some school board in southwestern Ontario that's finding out now what the funding formula, as my friend from Algoma said, means for small schools. Wait, friends, until that day dawns. The bean-counters are assuming that everything is the size of Markham or Leaside. Well, it isn't. There will be one mad scatter around the government caucus when this happy little reality to which my friend from Oakwood was making reference today dawns on people beyond Highway 7.
I simply say that there are some critical issues at stake. Of course we want the kids back in school, of course we want the kids and the teachers fully engaged in the learning process, but if that's going to happen, the government is going to have to be less belligerent, less bellicose, less arbitrary. The big bully from North Bay is going to have to suck it up and learn to be diplomatic for once in his life and understand that comments the kinds of which we heard last Tuesday night are not helpful and are calculated to aggravate and to incinerate and to incite, and that's exactly what happened.
Let me tell you, the morale in the schools I was visiting last week was deeply troubling. We can legislate kids back to school and we can put teachers back in the classroom, but presumably we want them there for good reason and good cause. I have my share of lacerations to bear from the teacher union leadership, and I say again I have some personal understanding of a minister's frustration. There were many days when I wanted to be my usual intemperate self, but when you get into these kinds of situations, as a minister and as a leader of the government you're not afforded that luxury unless it is your plan to divide, to aggravate and to incite, unless it is your plan to create a condition where people for no good reason lose confidence in the public school system so the door will open to the private school, the charter school, which is something I believe is not in the public interest of Ontario, large or small, north or south, urban or rural.
Hon David Johnson: There have been a number of comments made. Where I'm just a little bit uncertain is around the issue - and this is quite a hard act to follow actually - of incinerating and inciting.
Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): Sure it is. You got the facts.
Hon David Johnson: I won't speak to the facts because I have a deep regard for the member for Renfrew North, but he makes a lot of colour out of one or two facts and a few other situations in there that he indicates are true. The member for Renfrew North, in his very colourful accounting of the situation, has alluded to the incinerating and the inciting and pine bushes and war. I'm just recalling there was a leader of one of the parties who actually walked a picket line last fall. Did you know that?
Hon Jim Flaherty (Minister of Labour): Who did that?
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Hon David Johnson: Which leader? It was an illegal strike, and there was a leader of one of the parties. Most people would say that's incinerating and inciting. My understanding - I must be wrong, but they tell me it was the leader of the Liberal Party who was doing this. I'm sure that if I'm wrong, one of the Liberals -
Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): No, it was Howard.
Hon David Johnson: Was it? It was.
Interjection.
Hon David Johnson: Oh, it was both leaders, both the NDP and the Liberals. There you go, then. You have the leader of the NDP walking the picket line and you have the leader of the Liberals walking the picket line.
I'm further told that on another occasion during that same illegal strike there was again a leader of one of the parties here who was speaking at one of the rallies during that illegal strike, fanning the fires during the illegal strike, incinerating and inciting during that illegal strike.
Interjections.
Hon David Johnson: Again they tell me it was the leader of the Liberal Party who was there. It was probably the NDP as well, was it? It was both parties.
I must have missed this incinerating and inciting on behalf of the Premier, but I don't recall him incinerating and inciting on a picket line at these kinds of - I was there last week. I didn't see the member for Renfrew North at the Premier's speech last week to an audience of about 1,500 people, as I can recall, a very large audience, in which he said that we had excellent teachers in Ontario. The member for Renfrew North says we have some bad teachers. The Premier didn't say we had anything but excellent teachers in Ontario. I fail to understand how that's inciting and incinerating, to say that we have excellent teachers in Ontario, but he did go on to indicate that the system needed to be fixed.
When we talk about the system, we are talking about the fact that the average class sizes have increased year by year. That makes it more difficult for the teachers; that makes it more difficult for the students. When the average class size goes up year after year after year, that means all class sizes go up. The smaller class sizes get bigger; the larger class sizes get bigger; the average ones get bigger. It had to be stopped. No other government was willing to stop it, but we've stopped it.
When we speak about the system needing to be fixed, we were looking at the number of instructional days and the fact that our students were not getting the benefit of the same number of instructional days as students from other jurisdictions. That's no fault of the teachers; the teachers are doing the best job they can. But if the teachers are only able to spend 170 days with the students at the secondary level, where in other provinces the teachers can spend 180 days, 10 days more with their students, then how is that fair? That's not fair. If our students are involved in national tests in science and mathematics and they don't score as well as students from, let's say, British Columbia or Alberta, is it any wonder, if our students have 10 days less in instructional time? That's no reflection on the teachers. It's not fair to the students; it's not fair to the teachers. It's something that had to be fixed, and we did. That's what we're referring to when we say the system had to be fixed.
It goes further than that, too. I guess some members don't like the fair funding formula, which allocates resources on a fair and equal basis for the first time in the history of Ontario, where all students, whether they're in rural Ontario or urban Ontario, no matter what sort of board they're in - all members of this House will know that some of the boards had about $4,700 per student, I think I can recall in some boards, while other boards had about $7,000 per student to spend. Is that a disparity that we can allow to continue? Isn't that a disparity that we would say is not fair for the students who are only having the benefit of support of $4,700 or $5,000, while other students have perhaps $2,000 more in resources allocated to them? I don't think that's fair. I don't think any member in this House would say that's fair. Maybe we have different ways of expressing it; I don't know. But I personally could not stand up and defend a system which carried on in that vein.
The member for Renfrew North says, "How else could you interpret what's going on?" To his credit, he says there are a number of good things that have taken place in the education system that are supportable.
Mr Wildman: The curriculum.
Hon David Johnson: Yes, the new curriculum. I see the member for Algoma, and I hope we all agree that the new curriculum is one of those aspects. It's a more rigorous curriculum that is specific at the end of each grade level so the student, the teacher and the parent know exactly what should be learned.
It is going to take a few years to be fully in effect. That's what happens with a new curriculum. It can't be implemented overnight.
There's some criticism that some of the curriculum was introduced - social studies, for example, was introduced very recently. I don't expect the full social studies curriculum to be implemented overnight in our schools. That's a position we've had all along. The teachers have worked long and hard developing this social studies curriculum. I think that's why it's so successful. We've had a team of teachers working on it. They've worked long and hard and it's ready to go. But I'll tell you - and I said this earlier in the House today - if the choice is to put it on the shelf and let it sit there for a year, or to start with the implementation this fall so that our students can start to have the benefit of the new curriculum but recognize that it's going to be phased in over a period of time, then I choose to allow our students at the first opportunity, which is right now, to begin the implementation, fully realizing that they won't have the full impact for months or perhaps a year.
The issue of the textbooks has been raised. The member for Windsor-Walkerville raised the issue of the textbooks. I guess the CBC did some sort of story on it. I didn't see the story. I can only say that we have guaranteed every board their proportion of the funding. I don't know what the story was at all. I know in some of the French boards the number of French books available was not an adequate supply. We indicated to those boards that they could take a smaller proportion of their allocation but their monies would be protected. Of course there is going to be another RFP that will go out - as a matter of fact, we're in the process of that right now - and in the second part of it they would have a larger allocation so that their total allocation would be protected so they would get the best-quality books.
The initial allocation that we put out involved over 3.2 million books being purchased, which works out to 2.5 or three books per child in Ontario, which I think is unprecedented, because parents are telling me that the number of books in the classroom is nowhere near adequate, that students are sharing books, that some classes have one or two books, that the books are in bad shape, that they're held together by tape or other means. So I think it's unprecedented, but the amount of money involved, some $68 million, was discounted to $55 million, a savings of $13 million, and that $13 million will be plowed back into the next phase. Science equipment, computer software, more textbooks - we will spend the full $100 million in this allocation, and it will be to the benefit of the elementary students in the province.
The member for St Catharines mentioned the 7,500 fewer teachers. I forgot to remark on that last time. I'll have to check and see what the context of that is. We will not have 7,500 fewer teachers in the province of Ontario, and I think everybody in this House knows that. Many boards are out trying to hire new teachers. Particularly at the elementary level, there's no question that this year we'll have more elementary teachers, and boards are trying to hire more and more teachers. If anything, the problem could be finding enough teachers in some boards for them to hire. I did project at one point in time that there would be 7,500 retirements as a result of the early retirement pension plan. It appears that over the course of this year there will actually be 9,000 or 10,000 teachers retiring.
2040
I guess one way of describing that situation is that the teachers were pensioned off or the teachers were bought off or the teachers were shooed out of the system or whatever. That is completely inaccurate. The early retirement scheme was negotiated by the Ontario Teachers' Federation. The Ontario Teachers' Federation, in conjunction with this government, negotiated that deal. The Ontario Teachers' Federation members had been asking for an early retirement pension for some time because many of the teachers have been teaching for 30, 35 and more years, and in many aspects of business or public life there are early retirement schemes. We agreed. We said that teachers who have reached the 85 factor, a sum of 85 resulting from their number of years of experience and their age - this is paid out of the pension plan and it's a total deal which I -
Mr Gerretsen: You're not paying one cent.
