EDITORIAL: Teacher unions are ignoring reality
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With Ontario’s teacher unions gearing up for another war on the provincial government — the elementary teachers’ union on Thursday announced an escalating job action campaign starting Nov. 26 — the fundamental question facing taxpayers remains.
Why should they have to keep paying for the financial recklessness of the previous Liberal government in public education?
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In the decade before they lost power, the Liberals hired 14,000 more teachers, an increase of 12.5%, while enrolment dropped by 110,000 students, or 5.2%.
The Liberals left taxpayers holding the bag on a staggering provincial debt this year of $360 billion, making Queen’s Park the world’s most indebted non-national government, to which runaway spending in education contributed.
Seven years ago their own financial adviser, Don Drummond, told the Liberals their spending on education wasn’t sustainable, that class sizes needed to be increased and all-day kindergarten cancelled or phased-in more gradually.
The Liberals ignored that advice.
In doing what the Liberals should have done starting in 2012, Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government is neither slashing nor burning public education.
It’s reducing the number of teachers through attrition — not replacing those who retire or resign — rather than layoffs.
Financial accountability officer Peter Weltman has said the Ford government has put aside sufficient funds — $1.6 billion — to enable school boards to reduce teaching positions over the next four years, without layoffs.
The government has compromised on class sizes, reducing its original demand that high school classes should average 28 students, down to 25 students.
This as opposed to the financially unsustainable Liberal standard of 22 students.
It’s giving the teacher unions a 1% salary increase over each of the next three years.
The province and the unions are always fighting about the precise salary of an average teacher, but suffice to say it’s close to $90,000 annually, plus benefits.
Ontario elementary and high school teachers are well paid — as they should be — by Canadian and international standards.
The argument by the teacher unions that the Ford government is undermining public education is the same rhetoric they’ve spouted for three decades, whether the government was Progressive Conservative, Liberal or NDP.
Enough is enough. Taxpayers deserve a public education system they can afford, not one built on unsustainable levels of public debt.
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