Randall Denley: Won’t anyone stop unions and politicians from screwing up another Ontario school year?

Ontario’s public schools are facing a year of potential labour disruption by the province’s big teaching unions, which as of last week are working without a contract. It’s frustrating and unnecessary.

The grownups in the government and the unions both say their only concern is the welfare of the kids in schools. If so, maybe they should get new contracts signed so that parents and students don’t have to worry about another year of uncertainty.

They saw enough of that in 2019-20, when people who consider themselves education professionals engaged in work to rule, refused to help with extracurricular activities, and paraded around with signs.

The current negotiations are off to a particularly troubling start. Despite having the whole summer to work out a new contract, the unions and the government have accomplished exactly nothing.

The talks are hung up over a dispute regarding which smallish issues should be bargained locally and which ones should be the province’s concern. Some union locals have better deals than others on things such as professional development and rules for transferring teachers to another school. The provincial government is keen on standardization.

None of that is remotely important to parents or students, but the unions have asked the Ontario Labour Relations Board for a decision, something that will take months. The government won’t negotiate other issues until the matter is resolved.

In the meantime, the unions have begun their usual attempt to sway public opinion. Ad campaigns by elementary and secondary schools’ teachers unions are under way, and if you believe them, the province’s schools are crumbling hellholes short of every kind of service.

The root cause of all this, they contend, is Premier Doug Ford government’s supposed cuts to education. According to the unions, they total a stunning $6.5 billion.

As Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association president René Jansen in de Wal put it, “The impacts of the $6.5 billion in cuts… are hurting kids. They don’t have the supports they need, mental health supports, the supplies. We don’t have tissue paper in classes. Schools are crumbling.”

There’s no doubt that a cut of that magnitude would have quite an effect, but thankfully it never happened. In 2018-19, the Ontario government spent $25.18 billion on school operating and capital expenses. This school year it will spend $30.6 billion.

So yes, the figure is close to $6 billion, but it’s an addition, not a subtraction.

The non-existent mega-cut is a figment of the imagination of the people at the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Superficially, their argument is plausible. They say that if government education spending had been increased to match inflation and enrolment growth, the cumulative amount between 2018-19 and this year would have been $6.5 billion more than the government spent.

There are just a couple of problems with that conclusion. First, spending less than an arbitrary target is not a cut, it’s just less of an increase than some would like.

Other than simplicity, there is little reason to suggest education spending should be driven by the rate of inflation. In 2022, inflation went up 6.8 per cent. Should Ontario have increased school spending 6.8 per cent because people were paying more for food, housing and consumer goods?

Wage settlements, not the consumer price index, are primarily what drive education costs. This year, the government will spend $16.5 billion on classroom staffing, the largest education budget line item by far.

When teaching unions claim the schools are underfunded, they ought to consider the impact of their own members’ wages. The median salary for an Ontario elementary teacher is $96,000, and for a secondary teacher it’s $100,000. Ontario and Alberta teachers are the best paid in the country.

Ontario is in the middle of the pack nationally in per student spending, but it’s at the top in teacher pay. One could argue that the province overpays teachers at the expense of other needs. Someone should do a study of it.

The CCPA makes better points about Ontario’s spending on school repair and special education, items the unions also highlight. While important, these are not matters for contract negotiations between school boards and their employees.

The unions and the provincial government have set themselves up for a long and pointless exercise that will lead to a predictable conclusion.

After several months of performative nonsense by the unions and oversold claims by the government that its level of spending is “historic,” a deal will be reached that pays teachers about three per cent more per year. That’s in line with other public sector agreements in Ontario.

Alternatively, both sides could be as smart as they were in 2023, when major issues were settled by voluntary binding arbitration. It was a mature approach that delivered a fair result for the employer and the unions.

More importantly, the binding arbitration deal provided parents and students with the certainty that their school year would not be disrupted. Since the unions and the Ford government are in it for the kids, shouldn’t that be what they want?

National Post

randalldenley1@gmail.com