Hon David Johnson: It was a negotiated deal. The point is, there was a negotiated deal with the province of Ontario and the Ontario Teachers' Federation, a plan we were delighted to negotiate to allow those teachers who have worked long and hard, generally about 35 years of service, to have an early retirement.
It's also an opportunity, I might say, for young teachers to come into the system. I fail to see anything wrong, although I've heard potshots being taken at this here tonight, with allowing teachers who have worked long and hard, given years of service and dedication to the teaching profession, to have the opportunity to take that retirement and at the same time to allow young and new teachers an opportunity to come into the system.
If the opposition parties don't feel that the teachers deserve this opportunity, if the opposition parties don't feel that young teachers should have the opportunity to come into the system, get into the teaching profession, then say so. Just say so. Say you don't think that long-standing teachers should have the opportunity for an early retirement. That's certainly not the position of this government, and we were pleased to deal with the Ontario Teachers' Federation and come to this deal.
Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): With regard to the minister's comments about the actual section that we're talking about, which is subsection 10(5), he mentioned the word "fair," and I would like to bring him back to the whole issue of the lack of fairness in the clause that we are recommending be deleted. It's very short. I'd like to just read it again.
"Subject to subsections (2) and (3), a scheduled board may alter the terms and conditions of employment of members of a scheduled bargaining unit to the extent that the board considers it necessary to do so...to be able to comply with the requirements of the Education Act and the regulations made under it."
Read another way, it would read, "A corporation may alter the terms and conditions of employment of workers in the bargaining unit to the extent that the company considers necessary in order to comply with the requirements of the marketplace."
If you were to compare what's happening in this instance to what's going on in the private sector, that's exactly the kind of legislation you'd be proposing. Yet because it's teachers, one of those groups that you've got a "special interest" label on, you deem it okay to go after them in a fashion like this, given the fact that you totally control, with a majority government, the Education Act and any subsequent act and all amendments thereto, and by virtue of majority government, you set the budget; you decide how much money the board gets. By virtue of the changes you've made to board structures, they have no latitude in communities like mine in Hamilton-Wentworth to have any other means of revenue to offset the kinds of increased costs that we have in major urban centres.
I've heard from some other members that in the rural areas perhaps the formulas are working for them, but at the end of the day your funding formula denies communities like mine and other major urban centres the ability to offset the increased pressures which quite frankly your government agenda is exacerbating, like poverty, like the ability of new Canadians to settle into our communities, because you've cancelled all the programs that used to be there for them. Those are increases that communities like mine are having to absorb.
So when we get into a situation of collective bargaining, under this clause you virtually are micromanaging and micro-negotiating all the bargaining that's taking place at every separate bargaining table all across the province. Then, in your weird version of what fair is, you load up the law to say that board that's acting at your behest, because you handcuffed it financially and legislatively, now has the ability to unilaterally and arbitrarily change the collective agreement any way it wants.
It reminds me very much of what the government did with Bill 7 when they went after OPSEU and took away their successor rights. They didn't do it to anybody else. After they made the case that they were a special interest group and that public sector workers are all to be vilified, then they said it was okay to go after them legislatively and take away their rights. You did the same thing to injured workers under Bill 99 and you're doing exactly the same thing with this legislation.
It's not likely we're going to get to it, but it ties in very directly as I'm talking about the impact of these teachers, and I think the teachers are right when they remind us that teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions. So in large part, Minister, when we talk about what happens to teachers vis-à-vis legislative hammers in this place or micromanaging through board control by virtue of your financial leverage, you're deciding on the conditions that our children learn in, not just that those workers - and by the way, they are workers - are working in. You can't separate the two.
When we talk about arbitration, because it is directly linked to the kind of control you want here and moving away from the usual procedures, now you've gone absolutely crazy with this whole idea of ability to pay. Now you're saying to any mediator or arbitrator that they'll have regard to the relevant education funding regulations and Ministry of Education and Training policies. Your control again. Your control, total.
"If the implementation of the award would result in an increase in either the scheduled board's total or the scheduled board's average-per-teacher compensation costs for members of the scheduled bargaining unit, for either the first year or second year...
"The mediator-arbitrator shall include in the award a written statement" - get this - "explaining how, in his or her opinion, the scheduled board can meet the costs resulting from the award without incurring a deficit...."
So now they're going to write the budget for you if there are to be any changes. This, Minister, is what upsets us the most about what's happening. It's not just that you're ending strikes and lockouts that you caused in the first place, that your predecessor told us was coming, but now you have stacked things so unfairly against teachers because you believe you've got this window of opportunity to move in and hammer them. Rather than saying you want to directly control the wages and compensation of teachers - because basically you can do that now by virtue of how you operate the funding formula between you and the boards - you've played this game all evening and quite frankly the whole term of your government that this is all about kids. It's not. It's about money, taking money out of the system to pay for your tax cut. The more you can take off the backs of teachers, after having vilified teachers and somehow tried to make them the villains in all of this, the better, because then it won't show up as much, will it, Minister?
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There won't be as many schools that close if you can take the money off the backs of the teachers. There won't be as much heating equipment that needs to be refurbished standing out for parents to see, because you've taken the money off the backs of teachers. There won't be as many classrooms uncleaned. There won't be as many classrooms where the computers aren't hooked up, because that's outside your funding formula. All those things wouldn't appear if you can take more and more money out of the pockets of teachers and blame them and convince the parents that somehow you have defended the rights of parents.
The reality is that you have hurt the right of teachers to have any kind of fair bargaining process, just like you took away, under Bill 7, the rights of OPSEU members to have legitimate, legal successor rights. You have effectively taken out hundreds of millions of dollars, which makes this a weaker school system. All the spinning in the world isn't going to change that. Anyone who takes the time to read this legislation and look past the headlines will realize that this is all about hammering teachers, not helping students.
Mr Gerard Kennedy (York South): I think it's extremely important, Minister, that you reflect on this opportunity to get onside with the children's needs of this province, because up to now your whole program has been geared to deducting, to taking away from the children who depend on public schools in this province and on the separate school system. Children aren't going to understand why you have relentlessly, through the course of the summer, into the fall, to this point here today, taken it upon yourself to poison the atmosphere in which they have to learn, to try and turn teachers and boards, in some cases wedging in parents, into adversaries over something that has to be worked on, in a human services kind of way, directly and cooperatively on the results that have to be obtained.
You can't point to anything you've done to increase the morale of teachers or the ability of teachers to provide for their students. There isn't a single thing you've done throughout the piece that improves the capacity or capability of the teachers we have in this province. When you do that, you're directly deducting and taking away from children. The number of student contacts they're going to have you are arbitrarily increasing in some central fiat way of a type we haven't seen outside the Soviet politburo, in terms of the kind of central decision-making you're imposing on every classroom in this province without regard for the particular community needs they have. Particularly in this clause, 10(5), you are allowing one side to impose the conditions and you're basically making them force the teaching staff of this province to fit into a mould you've created. You didn't take care when you made that mould and you're siphoning away their sense of goodwill, their ability to do their job by compelling that to happen, because what you're saying to the boards is, "We won't give you the flexibility or the resources to do a good job," and what you're saying to the teachers is, "You don't have any choice."
I defy you to come up with one instance of where that has actually resulted in conditions of improvement in terms of the fundamentals of teaching, of being able to impart knowledge, of being able to deal with the various types of requirements there in that classroom. You want the teachers on your side. You want the children to have respect for those teachers.
We can measure some of the hypocrisy in which your ministry - we'll make it general - has become entangled: 66 centimetres and $430,000 to put things out to the parents of this province that have nothing to do with improving the instruction and the learning their children get. When you funded this, when you said that instead of buying better quality textbooks, instead of putting portables where they could be used, instead of funding some of the busing rather than having kids walk, when you put this piece of paper out for $435,000 you did that knowing full well that it would antagonize the teachers, who are looking for a sign from this government that you're serious about quality education, that you would perform the role of a referee, of somebody who would see those boards and teachers actually sit down and facilitate their discussions.
Instead, in this clause you're asking the boards to play the weight of the heavy, to play your role. You're saying they have no choice. They must fit the provisions, your provisions put in there by Bill 160, that don't allow flexibility to match the variety of students we have in this province, the different scenarios we have in terms of communities, the state of readiness of boards to be able to close schools without severely compromising students. You're going to turn the teachers of this province into political pretzels to fit your agenda.
The children of this province will pay a big price for your heavy-handedness. There is no other place for those consequences to be borne out. It's the children of this province who have to give you some pause. This political document, which you at least had the graciousness to withdraw some of earlier today, whether for political or other reasons, is still rife with politically inspired, unfair and heavy-handed material; for example, 10(1).
What you've got in terms of Mr Lauwers in Sudbury - he was someone who was negotiating, advising the board. He's written a clause that is going to make the Sudbury separate board perhaps one of the most certain in the province to be teaching seven out of eight. You put that in there, Minister, and that's not your job. Your job is to create a learning environment. We get to advise you here to give you the opportunity to do better and then judge you if you won't. If you won't take a view of the schoolroom, of the classroom in the school that actually can be explained in terms of its impact on students - there's a lot of doubletalk that could be inferred from some of the things you've tried to say.
