We agree that is a very good development. It’s too bad that it has taken this long for such a development to be put in place, because we have been calling for whistle-blower protections in this sector for a number of years. Certainly we have an obligation to ensure that people—teachers, educators—who are employed in the care of children can report suspicions of abuse without fearing that they will not be protected. This is one of the reasons that we do support this bill. We do recognize that this is important, but it’s sad that it is so long overdue.

We do not have a children’s mental health system that is coordinated, that is easy for families to navigate, that ensures that young people who are in deep crisis get the mental health treatment that they require. We really need to take a systemic look at the mental health system and make sure that the services are there for parents and children who need them.

We had heard the former provincial child advocate—he had said that he received roughly 19,000 serious occurrence reports, a quarter produced by group residential homes. The government has failed to enable that kind—

It is a pleasure to rise today to participate in this debate as the representative of my community of London West, but also as a school board trustee who served on the Thames Valley District School Board for 13 years. There is nothing I would appreciate more than having a meaningful debate about ensuring better schools and improving student outcomes. But unfortunately, I don’t think that’s what we are doing here today with this legislation.

If this government was actually serious about ensuring better schools and student outcomes, they would have done the consultation that would be necessary to make that happen. They would have talked to the teachers unions, to the educators who work in our school system. They would have talked to principals. They would have talked to school board trustees. They would have talked to parents across this province, and yet we have heard nothing about a consultation that took place prior to the drafting of this bill, and we have heard nothing from the minister about what actually informed the legislation that is before us today.

I have to commend my colleague the critic for education, the member for Ottawa West–Nepean, who points out quite rightly that this government is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. It is an attempt to deflect the attention of the public away from the very critical issues that are present in our schools that face parents and young people in our province every day and instead deflect blame onto school boards, to teacher unions and to whoever else the government wants to assign responsibility for the problems that they have created through years of underfunding.

Speaker, I wanted to begin with a contrast to the major governance overhaul that we see in this legislation versus the last time in this province that an education governance review was undertaken. It was in 2009. It was prior to my election to this place, but I was a trustee on the Thames Valley District School Board and a vice-president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association.

A governance review committee was struck to take an in-depth look at school board governance and look at how we could actually improve school boards, improve the functioning of school boards to better support students in the province. The committee that was struck had representation from the four publicly funded school boards in the province; had representation from the Canadian Education Association, who participated in the process as a representative of the community; and also had representation from a former director of education. That committee met with representatives of 70 school boards in the province, 137 trustees, 54 directors of education, 71 parent representatives. There were 148 written responses to the consultation paper on school board governance. That process led to legislation that was introduced by the Liberals to refocus school board governance in Ontario. It’s a stark contrast to the process—to the absence of process—that this government was engaged in in order to bring this legislation forward today.

But one of the fundamental principles that came out of that governance review process was the obligation of school boards to maintain a joint and equal focus on both student achievement and well-being. What we see in this legislation is the government putting well-being to the bottom of the pile. This Conservative government has no interest in ensuring that students are able to function in our school system and deal with the mental health impacts—the ongoing, worsening mental health impacts—of the pandemic, the increasing numbers of students with special needs who are in our school system, and ensuring that every student in this province has the resources and the supports they need to be successful. We are seeing in our school system data showing how students’ needs are increasing. The complexity of needs is increasing and the ability to access supports is declining.

There was a recent study from People for Education that was released in February on the mental health crisis in our schools. That report found that, in just three years, the number of students who described their mental health as good or excellent had dropped 12%, from 73% in 2019 to only 61% in 2022. But even more alarming, that report cited research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health that said 59% of Ontario students stated that the pandemic had made them feel depressed about the future and 39% reported that it made their mental health worse. What kinds of resources and supports are available in our schools to help students cope with the mental health stresses of the pandemic? There’s almost nothing in our school system, Speaker.

People for Education reported that 95% of schools said that they needed some or more support for students’ mental health and well-being. Only 9% of schools in Ontario said they have regularly scheduled access to mental health and addiction specialists or nurses. Almost half of schools had no access whatsoever to specialized mental health or addiction supports; 28% of schools said that they had no access to a psychologist, which is almost double the percentage just 10 years ago; 93% of schools said that they needed support staff such as educational assistants, administrators and custodians. We don’t see those additional supports that school boards have identified as being so desperately lacking in our schools in this legislation that is before us today. Nor did we see it in the funding announcement that the government released at almost the same time as this bill came forward.

Instead, the government announced GSNs, Grants for Student Needs, that include only a 2.7% increase over the GSNs from last year. Everyone in this place knows how inflation has been hitting our wallets and our ability to ensure affordability. Everybody in this place knows that a 2.7% increase is far below the rate of inflation and therefore represents a cut. We see total funding that’s available for school boards in Ontario that’s $2.5 billion short of where it would have been if school board funding had kept up with inflation since this government was elected in 2018.

