Ep 49: Public Schools, Private Interests—Is Ontario Chasing the U.S. Model?

A $29 million jet proposal is easy to headline. Lead in school drinking water, mold in portables, and classrooms so hot a student passes out during an exam are easier to ignore, until you realize they’re happening in a province that can afford better. 

In this episode of Let’s Talk Politics, we sit down with René Jansen in de Wal, President of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association (OECTA), to unpack the reality inside Ontario’s classrooms—and what years of chronic underfunding have actually delivered.

We break down the government’s claims of “historic” education spending against the reality of a billion-dollar shortfall once inflation and transparency are factored in. René explains how bundling childcare funding into education spending muddies the picture, and why families are feeling the consequences: larger class sizes, fewer staff supports, and schools being pushed to do more with less.

We also dig into governance at Queen’s Park, including supervisors replacing trustees, and why that shift can weaken transparency and community accountability.

Then we zoom out to the bigger stakes: OSAP cuts and student debt pressures, the risk of sliding toward U.S. style privatization, and how public education functions as an economic investment and a democratic equalizer.

René lays out what needs to change now: smaller class sizes, stronger mental health supports, safer schools—especially in the face of rising technology and social media pressures—and a public commission that brings parents, students, educators, and communities to the same table.

If you care about funding public education and the future of Ontario’s public schools, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. 

Like, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend—and let us know what you’re seeing in your local school.

Disclaimer: This episode was recorded on March 30, 2026. While some developments may have changed since then, the ideas and insights discussed remain relevant.

Transcript

Jet Scandal And School Reality

Julia Pennella, Host 0:00

I've got a question for you. If you had$29 million burning a hole in your pocket, would you buy a private jet for your inner circle of friends? Or would you fix the lead pipes in your local elementary school? Welcome back to Let's Talk Politics, the podcast where we break down the policies and economics shaping your life and help you make politics make sense. If you've been watching Queen's Park lately and been left scratching your head, you're not alone. Under Doug Ford, the past few months have felt less like isolated missteps and more like a scary pattern. A government elected on promises of transparency has moved to rewrite freedom of information rules in ways that would shield the premier's personal cell phone records from scrutiny. Then came along the so-called Air Ford One Saga, a$29 million private jet that was quietly scrapped only after public backlash made it unavoidable. But while the headlines focus on jets and backroom deals, the real impact is buried in the province's$244 billion budget. While students are seeing their OSAP grants slashed, basically being told to treat their futures for a mountain of debt, Ontario's younger students are heading into classrooms that are literally falling apart. We're looking at a$16 billion repair backlog that isn't just a number on a page anymore. It's mold in the portables, asbestos in classrooms, kids wearing winter coats at their desks just to stay warm, and even lead in the school drinking water. So the question is simple. In a province this wealthy, who is the government actually working for? To help connect the dots and share the reality on the ground in Ontario's public education system. I'm joined by Renee Jansen Indilal, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association. We're going inside the schools to talk about crumbling infrastructure, the rise of classroom violence, and the continued growing fear that Ontario is drifting toward the worst parts of U.S. style education policy. Quick heads up. And with that, let's talk politics. Lots happening in education right now on the provincial level. So I want to ask you, what is your political hot take in this moment?

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, I'm always an optimist. I'm a real proud Canadian, and Canada's a great country. But I think people often have to think education is a great Canadian success story. And that matters because the Ford government is moving to failed U.S. models of education, healthcare, student debt. So they're not really defending what makes us Canadian and they're hurting our future economy. Canadians really value fairness and opportunity. Education was designed to bring us uh peace, order, and good government. And it supports that as well as it's a great equalizer. It's part of the reason we have a really strong social foundation and a democratic foundation, which, if we look south, seems more important than ever. We need to remind ourselves of that success story. But it's also important for the economy. And the uh Ford government inherited a world-class system only eight years ago, and they have eroded it and they've managed to go into an ideological trap where you spend more to do less. In the United States, families go bankrupt and they spend more to have health care and they have less coverage. The same in education and straddling people with student debt. I just don't get it. At a time where the government keeps saying they're putting students first, their actions certainly don't demonstrate that. It's sort of a political theater, a tagline, but on things that really matter, uh, this government is going uh all American in a bad way.