You've taken money from the system. You've put money into separate envelopes. Some of those envelopes can't be accessed by various schools. In my riding it means that immediately those schools are going to be dirtier and less safe. There will be more glass in the playground because that's the decisions those boards have to make. They cannot have the cleaning staff they used to have. Similarly, when you take this inflexible point of view - we're so happy to have this respite tonight from that inflexibility, to have this actual discussion and be able to give you some advice on some of these important matters - you're going to do the same thing to teachers.
That's exactly what you seem to have in mind in terms of this particular amendment. When you say to the boards that there's no flexibility, when you say to those boards that have really bent over backwards and worked hard to keep those kids in schools: "Those agreements don't qualify as contracts. As the Minister of Education I don't see that" - Minister, there must be a level at which you can appreciate the linkage here.
If you compel those boards to pummel teachers in terms of doing things that aren't good for their communities, that aren't good for their classrooms - I spoke to a young teacher on Friday who, because you are insisting, is going to teach four 75-minute periods in a row in a portable that won't even allow her to take a washroom break, it's so far away. It's going to compromise the time she is able to put into the preparation. If that's humorous to the people opposite, to Mr Ford or to anyone else, that's fine, but until you're willing to shoulder the responsibility - and that's really what this is about tonight. You have an opportunity to take on the responsibility that comes with writing this bill, to deal with the impact this is going to have on people's lives.
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If you really insist on doing that to teachers in terms of providing those work conditions that aren't good for kids - you haven't produced any study or anything that shows that this can be done without harming kids. When we called for an independent review, you didn't respond to that. Make sure that children aren't harmed here, Minister.
If you don't think your government is capable of that, look no farther than your nearest hospital. We've already learned what a stubborn, uncompromising, sometimes bullying government can do when it says it's pursuing what it thinks is in our best interests. The names of those people are out there who have had tragic and adverse experiences in hospital emergency room hallways, who haven't been able to get basic medical care because of decisions that were made, because of appeals that weren't listened to, because of mistakes that your government has inflicted on this province when it cut hospitals and would not shoulder the responsibility of what happened as a result.
Minister, this is your social contract. You want to impose this on all the contracts that are affected here. This is your decision to make tonight, to provide to each of the children in this province some sense that a government, of no matter what partisan stripe, is not going to load the pressure on them, because that's the only thing the teachers can do. Teachers must teach under the conditions we create for them, and we've got to be accountable.
You have no idea whether this can work in that multiplicity of boards. You have not set up any transition mechanism to make this work in ways that guarantee that children won't be harmed, just like patients were harmed in this province. You should have done that. In fact, you should still do that. If you're going to insist on doing this, you should still do that, because sooner or later the parents of those children are going to come looking for who is responsible. They're going to know that it was you who could have protected those kids from being harmed. Instead, you've decided to sustain this myopic view that says, "As long as we're taking a billion dollars out of education, as long as we're feeding the tax cut, that's more important."
This is the point in your mandate where, as our leader said today, we're looking for you to be reasonable. If there's another side to the personality of the Harris government, if there's a Dr Jekyll out there, we want to see him. We've seen Mr Hyde. We want to see whether you can respond to the normative requirement that parents across this province have, and that's to protect their kids even as you make changes.
You've made a lot of wild promises here tonight about how this is going to make things better and your propaganda repeats them and repeats them, but there's a fundamental inconsistency to that. You're not taking responsibility for implementing these. You stripped the contracts of the affected workers here, the teachers. You did that. That was your decision; it was not a natural outcropping of what boards and teachers had decided as a result of their bargaining elsewhere. Then you made them go through an exercise, your experiment of sticking them in rooms all around the province, with varying capacities to respond.
Tons of them have only put together those one-year agreements. They haven't been able to make it work in terms of Bill 160. Because you won't take the responsibility of persuading, of learning what to do, of working with those boards, of working with those unions the way our leader did when he sat down and talked to the boards and the unions last week to try and find solutions - the very seat you should have been sitting in. That's what the children of this province and their parents would expect from you: to protect them at all costs. You're entitled to have your way with the education system if you can ensure that you're going to defend the interests of children as you do it.
You're in no position to do that, because in almost every instance what we've got here tonight is what the Minister of Education has wrought on the system and now is trying to cover up. Every time this bill addresses the rights of teachers and so on, it comes right up against the provisions of Bill 160. You're like someone coming along after a car crash once you've thrown the tacks on the road. This is your accident. This is probably the only clear opportunity you're going to have to do something about it before the impacts are visited upon children across the province.
In my riding we've got elementary children whose teachers are there, who haven't been locked out, who have to travel miles and miles to other schools. Four complete classes are being bused away because of you, Minister. They're losing their instructional time, they're not able to have a recess in the afternoon and they don't get to participate in extracurricular activities because you've taken them away from them. You didn't see fit to have a transition to make this bill work and you want these draconian measures instead.
This will be your legacy, and maybe it's what you want: pulling public education apart in this province.
The Second Deputy Chair (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Pursuant to the order of the House of today's date, the time has expired. I will now put the questions.
Mrs McLeod: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I'm not in any way challenging the time agreement we all have that at the termination of this period the balance of the amendments would be considered to be read and that therefore they won't actually be read. But I do believe it may present somewhat of a procedural problem for us to follow, because with the shortness of time I don't believe there is a numbering of the amendments. Can I ask how the amendments will be placed as we come up to them?
Mr Wildman: On a point of order, Mr Chair: With regard to the amendments that have been tabled, I just point out that in regard to the NDP amendments on section 17, the arbitration section, I believe we would have to put subsection (3) and then subsection (6) prior to the amendment deleting the whole section.
Mrs McLeod: Mr Chairman, on the same point of order: The same thing would apply. There would be some confusion in knowing what we're actually voting on unless you are able to read the amendment so we know what we're voting on.
The Second Deputy Chair: We'll read them all.
Mr Wildman: And the order I suggested, is that acceptable?
The Second Deputy Chair: Mr Wildman has moved an amendment to subsection 10(5).
Interjection.
The Second Deputy Chair: - that subsection 10(5) of the act be deleted. Carried? No.
Mrs McLeod: On a point of order again, Mr Chair: Do we revert back to ones which were stacked from earlier in the debate?
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The Second Deputy Chair: All those in favour, please say "aye."
All those opposed will please say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it. The vote is therefore deferred.
Mrs McLeod has moved that subsections 10(5), (6) and (7) of the bill be struck out. Is it the pleasure of the committee that the motion carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it. The vote is deferred.
Mr Wildman has moved an amendment to section 12(b), that the words "Minister of Labour" be deleted and replaced with "chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board." Is the pleasure of the committee that the motion carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it. The vote is therefore deferred.
Mrs McLeod moves that subsections 12(1) and (2) of the bill be struck out and the following substituted:
"Appointment of mediator-arbitrator
"(1) If notice is given under section 11,
"(a) the parties may jointly appoint a mediator-arbitrator; or
"(b) either party may at any time request in writing that the Ontario Labour Relations Board appoint a mediator-arbitrator.
"Same
"(2) On receiving a request under clause (1)(b), the Ontario Labour Relations Board shall appoint a mediator-arbitrator."
Shall the motion carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it. The vote is deferred.
We forgot these sections. Shall section 11 carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it. The vote is deferred.
Shall section 13 carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the ayes have it.
Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre): Can we see a replay, please, Mr Chair?
The Second Deputy Chair: The vote is deferred. I think you understood me.
Mrs McLeod moves that subsection 14(6) of the bill be struck out. Is it the pleasure of the committee that the motion carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it. The vote is therefore deferred.
Shall sections 15 and 16 carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the ayes have it. The vote is therefore deferred.
Mr Johnson moves that subsection 17(2) of the bill be struck out and the following substituted:
"Same
"(2) For greater certainty, in complying with subsection (1) the mediator-arbitrator shall have regard to the provisions of the Education Act as it may be amended by Bill 63 (An Act to amend the Education Act with respect to instructional time, which received first reading on September 28, 1998) or by any other act, regardless of whether section 2 of Bill 63 applies to a provision of an agreement between the parties."
Shall the motion carry?
All those in favour will please say "aye."
All those opposed will please say "nay."
The motion is carried.
Mr Wildman moves that subsection 17(3) be deleted. Is it the pleasure of the committee that the motion carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it. The vote is deferred.
Mrs McLeod moves that subsection 17(4) of the bill be struck out. Is it the pleasure of the committee that the motion carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it and the vote is therefore deferred.
Mr Wildman moves that subsection 17(6) be deleted. Is it the pleasure of the committee that the motion carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it. The vote is therefore deferred.
Mrs McLeod moves that subsection 17(6) of the bill be struck out and the following substituted:
"Same
"(6) The mediator-arbitrator shall include in the award a written statement explaining whether or not, in his or her opinion, the scheduled board can meet the costs resulting from the award within the funding provided to that board under the Education Act."
Shall the motion carry?
All those in favour will please say "aye."
All those opposed will please say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it and the vote is deferred.
Mr Wildman moves that subsection 18(3) be deleted. Is it the pleasure of the committee that the motion carry?
