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ONTARIO TO SLASH $800 MILLION FROM EDUCATION
PV Ontario Bureau
(This article is from the December 1999 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
TORONTO - A leaked Cabinet document, made public in the Toronto Star's Nov. 17 edition, exposed the Harris government's secret plans to cut a further $800 million from public and post-secondary education in Ontario over the next two fiscal years.
Claiming that the cuts were consistent with election promises not to cut health or "classroom" spending, a clearly ruffled Education Minister, Janet Ecker, would neither confirm nor deny the report.
But parents' groups, education unions, the Ontario Public School Boards Association (OPSBA), and the Canadian Federation of Students (Ontario), clearly didn't believe Ecker.
The leaked document showed that the deep cuts to education were to be kept secret, and no wonder. Over the next two years, the government intends to cross the line into the amalgamation and privatization of Ontario universities and colleges, to increase tuition fees, and to reduce risk guarantees on student loans, making post-secondary education even less accessible to all but the wealthy. Research and development will also be slashed.
The leaked document shows the government intends to strip collective agreements in all education sector unions, freeze wages, grab pension funds, contract out jobs and education services, and fundamentally transform the working and learning environment in all public and post-secondary institutions.
Budgets for public school textbooks, transportation, and diverse programs, including special education and funding for Ontario's schools for the blind, deaf, and learning disabled, are to be slashed or eliminated. User fees are to be slapped on Heritage Language programs, as well as English as a Second Language for Adults. Transition and mitigation funds promised to school boards are to be cut, along with grants designated to prevent school closures. Widespread school closures and firesales of assets are anticipated in the secret document.
Even still-warm election pledges to provide increased student assistance and Millennium scholarships are to be reversed. The document notes that these are policy reversals or reversals of election pledges.
By noon on Nov. 17, every stakeholder in public and post-secondary education had converged on Queen's Park, spitting mad about the planned cuts and the secrecy shrouding their development and implementation. Both opposition parties charged the government with lying.
People for Education and the Metro Parents' Network, ably represented by Annie Kidder and Kathleen Wynn, denounced the government, calling on parents, the public and the Toronto District School Board to refuse to implement the cuts.
Similar themes were echoed by Jacqui Latter of the Ontario Education Alliance, who said the cuts were forcing school boards into "deals" with corporations, resulting in the commercialization of schools.
"The fact is, they've already cut so much money from education, that they've left our schools really vulnerable to corporate involvement," she said.
In meetings that day, Toronto District School Board Chair Gail Nyberg reportedly told staff to "Keep your knives in your pockets because we're not cutting anything today." In a press statement she sharply attacked the government for its secrecy.
Ontario Public School Boards Association President Liz Sandals said, in an interview with People's Voice, "Public education just can't take any more cuts. Both the premier and the Minister had promised that there would be no further cuts to education, and we expect them to live up to that promise."
Asked what OBSBA would advise school boards to do if there were cuts, she said "We assume the funds will be there. We expect that the funding will be there."
But if the funds are not there, Sandals said, "I think that you will find that the way the legislation is structured in terms of the penalties for Trustees if they run deficit budgets, that the bottom line is that Trustees will follow the law."
But not all Trustees agreed. "We can't accept this," said TDSB Trustee Elizabeth Hill, who joined protesting parents on the steps of the Legislature. "The Boards must stand up with parents, students and educators to fight this. Trustees are elected and accountable to their communities and constituents - not to Queen's Park. Our mandate is from our communities, and our mandate is to defend public education and oppose privatized, two-tier education."
In a telephone interview, Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (OSSTF) President Earl Manners said, "I hope School Boards will call their bluff," and refuse to implement any more cuts.
"Teachers and support staff have been out there defending public education throughout the last mandate of this government, and they will continue to do so. School Boards are trustees of public education and it's time for them to say `we cannot operate anymore with the inadequate funding that we have - and certainly with any more cuts' - and to refuse to do the job of the provincial government. Let them take responsibility for the cuts, because they don't want to be seen to be responsible.
"The announcement today that they're considering privatized colleges and universities is the same as Ralph Klein's statement yesterday that he's going to introduce private hospitals into Alberta. This is just allowing an American style education system and health care system in the back door, and obviously this provincial government here in Ontario, is prepared to sell our education system to the highest bidder," Manners added.
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