Record Spending And The Shortfall

Julia Pennella, Host 4:21

Wow, really interesting points there. I really liked how you phrased it. The education is an equalizer, as in connections to democracy is really important. On that note, you know, the Ford government often uses the phrase of historic funding that they've been putting into the education system. However, OECTA and other partners have identified there's about uh a 6.3 billion shortfall in funding. Can you break that down? Where did these numbers come from and why, you know, quote, more money than ever doesn't actually mean enough money?

SPEAKER_00 4:56

It's a fair way to phrase this the government's trying to mislead people. Uh, and and let me use two examples: inflation and childcare. So, first of all, everyone listening goes to the grocery stores right now and they're spending record amounts on groceries, but they know they're coming home with less because of inflation. So when the government says it's spending record amounts, that can be true, but because every year you don't match inflation, every year there's a further cut. And the most recent budget reinforces that. So there's even less than a more of a cut than$6.3 billion. The other challenge is they're playing a little bit of chess. They make a lot of their finances harder to see. It's much less transparent than when they came in, despite promises of transparency and accountability. And they do things like roll in the childcare funding into education funding to make it look bigger than it is. So, you know, they're misleading people on that. The bottom line is anyone who's involved in schools, parents, families, communities, they go into schools, they know that we have a problem. Classes are too big, there's not enough supports, the schools are decaying. There's a problem, and there's just not enough money. That's the most central issue we have.

Julia Pennella, Host 6:01

And on that note, infrastructure, in addition to all of the educational resources, has also really taken a hit. The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario found that there's over a$12.7 billion shortfall in school repair backlog. What is the most common critical infrastructure failures that are impacting maybe some day-to-day operations at schools?

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yeah, well, and the bad news is that number's now at about 17 billion. A recent report suggests that, and they're at least 12 years to getting to what's currently wrong, not including keeping maintenance of buildings that continue to dilapidate. But let me give you some examples of things that are problematic. Many people are not aware of how many schools kids are unable to drink or are drinking water because it has lead in it. That's very common in many schools, especially older schools. Some parents aren't aware of that, and kids are having to trek in their own water. And young kids constantly have to be reminded: no, don't drink from those taps because lead's not good for you. We had the pandemic. We know that good air quality ventilation leads to better learning. COVID punctuated that. But in the aftermath of that, there's no concerted effort to fix ventilation properly. There's mold, most commonly in portables. We have too many portables. There's asbestos crumbling steps, and then there's like boilers and heater systems. So I, for one, have been at my school and kids are writing exams. It's June, it's like 89 in the class, and a kid passes out on their exam, like they're sweating on their exam, they can hardly read. They pass out because of the heat. We have schools in the winter where kids are wearing their scarves and their coats because this the class is so cold because the windows are so drafty and the heating doesn't work. Fixarschools.ca, I think it is as a group that gets into a lot of detail about that. I want people to imagine if you were a wordplace, can you imagine going to a workplace where you had to wear a coat in the winter, pass out in the summer, have to deal with lead in the water, not be able to drink the water? Like these are things that we just wouldn't let happen. It's bad for learning, it's unsafe. So that's not putting kids first, no matter what they say.