Mrs McLeod: On a point of order, Mr Chair: May I ask whether you have either read or considered to be out of order both the NDP motion - that's section 17. Have you read that motion that it be deleted and also our motion that section 17 of the bill be struck out?
The Second Deputy Chair: Those motions were out of order and the question was not put.
Mr Wildman moves that subsection 18(3) be deleted. Shall the amendment be carried?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it. The vote is deferred.
Shall sections 19 and 20 carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the ayes have it. The vote is deferred.
Shall sections 23 and 24 carry?
All those in favour, please say "aye."
All those opposed, please say "nay."
In my opinion, the ayes have it. The vote is deferred.
Mrs McLeod moves that the preamble to the bill be struck out. Is the pleasure of the committee that the motion carry?
All those in favour, say "aye."
All those opposed, say "nay."
In my opinion, the nays have it. The vote is deferred.
Mr Johnson moves that the long title of the bill be amended by striking out "and to amend the Education Act with respect to instructional time."
Shall the motion carry? Carried.
We will now vote on these amendments. Call in the members; this will be a five-minute bell.
The committee recessed from 2121 to 2126.
The Second Deputy Chair: We're now voting on Liberal amendment 10(1).
All those in favour of the amendment will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant (Ms Deborah Deller): The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
We'll now deal with NDP amendment 10(5). All those in favour will please rise and remain standing. Same vote? Same vote.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
We'll now deal with Liberal amendments 10(5), (6) and (7). All those in favour will please rise. Same vote? Same vote.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
We'll now deal with section 10.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We now deal with section 11. All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We'll now deal with NDP amendment 12(1)(b). All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
We'll now deal with Liberal amendment 12(1) and (2).
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
We will now deal with section 12.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We will now deal with section 13.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We will now deal with Liberal amendment 14(6).
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
We will now deal with section 14.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We will now deal with sections 15 and 16.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We will now deal with NDP amendment 17(3).
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
Mrs McLeod: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: Did the government not place the motion to amend subsection 17(2)?
The Second Deputy Chair: Yes, and it was carried.
We will now deal with Liberal amendment 17(4).
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
We will now deal with NDP amendment 17(6).
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
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The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
Liberal amendment 17(6):
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
Section 17, as amended:
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We'll now deal with NDP amendment 18(3).
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
Section 18:
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We'll now deal with sections 19 and 20.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We'll now deal with sections 23 and 24.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We will now deal with the schedule.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We'll now deal with the Liberal amendment to the preamble.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 34; the nays are 57.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion lost.
We will now vote on the preamble.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
We will now vote on the long title, as amended.
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 89; the nays are 0.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
Shall the bill, as amended, carry?
All those in favour will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 57; the nays are 34.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
Shall I report the bill, as amended? Agreed.
Hon Mr Sterling: I move the committee rise and report.
The Second Deputy Chair: Is it agreed?
All those in favour will please say "aye."
All those opposed will please say "nay."
In my opinion, the ayes have it.
Call in the members; this will be a five-minute bell.
The division bells rang from 2154 to 2200.
The Second Deputy Chair: Mr Sterling has moved that the committee rise and report.
All those in favour of the motion will please rise and remain standing.
All those opposed will please rise and remain standing.
Clerk Assistant: The ayes are 59; the nays are 33.
The Second Deputy Chair: I declare the motion carried.
The committee of the whole begs to report one bill with certain amendments and asks for leave to sit again.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Shall the report be received and adopted?
All those in favour will please say "aye."
All those opposed will please say "nay."
In my opinion, the ayes have it.
This will be a five-minute bell.
The division bells rang from 2203 to 2208.
The Acting Speaker: We're now voting on the following question: Shall the report be received and adopted?
All those in favour will please rise one at a time and be recognized by the Clerk.
Ayes
|
Arnott, Ted Barrett, Toby Beaubien, Marcel Boushy, Dave Brown, Jim Carr, Gary Carroll, Jack Danford, Harry DeFaria, Carl Doyle, Ed Ecker, Janet Elliott, Brenda Fisher, Barbara Flaherty, Jim Ford, Douglas B. Fox, Gary Froese, Tom Galt, Doug Grimmett, Bill Guzzo, Garry J. |
Hardeman, Ernie Harnick, Charles Harris, Michael D. Hastings, John Hodgson, Chris Jackson, Cameron Johns, Helen Johnson, Bert Johnson, David Jordan, W. Leo Klees, Frank Leadston, Gary L. Martiniuk, Gerry Maves, Bart McLean, Allan K. Mushinski, Marilyn Newman, Dan O'Toole, John Parker, John L. |
Pettit, Trevor Preston, Peter Rollins, E.J. Douglas Ross, Lillian Sampson, Rob Shea, Derwyn Skarica, Toni Smith, Bruce Snobelen, John Spina, Joseph Sterling, Norman W. Stewart, R. Gary Tsubouchi, David H. Turnbull, David Villeneuve, Noble Wettlaufer, Wayne Wilson, Jim Wood, Bob Young, Terence H. |
The Acting Speaker: All those opposed will rise one at a time and be recognized by the Clerk.
Nays
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Agostino, Dominic Bartolucci, Rick Bisson, Gilles Boyd, Marion Bradley, James J. Brown, Michael A. Caplan, David Christopherson, David Cleary, John C. Colle, Mike Crozier, Bruce Cullen, Alex |
Curling, Alvin Duncan, Dwight Gerretsen, John Hampton, Howard Hoy, Pat Kennedy, Gerard Kormos, Peter Lalonde, Jean-Marc Lankin, Frances Lessard, Wayne Martel, Shelley |
McGuinty, Dalton McLeod, Lyn Miclash, Frank Patten, Richard Phillips, Gerry Pupatello, Sandra Ruprecht, Tony Sergio, Mario Silipo, Tony Wildman, Bud Wood, Len |
Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 58; the nays are 34.
The Acting Speaker: I declare the motion carried.
Pursuant to the order of the House of today's date, the bill is ordered for third reading, to commence immediately.
Hon Mr Sterling: Mr Speaker, on a point of order: I believe we have an agreement that the time, which is 60 minutes, will be split 10 minutes on the government side, 20 minutes for each of the opposition parties, and then 10 minutes on the government side at the end.
The Acting Speaker: Agreed.
Hon David Johnson: I'm proposing that the time for the government side be split by the members for Durham West and Durham East, and the member for Middlesex will be wrapping up. Since I've spoken at great length today, I'll simply express my extreme delight that the kids are going to be back in class tomorrow.
The Acting Speaker: Minister, you have to move third reading first.
2210
BACK TO SCHOOL ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LE RETOUR À L'ÉCOLE
Mr Johnson moved third reading of the following bill:
Bill 62, An Act to resolve labour disputes between teachers' unions and school boards / Projet de loi 62, Loi visant à régler les conflits de travail opposant des syndicats d'enseignants et des conseils scolaires.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Minister?
Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): Again, Mr Speaker, my extreme delight that the kids will be back in school.
I split my time with the members for Durham West, Durham East and Middlesex.
Hon Janet Ecker (Minister of Community and Social Services): I'm very pleased today to rise in support of this legislation and to say how very pleased I am on behalf of the parents in the riding of Durham West that their children will actually be back in school tomorrow, which is where they very much want to be and certainly very much where they should be. From the phone calls I've been having over the last couple of days, parents and students have simply been fed up with the teachers' unions playing politics in the schools. I'm very pleased that they will be back.
I think the hypocrisy in the position that has been taken in my riding by some of the members of the union leadership has been, quite frankly, breathtaking. Last fall, when the teachers were undertaking their labour action, they claimed that there wasn't enough money in the system. They said there wasn't enough money for textbooks, for new schools, for smaller classes, more teachers, that somehow or other all that money had been taken out of the system.
Now, this fall, when their benefits are on the table, the pamphlet that has gone out to parents in my riding is claiming that the boards have millions of more dollars to pay for their demands. I think the parents, in the calls that I've had, have seen through this very clearly. What is important in our region is that the new funding formula, the requirement in the legislation last fall, is working. In our Durham board we have more textbooks, we have more new schools, we have smaller classes, more teachers, more computers. We have an education system that is working better in our region because of the reforms that this government has put into place, which I very much support.
I think I may use the quote about all the more money that's in the system in my campaign brochure, wherever that may come, because I think that certainly reinforces what we said was going to happen, that there would be more money available for the teachers and the children in the classrooms. We said we would do it, the minister said this would happen, and that is indeed what is happening in the classrooms in my community.
I certainly respect the collective bargaining process, but not when it is used to play political games with our children. That clearly is what has been happening, where some individuals have been trying to fight last fall's battles all over again, fight Bill 160, a bill that guaranteed equal funding for students, that would cap average class sizes, that would ask teachers to spend 25 more minutes in the classroom, things that will help guarantee the quality and improve the quality in our education system.
It is clearly time - we thought about this, and it was not an easy decision for the Minister of Education, but we could not in good conscience allow this kind of political posturing to occur to threaten the education of our children. It is now time to stop. That's what this legislation will do.
