Mr. Peter Tabuns: Speaker, this has been a bad year for education in Ontario, and this resolution will make it worse. I don't want things to get worse. Students and parents don't want them to get worse. Teachers and education workers—ditto. You can't understand why this resolution has to be defeated without looking at what's happened in the last 12 months. Last August, the Liberals called back the House to pass Bill 115. We were told it was necessary to ensure that schools opened on time and stayed open: peace in our schools, peace in our times, all with the simple passage of this bill. L'été passé, les libéraux ont dit que le projet de loi 115 était nécessaire pour avoir de la stabilité dans nos écoles. Ce n'était pas vrai. Bill 115 was a politically motivated bill, put in place to win a by-election in Kitchener--Waterloo. It failed on two counts: It didn't bring so-called peace to our education system, and it ensured a third place finish for the Liberals in the by-election, not a victory. Why did that bill fail? In part, because it put narrow political considerations first and the interests of students and parents last. Why did it fail? In part, because it treated teachers and education workers as targets, not partners—it treated them as targets who could be bullied to political advantage, whose democratic rights could be trampled without political cost to the Conservatives or the Liberals. What it did—and many predicted this at the time—was it sparked anger and demoralization on the part of teachers and education workers. So, in turn, instead of bringing stability to our schools, it brought conflict and disruption to our students and our families. Given what we're going through with the aftermath of Bill 115 in our schools, why would anyone want to make it worse? Why would we want to go through another round of "My way or the highway," as is proposed in this resolution? We have been down this path before, with similar results. Writer George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." So let's take a moment, Madam Speaker, to remember the past. During the Harris-Eves era, there was ongoing conflict in our schools. Many forget this. The resolution we debate today was the heart of Bill 74, introduced in the year 2000 to deal with declining levels of extracurriculars, or co-curriculars, as some call them. It had the same goal as this resolution: to simply change the job descriptions for teachers to make co-curriculars compulsory. It was a futile and unenforceable initiative but with substantial consequences. In 2001, the Report of the Minister's Advisory Group on the Provision of Co-instructional Activities addressed the issue. Appointed by the Progressive Conservative government, the group interviewed people across Ontario and looked at how the issue of co-curriculars was dealt with in Quebec, Manitoba and New York. Let me read a few crucial paragraphs from the background of the study on pages 3 and 4, because anyone who takes part in this debate today, anyone who's watching this on television, should be aware of what we have already found out in this province: "In the past few years, teachers' unions in some of Ontario's district school boards have withdrawn from leading and participating in co-instructional activities as a bargaining tactic, to influence the outcome of collective negotiations. At present, most boards in Ontario do not offer their students a full range of co-instructional activities. In June 2000, the government introduced the Education Accountability Act (Bill 74), which included provisions for the accountability of school boards, limitations on average class sizes, and the minimum teaching assignments of classroom teachers in secondary schools. After the introduction of Bill 74, levels of co-instructional activity dropped in most schools." After the introduction of a coercive measure, even more teachers withdrew from co-instructional activities. "In some schools, co-instructional activities have ceased completely. All boards and schools report that the quality of the co-instructional activities that are offered has suffered significantly." They go on, and I think this paragraph is useful for our understanding: "The situation across the province is deteriorating, even in the few schools that have so far managed to maintain traditional levels of co-instructional activity. Principals of these schools told us that they do not believe they can continue to maintain these levels in the next school year. In fact, everyone with whom we spoke expressed a sense of great urgency about resolving the issue." More: http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/house-proceedings/house_detail.do?Date=2013-02-26&Parl;=40&Sess=2&locale;=en#P383_101791

• published: 28 Feb 2013
• views: 1571