We also know, thank goodness, from the Financial Accountability Officer, who is providing some transparency on school board funding—this government says this legislation is necessary for transparency. We appreciate the work of the Financial Accountability Officer, who showed us that this government is actually spending $1.1 billion dollars less than planned in education during the 2022-23 budget.

This increase to the GSNs that the government has announced works out on a per-student basis to represent an increase of one half of 1% for every student in our school. Their so-called plan for math education works out to less than 50 cents per student per day. Their plan to hire new education workers works out to one educator for every 6,650 students across the province. The legislation, along with the GSN announcement, is going to do nothing to actually provide the supports that students need in our school system.

I want to share some information, some emails that I have received from parents in London West about what is actually happening in our school system. This is a parent who said her daughter is in senior elementary. She has identified learning disabilities. She says, “Because of her learning disabilities, she has been in a particularly high-needs cohort with severe behaviour and mental health needs that go unaddressed annually. The particular behaviours in her cohort have led to teachers opting for early retirement, needing to access sick leave, choosing to leave the profession altogether. Sadly, the school has lost teachers seven out of eight years in the grade that this cohort reaches, including one teacher who was assaulted by a student and another one who passed away—unconfirmed stress-related condition.”

This parent asks, “Why is the government not providing access to reading support programs?” She said that there were a number of students in her daughter’s class who were struggling, yet only six students per year were able to access the program funded by this government to provide daily instruction. Her daughter had to wait three years and was almost denied as she was already in grade 6.

The parent asked how many of her daughter’s peers have similar literacy and numeracy learning challenges “without the ability to access what we have managed to track down independently?” This is a two-parent family who had the resources to get some additional support for their daughter.

She says, “How will the current government’s underfunding education affect my daughter’s future employment opportunities now that she is only five years away from the full-time job market?” These are all very good questions, and there are no answers for this parent in the legislation that we have before us today.

I want to share a submission that was made by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario Thames Valley Local during the pre-budget consultation in February. That submission references a systemic and pervasive crisis that is characterized by an increase in the number and severity of violent acts in schools, large numbers of teachers off work due to injury and mental health issues caused by violence and students who are immersed in and increasingly inured to the violence that surrounds them every day. They point to a six-month average of 636 violent incidents per month, which means that Thames Valley District School Board is on track to report 6,360 violent incidents by the end of the 2022-23 school year. Much of that is due to those mental health challenges that I spoke to earlier with students who are experiencing increased mental health crises and do not have access to the programs that they need to support them.

The other thing missing from the government’s GSNs is funding to actually address the backlog of maintenance and repair that we have seen built up under the Liberals and worsen—close to $17 billion now—under this government. Thames Valley District School Board is facing a backlog of $700 million in maintenance and repair, and if that were to include HVAC updates and AODA compliance, that backlog rises to $900 million over the next five years. And yet, nothing in this government’s budget or GSNs addresses that huge backlog of maintenance and repair that has built up in this province.

Thames Valley District School Board is also very worried about the fact that this government decided to discontinue the tutoring supports that were available for students coming out of the pandemic, which they saw as being very valuable and beneficial to students.

The other issue that I’m hearing about in London West related to school board funding, and again, not addressed in this legislation, not addressed in the GSNs, is the need to fund transportation to our schools. If kids can’t get to school, they’re not going to be able to learn.

Parent Vanisse Victoriano wrote to me to say, “I am a mother of two lovely kids. My 13-year-old keeps missing school due to a school bus shortage situation, bus delays and bus cancellations. My daughter’s school had five bus line cancellations today alone due to bus driver shortage.” This email was written to me in February.

She says, “I urge and beg you to help increase the bus driver wages so we don’t keep having this problem over and over again. The problem will only resolve once government starts paying better wages to bus drivers so that will attract more people to work as bus drivers”—

Speaker, I’m wearing purple today to show my support for the education workers, the education assistants, custodians, early childhood educators, school secretaries and other school support staff who provide vital supports to students, yet are the lowest-paid workers in the school system.

Parents in London West and across the province know the contributions of these workers to the success and safety of their children, and they want to see them fairly compensated. They also want more supports for struggling students in schools instead of direct payments to parents for an hour or two of tutoring, which won’t do anything to help students catch up and requires parents to try to track down a tutor.

CBC London shared some comments from parents. One said, “You can’t have a government at the table saying we have no money to give education workers, then provide all these random payments to parents.”

Another asked, “Wouldn’t it just be a better decision to take that money and hire EAs? That way, this so-called catch-up plan could be a plan that helps teachers support our students and not put the burden back on parents.”

A third said, “This feels a little bit more like a bribe to parents and families,” and would rather have that money go back into the education system.

Instead of a $365-million catch-up program, why won’t this government invest in the supports that would really help kids catch up—the education workers who support students in our schools?