I think it is also time, with all due respect, that we declare Durham region an Earl Manners and Marshall Jarvis-free zone. I think our teachers are quite capable of solving their issues and dealing with the board. It has been quite distressing to see many teachers who feel they've been taken advantage of with what has happened over there. I must say as well that when we sat here this afternoon, when the government was trying to put forward legislation, trying to be reasonable and flexible about getting this passed so children could get back into the schools, it was interesting to see that the members of the honourable opposition across the way had to run over to see Mr Jarvis and Mr Manners and consult before they took a position in the House. This is something we haven't seen.
Hon David H. Tsubouchi (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): Pay homage.
Hon Mrs Ecker: My colleague from Markham says, "Pay homage." That certainly was the way it could look to us. That's something we're quite surprised to see with the Liberal Party.
I'm very pleased that this legislation will be passing. I'm very pleased that it is going to be getting the children back into the schools so that the teachers who care about those kids are going to be able to teach, so that those kids can learn and so those parents can be satisfied and know their children are going to get a better education.
Mr John O'Toole (Durham East): It's a real pleasure to join in support of the minister and also to speak after my peer from Durham West, the Honourable Janet Ecker. I know just how hard she works in Durham and how important the issue is to all of us in Durham. I know exactly what she means. The time for politics is over. Respectfully, I think Mr Hampton moved a long way forward to allow this to go through this House today, to allow our students to go back to school. That's what we all want.
Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): The real leader of the opposition.
Mr O'Toole: The real leader of the opposition came out today, and I think to the chagrin of Mr McGuinty - who's here, by the way. I shouldn't name him, but respectfully, he hasn't been here for the rest of the day.
Anyway, I'm going to name the boards that are affected by this decision. I think it's important:
Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board; Durham - my riding and Janet's riding - Catholic District School Board; Durham District School Board; Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board; Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board, my board - I was a trustee there and my wife teaches for that board; Sudbury Catholic District School Board; Toronto Catholic District School Board; and York Catholic District School Board: mostly Catholic boards. I'm surprised. They are getting more money. They've been fighting for years for full funding; now they have it. What's up?
I think the problems between Earl and Marshall, who is actually running it - if you read what Marshall is saying and what Earl is saying, technically, Marshall is really following Earl Manners's lead, in my book.
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I've had at least 20 calls per day, if not more, from my riding. I try to return those calls. Many of them are students. I've got one - this is a quote from one of the student trustees in our area. I'd ask every member here tonight to listen to this, from one of our students. He wrote this, and it's a press release. I'm going to read part of it.
"The Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board recognizes the student senate as the representative of the 13,874 students in its jurisdiction. The student senate is composed of two representatives from each secondary school in this district. Our representative to the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board is Chad Walsh, student trustee." By the way, Mr Walsh signed this memo.
"The members of the student senate regret the impasse that has arisen between the board and the teachers. This labour dispute is unfortunate for all concerned and continues to create many problems. One major problem is the adverse effect this dispute is having on student morale. The feeling of uncertainty and the loss of extracurricular activities have stripped many students of their optimism. They are losing sight of their goals.
"Our community suffers...."
It goes on to say, "The members of the student senate believe it would be in the best interests," of the two parties if this dispute were to be solved hastily with a resolution. "Our students and our community cannot reasonably be expected to endure continued disruptions of this nature."
This is written by Chad Walsh, a student from that board. Each one of us should listen to the young people. That's what this is about: It's about the students. There's politics on both sides, including ours. Listen to the students and open up your mind.
Interjections.
Mr O'Toole: I'm listening when you're speaking. I know the members on the other side have quite honestly exacerbated this problem.
How does it affect us personally? As a parent with five children, and my wife is a teacher - she was told this week by the union personnel in her school in Bowmanville, "If you don't obey these work-to-rule orders, you'll be fired." Can you imagine? That was said - you can quote me on that - by the union representative: "You will be fired." My wife takes care of primary children. The bus was there. It was a new school; it was a construction site. The reality is, this problem is -
The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Further debate?
Mr Dalton McGuinty (Leader of the Opposition): I want at the outset to take the opportunity to congratulate my colleague Lyn McLeod, the member for Fort William, for the outstanding work she has done on this matter. While a number of parents, students, and in fact a lot of teachers might be happy tonight that our schools will be open tomorrow, it's important to recognize that today and tonight is not a victory; it's an admission of failure. It's a failure on the part of this government to provide stability in public education in Ontario.
You've got to ask yourself, what kind of policies would have led to this unprecedented disruption, chaos and confusion in Ontario schools, the kind that led to 200,000 children being out of school today who have been out for a number of weeks now, and that prior to the summer break led to every single teacher in the province vacating their classes, over a million school children being out of school - an event, as I understand it, unprecedented in the history of the planet? What kind of educational policies have led to this kind of strife, divisiveness, chaos and confusion?
Let's be perfectly clear about this. Nobody here, surely, is prepared to say there is no room for improvement in the public education system in Ontario. The issue then surely is, how do we go about bringing that kind of change? Are we going to recognize at some point in time that the best kind of education, the ideal that we hold out here, the one that informs our thinking and inspires our efforts, the very best kind of education, is one that necessarily involves a good working partnership between government, trustees, teachers and parents?
For those who take some consolation in the passage of this bill later on tonight, they should understand that in reality there are 144 collective agreements to be negotiated. That's the total. Eleven have been arrived at. There are 11 agreements now on the books. The balance of the 144 could still be the subject of a strike or a lockout. So this is but the tip of the iceberg in terms of what it's about to address here. Eight school boards, that's all. There are many, many which still have agreements that have yet to be reached, which still could be the subject of a strike or a lockout.
When you talk about a failure to provide stability in public education, what we're fundamentally talking about here is a failure on the part of the government, a failure on the part of Mike Harris's leadership to bring sides together. That's the job of the Premier. That's what a Premier is supposed to do. Not this guy. He prefers to divide. He prefers to drive sides apart and that's exactly what he's done over the past two years. Whether it's through his negative TV ads attacking teachers, Mike Harris drives sides apart. Whether it's through his interference in the bargaining process, Mike Harris drives sides apart. Whether it's through his decision to bring forward a 17-page omnibus bill today rather than straightforward, simple, honest back-to-work legislation, Mike Harris drives sides apart. Again, that's not what Ontarians want from their Premier. They want a Premier who brings sides together.
If you stop and think about it for a minute, we can't afford in this new economy, in this competitive global economy, to have at the helm some guy who has special expertise and who is overly adept at dividing our population, at pitting one group against the other. If I were living in another jurisdiction today, in some other part of the world and I heard of this news coming out of Ontario, I would be saying, "Thank goodness there's somebody over there who is giving us a hand." We've got a Premier who is dividing the people.
What are our shared objectives today in Ontario? What are our common goals? What have we bought into? What's our common sense of purpose in Ontario today? I think if you were to go out there and talk to people at the doorstep, go into the laundromats or the doughnut shops or the church basements and ask people what they think Mike Harris is making us all buy into, where he is taking us, what is our common sense of purpose, whether you're talking about education or health care or anything else, they'd say: "I'm not aware of any. All I know about this guy is he's really good at causing strife and disturbance and chaos and confusion." We can't afford that, not on the cusp of the 21st century.
You know what I did? Last week I got hold of those people who represent teachers in Ontario and I asked them to come and meet with me. Then I got hold of those people who represent school boards in Ontario and I asked them if they too might come and visit with me in my office. I sat them down and I said, "Listen, what is it that I might do to assist in bringing about collective agreements at the earliest possible opportunity in order to get our children back inside the classroom?" And you know what? When I think about it, that's the job of the Premier. That's his job. He's supposed to be doing what he can to bring the sides together. He's so damn busy taking sides and pitting people against each other that he's lost sight of his primary responsibility in Ontario.
I listened to these people, and as far as I'm concerned listening to people, to players with legitimate authority who have some ability and maybe more importantly have some potential when it comes to helping us put into place public policy, listening to these people is not a sign of weakness. It seems to me it's a sign of strength. At some point in time you've got to make a decision. Our teachers, for example, are they some kind of an obstacle to be overcome on an ongoing basis or are they a resource to be tapped? Can we really bring about lasting, substantive improvement in terms of what takes place inside our classrooms without enlisting the support, the goodwill and the expertise of our teachers? We can't. It can't be done. Like it or not, we need them. We've got to work with them. This government has got to stop asking for their surrender and start asking for their help.
2230
I met with the representatives of the teachers and the representatives of the school boards and it quickly became apparent that there were a few common threads of concern that they expressed. I took their advice and last Friday I put forward what I call a school stability plan. It seems to me that if we're going to recognize rights from time to time in Ontario, surely one of the rights we ought to recognize when it comes to Ontario parents is the right to have stability in the lives of their children when it comes to their schooling. So I put forward a plan, the school stability plan, and in it I asked the government to do three simple things:
Number one, would you please provide an independent review of the funding formula? It's readily apparent to anybody who has spent any time looking at this that the funding formula is totally inadequate in terms of ensuring that we continue to offer quality public education in Ontario.
The next thing I said is, would you not permit us to have one-year contracts and allow those to be signed until the funding review is completed?
Third, would you not permit a phase-in of the class size provisions where school boards simply don't have the physical space to meet the imposed requirements?
It seems to me those are all eminently reasonable. What I'm trying to do here is to inject at least some element of stability in public education in Ontario. I have received no word from the government with respect to that offer.
I did something else on Friday, something I spoke about earlier today in question period. I told the government that we were prepared to be reasonable, to work with them to solve the crisis they themselves had created. I told the government last Friday that if they presented a fair and honest bill, we would not delay the final vote on that bill.
I want to be very clear: We don't support this legislation. It is bad public policy. It pre-empts the legislative responsibility assigned to the Education Relations Commission, a body that was first established by Conservatives some time ago in this province. If it comes to making a decision, if it comes to listening to the ERC as to whether or not teachers should be sent back to the classroom, or to Mike Harris as to whether or not they should be sent back to the classroom, who do you think we're going to trust to be objective, impartial, at arm's length? Surely it's not Mike Harris.
Had the framer listened to our reasonable proposal, those 200,000 kids could have been back in the classroom this morning. Mike Harris refused to listen to that proposal and of course that's perfectly in keeping with his track record to date.
It's important to understand how we got here in the first place, to the point where more and more people are losing confidence in public education in Ontario. If I were a cynical person, I would say that this was very much in keeping with the strategy and the intent of the Premier, which is to make people believe they should lose confidence in public education so he could create an opening for things like charter schools, for things like a voucher system.
I can tell you that as far as I'm concerned, the very foundation of our future economic prosperity in this province lies in a healthy, adequately funded, properly supported, nurtured, cherished, valued public education system.
How did we get here? We got here quite simply. The chronology is very straightforward. First, the Premier tells us he's out to create a crisis in public education. Then he takes a billion dollars out of our classrooms. Then he launches an unprecedented attack on the teaching profession. Then he introduces Bill 160. Then he assumes complete control over all education. This has resulted in teachers being fired and schools closed. He decides to rip up every collective agreement in the province, and he did it all at once. Then he handcuffed trustees. He placed a straitjacket on the negotiations.
What are our kids going to be returning to? In a word, a mess. This legislation will not resolve the crisis in public education in Ontario. This crisis is going to continue, this mess is going to continue until Mike Harris ends his attack on the teaching profession and begins returning some of the money he has taken out of the classroom. Students are going to be returning to classrooms that have less funding. Students will be returning to fewer teachers and those teachers who are there will have less time to devote to individual students.
During the course of my travels throughout this province, I can tell you not once did I ever happen upon a parent who said to me, "The problem with public education today in Ontario is that my son's teacher has too much time to spend with him." They never said that, and that's what we're talking about here. The government can cloak it in all kinds of edubabble. At the end of the day, what they want to impose on public education in Ontario is for teachers to have less time with individual students and that cannot be a healthy thing in Ontario education.
Can we afford all of this chaos, this confusion, this demoralized teaching profession that this government would convert into a group of clock punchers, where they have to account for every single minute? Any time that is not devoted to what they call instructional time apparently has no value. Either our teachers are professionals or they're not. If they are professionals, as I believe them to be, then at some point in time we have to place some confidence in them, some confidence in their ability to deliver. We can help by assigning some overriding objectives, but I don't want to get into this business where we tell them they have to account for each and every minute, because you don't have to go too far down that path and suddenly we decide we're going to have to hire people now to coach the football team like they do in the United States of America, and we're going to have to hire people to coach volleyball because teachers are just clock punchers. They never got into the business, never got into the profession of teaching, never entered that vocation to be considered clock punchers by the government.
Let me tell you about my commitment to improve education in Ontario, some of the things I've already committed to. Number one, we will repeal Bill 160. Number two, we will create a real working partnership in education. I understand, recognize and respect the limitations of government when it comes to delivering quality education. We simply can't do it without the help of teachers, without the help of trustees, without the help of parents. You've got a choice, to enlist them in your cause or suffer the consequences.
Maybe to speak the language this government understands, if you had a corporation, ask yourself, if you wanted to get the best out of your corporation, how would you treat your employees? How would you get them motivated? How would you make them ambitious? How would you get them to feel good about their job? Would it be by taking the approach this government has taken towards teachers, by constantly criticizing, denigrating, demoralizing, devaluing? The answer's obvious. You wouldn't do it in business and they should know as well that you don't do it in education.
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We've got to create a partnership with our trustees. My father sat as a trustee for 16 years at the Ottawa Board of Education. I can recall in the evenings at home he would get calls. Somebody would phone and say, "We've got a problem at a school." First, my father knew where the school was and, second, there was an excellent chance he had some understanding of the personality or the culture at that school. He knew who the principal was and in many cases he knew who the teachers were.
He took his responsibility seriously and you didn't take on that job, contrary to the myth perpetuated by this government, to get rich. He took on the job because he felt it was an important responsibility, and that's a feeling shared by trustees throughout this province. Either we're going to have to place some confidence in them to do their job and to represent the interests of local ratepayers, or would you just tell them we don't need them any more? I think the government ought to be honest on that front. I think we can't do the job without them and I intend to return some real authority to them and that has to include some local ability to raise taxes.
Obviously, from what I've been seeing tonight, an important part of this partnership has got to be with teachers. The single most important resource we have when it comes to education in Ontario is not the books, it's not the curriculum, it's not the physical space, it's not the class size. The greatest resource we have in education today in Ontario is our teachers. Never before has any government set out so deliberately, it would seem to me, to demoralize a group of citizens as Mike Harris has done with our teachers.
To be brief and to summarize: If we're going to have quality education in Ontario, if we're going to assure its continuing existence as a thriving, cherished and valued experience for our students, we can only do it by means of a partnership.
Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): As we are about 30 minutes away from the final vote on this piece of legislation before us today, I think we have to ask ourselves, each of us from all parties in this Legislature: Are kids going to be better off? Are classrooms going to be better off? Are we going to be providing better-quality education after we pass this legislation today? I am sad to say that the answer to that is unequivocal and it's no.
The former Minster of Education committed the government to something in the very early days of the Harris government. He committed their government to creating a crisis in the education system in the province of Ontario: create a crisis so there's room to make change, a very cynical, a very calculated plan, something in the lingo of change management out there in the business world that the minister imported into public services. But do you know what he forgot and what they forgot and what Mike Harris forgot? When you create a crisis in the education system to create the room to make the changes you want, who is affected at the other end of it are some real people.
First and foremost, there are the kids, the kids whom government is supposed to be dedicated to protect, dedicated to provide the best quality of public education that is possible. That should be your goal, your mission. And the people who work in the system, the teachers, the education assistants, the caretakers, the administrative staff, are affected by your crisis too: parents, families, communities.
I've got to say that this is one promise that you've kept and you've kept it in spades. There is a crisis in the education system in Ontario right now. There is chaos. I'm not just talking about the boards that are affected by the legislation that the government will pass here tonight. I'm not just talking about the boards where the staff are locked out or where there are strikes going on, because, actually, they are the minority in the province right now. But there are hundreds of others where the negotiations are up in the air, where the dispute is ongoing, where extracurricular activities are not taking place, where this dispute can still evolve and where we can see more lockouts and more strikes in the future.
Does your bill do anything to help settle the disputes across the province? Again I say, unfortunately, I'm sad to say this, but no. In fact it creates more barriers to settlement. But I suspect in a way that has been the goal of the government all along. Take a look at it. It started with Bill 104, when you took away flexibility from local boards. For a government that certainly believes in people out there and in small government, not in big government, they've amassed more power into the centre than any government in Ontario in the history of Ontario.
If you think about it, boards, where they understand the local issues, surely that's where the local solution should be found between local teachers, parents and boards together. But you're not allowing that to happen. You are imposing the cookie-cutter approach out of Toronto. You know, ham-fisted, whatever we say in Toronto in the ivory tower, that goes for the whole province. I can't believe that's your approach but in effect that's what you've done.
You followed Bill 104 with Bill 160, where you changed the rules on everybody, where things that had been subject to local decision-making between boards and teachers and parents' councils you took away from them and you set the rules in legislation. You again centralized power. You followed that with a funding formula that's part of your overall plan to take $1 billion out of the education system, $1 billion out of our classrooms.
I don't believe for a moment the rhetoric I continue to hear from your government because we see every day, when we go out to schools, the effect in the classroom, we see the supplies they're doing without, we see that there are more kids. In some of the classrooms out there there are larger class sizes now as a result of the move you've made and making it board-wide averages. There are larger class sizes than there were. You can't square the circle. It's not possible.
All through this, I can't help but believe we're at a point where you wanted to be, at a point where you wanted to see the public confidence in our public education system eroded and where you wanted to see this kind of conflict. Just look at the actions of the last little while. You not only changed the rules of bargaining in 160 but you essentially ripped up all of the contracts in the province as of August 31, just a handful of days before the kids were due back in school.
If you wanted stability, if you wanted good transition, why would you force all the contracts to end right before school comes back? They all had different expiry dates. Some were two-year agreements, some were one. Again, board by board these things would have been worked out with transition but, no, August 31, they're all gone, all the terms of the collective agreements are gone. Boards can impose new terms. Surely you knew that would lead to strikes and that would lead to conflict.
Then you followed that with a series of the most amazing flip-flops by the minister and the Premier, where they said: "We're not going to legislate back to work. It's between the boards and the teachers. They'll figure it out." And then the next day: "We're going to legislate back to work. We may have to because we're worried about this." Then the next day, "No, we're not going to legislate back until the ERC rules jeopardy." And then you announce, "We are going to legislate back."
What do you think that did to bargaining? Every time you threatened legislation, more boards stepped back and said, "Whoa, we're just going to sit back and wait." If you didn't believe it when we told you that a week ago or two weeks ago, surely today you must with your own eyes have seen the evidence last night when the Toronto Catholic board said no. There was agreement there where they could have got the teachers back to the classroom, the kids back in the classroom today, and they said, "No, we're simply going to sit back and wait now to make sure we're covered by the legislation."
2250
In the middle of negotiations the minister sends out a missive, because the people in the ministry have called around and found out some of the settlements, giving a definition to instructional time that undermines some of the agreements that were already made, and he says, "No, this is the rule: more negotiations stop immediately." Then he's told, "Whoa." He now may be called as a party to the negotiations, and having bargained in bad faith, he steps back the next day and says, "Oh well, if you can negotiate something before I bring this into legislation, go ahead." Every step of the way you have confused the issues, you have made it more difficult to get resolution, you have forced this crisis and you've forced us to a situation now where you've got legislation ordering people back into the classroom. You know we all want the kids back in the classroom and teachers want to be back in the classroom.
But take a look at what you've included in the legislation. Take a look at the repugnant provisions you've put in with respect to arbitration, with respect to forced ability to pay, language beyond what anyone has seen before. Any decent arbitrator with any respect for the profession of arbitration in labour relations, in interest arbitration, won't be able to abide this. But of course you don't worry about that, because we've already seen in the other sectors - the nursing home sector, for example - where you simply go out and you appoint retired judges who have no background or history in interest arbitration or in labour relations, who don't understand any of the precedents. But you don't care, because it's your end goal to undermine the confidence in the system, to allow us to get to a point where there will be a public demand to consider charter schools, to consider vouchers. It's quite clear that's where you're headed.
Take a look at the provisions in this which strip contracts. Don't give me a thumbs-up "Yes, I agree with it." You're allowing the boards to set the terms of the contracts at this point in time without it even going to an independent arbitrator. You're allowing them to strip provisions in collective agreements, the collective agreements that you tore up under Bill 160, and all the time you set the grounds for this by vilifying teachers, by making teachers the enemy out there, by labelling them as a public interest group.
They have an interest and it can even be a special interest, if that's what you want to call it. Their special interest is in the education of the children of this province, it's in the professionalism in which they carry that out. It's time you recognized it, it's time we stopped hearing the Premier run down teachers, run down our education system. It's time we had a government that took a breath and said, "We support our education system, we support quality education and we're going to work together with the partners to get that."
As I'm sharing time with others in my caucus, I want to just finish by saying that this legislation, which I began with, does not fix the problems in the education system. There are four things that are needed to fix the problems and ensure that we have the quality system we need. We must repeal Bill 160, we must reinvest funding resources into our classrooms, we must restore flexibility to local boards to find local solutions and we must ensure that our teachers can spend quality time, necessary time, not just in the classroom but one on one with students, to ensure that our students have the benefit of the full experience of a quality education system. If you do that, we can support you. If you do that, we can ensure that our kids not only get back to the classroom but get back to a quality education in the classroom.
M. Gilles Bisson (Cochrane-Sud) : Je veux prendre l'opportunité de faire un couple de commentaires sur la situation que nous, le gouvernement provincial, avons créée. Ça, c'est le mot important. La situation dans laquelle on se trouve aujourd'hui faisant affaire avec les négociations entre les enseignants et les conseils scolaires n'est pas une situation que les conseils ou les éducateurs, eux, ont créée. C'est une situation que le gouvernement a créée. Il faut être très, très clair.
Il faut être très clair. Pourquoi ? Numéro un, le gouvernement a décidé de tout réformer du système scolaire sous la Loi 104. Ils ont repris des commissions scolaires et ils y ont mis des unités beaucoup plus grandes. Ils ont donné un milliard de dollars de moins qu'en 1995. Ils ont changé la Loi sur l'éducation sous la Loi 160 puis là ils disent, «Allez vous arranger, vous autres, les enseignants et les conseils scolaires, pour faire votre job comme enseignants et commissions scolaires,» et on trouve que c'est quasiment impossible. Pourquoi ? Parce que le gouvernement a fait une décision, une décision politique. La décision, c'est qu'ils veulent changer le système d'éducation contre un modèle qui reflète plus étroitement les pensées du gouvernement que dans le passé.
Ce qu'on voit est un système diminué, un système qui est moins qu'il ne l'était en 1995 et, je veux le dire ce soir, un système qui va avoir dans les années à venir, pas trop longtemps, des écoles de charte dans la province, un système d'éducation privée pour ceux qui ont de l'argent, un système d'éducation publique pour ceux qui en ont moins. C'est là qu'on s'en va. C'est la décision du gouvernement provincial.
Je veux aussi faire un commentaire que je me suis fait dire l'autre jour. J'étais avec Blain Morin, notre candidat dans le comté de Nickel Belt. On avait la chance d'être dans le bout de Chelmsford, au «post office», je crois. Quelqu'un est arrivé qui me connaissait par vue, parce que je suis assez dans ces médias dans le coin, et il est certain qu'il connaissait M. Blain Morin comme étant notre candidat. Cette personne est arrivée et s'est identifiée en me disant, «Monsieur Morin et monsieur Bisson, je veux vous dire que je suis un enseignant.» Il est enseignant depuis des années. Il a dit, «Jamais, dans mes plus de 20 années en éducation, je ne me suis senti aussi faible qu'aujourd'hui.» Pourquoi ? Parce que, dans son opinion, comme dans l'opinion de beaucoup d'autres enseignants dans la province, ce gouvernement ne met pas de valeur sur l'oeuvre qu'ils font dans une classe avec nos jeunes.
Cela m'a beaucoup bouleversé, comme ça a bouleversé M. Morin. Lui il m'a dit, «Écoute, Gilles, si un professeur va à l'école et qu'il ne se sent pas bien, il ne sent pas que son oeuvre ait de la valeur, il ne se sent pas reconnu par son gouvernement et son employeur, comment cet enseignant-là va-t-il être capable de faire une bonne job avec nos jeunes ?»
Moi, je sais qu'ils sont des professionnels, mais ces enseignants trouvent que ce gouvernement ne valorise pas leurs efforts. Je veux dire de la part du caucus NPD, parce que je pense qu'il faut le dire, que nous, on respecte le travail que font les enseignants et les enseignantes de l'Ontario avec nos jeunes. Nous autres, on dit que c'est une oeuvre de valeur, quelque chose d'important pas seulement pour eux comme enseignants, comme une job ; c'est beaucoup plus que ça. Ce sont eux autres qui ont l'avenir de nos jeunes dans leurs mains. Ce sont eux qui travaillent jour après jour pour s'assurer que mes jeunes - Julie Bisson, Nathalie Bisson - et les autres jeunes à travers la province ont la chance d'avoir une éducation qui peut leur donner les avantages dont ils ont besoin dans les années à venir.
I just want to be clear. In closing I only want to say that it needs to be put on the record that the work that teachers of this province do is work that is of value, it is something that I respect and other New Democrats respect and, in the words of Blain Morin, "If this government is not prepared to respect and to give value to the work that teachers do in this province, then this government should not be the government of Ontario." They should stand down, call a provincial election and let somebody like the New Democrats move in, who recognize and respect the work of the people of this province, work done by the teachers in Ontario.
Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): In the time remaining I want to make some remarks about what got us here tonight and why this frankly is not a very happy occasion.
It is incredible, certainly in the annals of Ontario history, that a Minister of Education would ever blurt out the words, "We need to create a crisis in education," but that in fact has been the starting point for this government's total direction with respect to education.
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It is certainly incredible in the annals of this province, in the history of this province, that a government would pass legislation which literally terminates every teaching contract in the province the very day before students are supposed to return to the classroom. The very day before students are to return to the classroom, this government in effect wipes out all of the teaching contracts.
It is incredible in the history of a province that while boards and teachers try to overcome this incredible obstacle put in their way by the government, this government then over the course of the next two to three weeks does all it can, everything it can to frustrate the coming together of those discussions, to frustrate the development of new collective agreements, to delay where it can and in many cases to destroy.
It is incredible that in this province you get a director of education, in this case Mr Don Folz, who is the education director for the district separate school board in Peterborough, writing a letter to the Minister of Education and saying in that letter, "But for your interference, Minister, we would have had a collective agreement with the Peterborough district separate school board." That is what has happened. That is what this government has done. This government has literally driven the education system of this province to this point, driven the system to this kind of chaos, this kind of crisis.
What will come of this legislation? The children who have been locked out of their schools or the children who have been affected by some strikes will over the course of the next couple of days be able to go back into their classrooms. But is this legislation going to solve the crisis? No, it is not going to solve the crisis. It is not going to overcome the fact that $1 billion has been taken out of the system. It is not going to overcome the fact that this government has set out on a course to attack and vilify and demoralize teachers. It is not going to overcome the under-resourcing that we now see in our schools. It is not going to overcome any of those things.
I don't like to say this to parents, I don't like to say this to students, but over the weeks and months ahead we are going to see a continuation of the awful atmosphere, the terrible atmosphere this government has created in our schools and in our education system as a whole.
This is not a happy night. Yes, students will over the next couple of days go back into the classrooms but they will not go back into happy classrooms; they will not go into adequately funded classrooms; they will not go into adequately resourced classrooms; they will not go back into schools where the teaching morale is as it has been and as it should be. That is too bad. That is very sad because we've had one of the better education systems in the world. Unfortunately, this government isn't -
The Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Smith: I'm certainly pleased to have the opportunity to conclude this evening's debate on third reading of this bill and lend my support to what I think is a very significant decision the Legislature has made today and a decision we've made, those supporting the bill, in support of students who have been affected by the labour dispute.
It's about making the right decisions, in my mind, for the students of this province, and that's why right from the outset the government of Ontario has set a course of developing a very comprehensive plan for education reform, one whereby we recognize the need for changes in the way school boards were governed and the structures that oversaw that process, changes in the way education was financed in this province, which historically report after report had identified as being in need of a remedy, and last, as I think we've heard today from many members in the Legislature, the need to change the curriculum standards in this province so that they meet the needs of students and challenge students in our classroom.
We've heard some positive comments from members on all sides of the House in terms of the success the curriculum documents have realized in this province, and certainly the benefit they're bringing to our elementary students at this point in time.
It's in this context that we've developed a comprehensive plan that focuses directly on the students in our classroom, directly on the resources that teachers need to deliver a high-quality product to the young people of this province. It's about investing more into the classrooms in this province, the sum of some $583 million, a very significant contribution and statement of support in terms of the importance that education holds for all of us, holds for students and certainly holds for parents. In doing so, we've recognized that we are going through a difficult period of time, that there is a difficult process and transition period we have to move through, an environment that requires a stable funding environment. That's why at the outset the Minister of Education very clearly understood that process was going to be a significant one that required his commitment to provide a stable playing field for our changes to be realized.
Certainly a significant part of this is developing a stronger parental say, and clearly the desire for parents to be involved was re-emphasized over the course of the last two weeks where we saw parents coming forward to see the minister, to meet with the minister to express their concerns, their desires and certainly their vision for education in this province, and the willingness of the minister to hear their concerns and act on their concerns. Quite frankly, the message they provided to him was that the time had come for action, that the time had come for action to bring closure to this issue so that the kids of this province, those who were being affected by a work stoppage, could return to their classrooms and start their school year, where they should have been at the first part of September.
We've said from the outset - as we've experienced, quite frankly, in the community college sector where teachers in that particular area have worked without a contract for some two years and those individuals continue to provide services in the classrooms - and very clearly the message has been, "Let the teachers teach, let the negotiators negotiate and let the kids learn in the classroom where they need to be in front of their teachers." The community college example was one where the services weren't withdrawn, where that was the desire of those individuals to continue to provide the services to the students at the community college level. There is no reason why the same scenario could not have materialized at the elementary and secondary levels.
As I said at the outset, change is not easy. As an individual who has been through a process at the municipal level, a process that I experienced personally, that was decided upon by the previous NDP government, I understand the challenges that come with amalgamations and I understand the frustrations people experience as employees as you move from one employer to a new employer. It's not an easy process. I can say from a personal perspective, having experienced that situation, that I am fully aware of the feelings, the apprehension and the hope in some cases that those changes bring, that the changes you may experience may lead to a more positive experience in the future. I do recognize that change is difficult, but when it comes to education in this province, the changes are very necessary. The transition period we are going through is very significant and one that requires very careful management, focused entirely on bringing improvements to the education system.
I heard the leader of the official opposition ask the question in his remarks whether or not this will bring long-lasting improvements to the education system in this province. Unlike him and his colleagues in the New Democratic caucus who support the repeal of Bill 160, I do not support a return to the status quo. In my mind, repealing Bill 160, returning and providing taxation powers to school boards and trustees in this province, is an indication that you support the way things were in education in this province. Quite frankly, the reports we've had for two decades have suggested the contrary, that now is the time for, the need for change.
I had thought when I first came here in 1995 that I had a sense that the NDP realized there was a need for education change, that there was a sense of leadership emerging, but they failed to move ahead and at the same time. That change is necessary started with Dave Cooke and Mr Silipo, who also I think had a vision of change for education in this province, but it didn't materialize. In 1995, under the leadership of Mike Harris, and now two education ministers, that new vision is materializing and is one that I think will serve the students and the parents of this province in a very positive way. The education system itself has caused drag. It's dragged our teachers down and it's dragged our students down. The focus of our reforms is to reverse that, whereby teachers can excel and students can excel in the same context.
The leader of the official opposition said the bill was not good public policy. I disagree. The back-to-work legislation we're debating today is appropriate and necessary in terms of the educational experiences of the students affected by this disruption. I personally believe the Minister of Education continues to provide leadership, to provide a vision of where we have to take education into the future. The minister's not satisfied with the status quo, my caucus colleagues are not satisfied with the status quo, and quite frankly there is no crisis in the education system in this province. We are going about a process of change which will lead to very positive changes to the education system.
There's no sinister motive here. The motive is very simple and straightforward. The government is seeking to re-establish a rejuvenated and new education system that simply benefits kids. It's about putting kids first and this legislation does that. The changes that this government has pursued, the tools that we have provided to the school system to support those changes, are significant in bringing that change process to realization.
To conclude, I can simply say that the government does not take the changes we are making to the education system lightly. When you're dealing with the future of young people, that would be an irresponsible position to assume. The position we have taken is that the status quo is not acceptable. We can do more for students in this province. We can make a system that is better, and better understood by parents and students alike, and that is why we've gone about this in a very systematic way - again, a very systematic way - with a comprehensive package that was clearly articulated. There are no surprises here. The government clearly articulated its direction and intention to fundamentally reform the way school boards are governed and the way they're financed, and by investing in children in this province.
The Speaker: Further debate? Seeing none, Mr Johnson has moved third reading of Bill 62.
Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?
All those in favour, please say "aye."
All those opposed, please say "nay."
In my opinion, the ayes have it.
Call in the members; this will be a five-minute bell.
The division bells rang from 2314 to 2319.
The Speaker: All those in favour, please rise one at a time and be recognized by the Clerk.
Ayes
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Arnott, Ted Barrett, Toby Beaubien, Marcel Boushy, Dave Brown, Jim Carr, Gary Carroll, Jack Danford, Harry DeFaria, Carl Doyle, Ed Ecker, Janet Elliott, Brenda Eves, Ernie L. Fisher, Barbara Flaherty, Jim Ford, Douglas B. Fox, Gary Froese, Tom Galt, Doug Gilchrist, Steve Grimmett, Bill |
Guzzo, Garry J. Hardeman, Ernie Harnick, Charles Harris, Michael D. Hastings, John Hodgson, Chris Jackson, Cameron Johns, Helen Johnson, Bert Johnson, David Jordan, W. Leo Klees, Frank Leadston, Gary L. Martiniuk, Gerry Maves, Bart McLean, Allan K. Mushinski, Marilyn Newman, Dan O'Toole, John Ouellette, Jerry J. |
Parker, John L. Pettit, Trevor Preston, Peter Rollins, E.J. Douglas Ross, Lillian Sampson, Rob Shea, Derwyn Skarica, Toni Smith, Bruce Snobelen, John Spina, Joseph Sterling, Norman W. Stewart, R. Gary Tsubouchi, David H. Turnbull, David Villeneuve, Noble Wettlaufer, Wayne Wilson, Jim Wood, Bob Young, Terence H. |
The Speaker: All those opposed, please rise one at a time and be recognized by the Clerk.
Nays
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Agostino, Dominic Bartolucci, Rick Bisson, Gilles Boyd, Marion Bradley, James J. Brown, Michael A. Caplan, David Christopherson, David Cleary, John C. Colle, Mike Conway, Sean G. Crozier, Bruce |
Cullen, Alex Curling, Alvin Duncan, Dwight Gerretsen, John Gravelle, Michael Hampton, Howard Hoy, Pat Kennedy, Gerard Kormos, Peter Lalonde, Jean-Marc Lankin, Frances Lessard, Wayne |
Martel, Shelley McGuinty, Dalton McLeod, Lyn Miclash, Frank Morin, Gilles E. Patten, Richard Phillips, Gerry Pupatello, Sandra Ruprecht, Tony Sergio, Mario Silipo, Tony Wildman, Bud |
Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 61; the nays are 36.
The Speaker: I declare the motion carried.
Be it resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.
There being no further business, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 2322.