Julia Pennella, Host 8:07

Is there public interest in this, or is the media talking about these things? Like, I'm just curious, how can you get people motivated to understand these are serious issues and mobilize and use that?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Yeah, you're right. It has to be the community. So I mean, the schools, existing communities, the parents and grandparents and people are involved. They're the ones who need to be aware of that, and they're the ones that have to get involved. I will point out that the supervisor that's getting paid$300,000 or$350,000 or$40,000 a year expense, which is more than all of the trustees in the Toronto board. One of the cuts he made was he said, Well, we're making a new school, but we're not going to put in air air conditioning. So that's one of the horrible spending things that trustees were taken over for because they have the audacity to say, well, we should actually put air conditioning in schools. We're building for the future with uh the heat and everything else. So what happened in that case though, parents of that school got wind of that and the community did speak up. So the challenge is it's happening on a case-by-case basis. We really need people to become more broadly aware because the demand for the care of our public education system needs to be more abroad. But there is fight back. And when parents speak up and when communities speak up, they're having an impact. They got the supervisor and TC double to at least reverse one school. I will wait and see what the rest of them are, but uh that that's on the way right now.

Supervisors Replace Trustees And Sell Off

Julia Pennella, Host 9:26

So and for folks that aren't too familiar, the supervisors, is that the oversight from the provincial government to replace the trustees? Could you just uh elaborate and explain that a little bit?

Underfunding As Ideology Not Efficiency

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Yeah, yeah. So the government decided that the trustees were horrible people and doing this ridiculous spending. And separate from one$15 shake I heard about, all I've seen supervisors do is go in and try and sell land. They're cutting staff, they're cutting supports, they're trying to sell off schools. So they're not finding horrible spending. What they're saying is that the uh trustees weren't making those cuts because the system's at the bare bones, and how dare they stand up to that? So the government appointed supervisors in some of the major boards, and they uh they don't have any expertise in education, they have not consulted at all with the trustees, the parents, the teachers, anybody. They're operating without any oversight or accountability. So it that which again, that's kind of an American model, right? That centralized uh fiat type of dictate. It's just a bad governance model. And for community schools, it's really not a good idea, but it's the model they chose. Uh, it's part of the blame and distract kind of pattern that you see with this government. Let's blame the trustees. And I I'm not trying to defend the trustees. There are some who've made mistakes. There are some politicians in Ford's government who've made mistakes. Does that mean we get rid of all of his government? Some might want that, but that's not what you would do. That's not the reason to do it. Every type of job or place you go, there are some people who make mistakes, and you hold those things accountable. You don't crash the whole system because some errors or some problems are found.

Julia Pennella, Host 11:05

The normal operation of running a business and managing is handling those things and making them better when we are looking at the provincial government, they're trying to cut taxes as any government is, try to win that uh public and popular vote. But why is it do you think from where you sit, there has been this huge attack on education? We've seen OSAP grants slashed. We mentioned some of the infrastructure and investment shortfalls, the trustees being sidelined by Bill 33. Again, I get it. If the goal is a stronger economy, why do you think the government's primary target for trimming the fat is that foundation of our future labor force?

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Well, they're not trimming the fat. And I'd suggest I think it's ideological, right? If you look at the pattern, American education, healthcare, et cetera, you underfund those things to get people to go to privatized care, which costs more and starts to create barriers, especially for those of us who have less money. The very wealthy will do fine. So I can see that they want it, but let they keep saying they're trimming the fat. First of all, there is more wealth and obscene profits than ever before. So there's no lack of money. It's just who we want to have it. And the the wealthiest people in Canada, the United States, are moving up their wealth, net wealth in extreme and obscene manners at a time where we're saying we can't afford to spend uh money to put a kid in a school with uh without lead in the pipes. That's nonsense. That argument is just uh a distraction. It's a matter of priorities. And this government isn't just trimming fat. I mean, they're cutting supports, the classes are getting larger, fewer supports, fewer supplies, safety issues, buildings crumbling. These are things that they should be investing in. So it must be ideological because education pays back$1.3 for every dollar you invest. That was a conference board of Canada study that showed that. Because people get a more higher job rates, higher salary rates, higher home ownership, lower social costs. Public education brings all of those benefits. So it's one of the best investments we can make. And at a time where we need people to be learning, the fact that they're cutting public education now, OSAP with again an American model, where you straddle families, the poorest families and students, with debt, or you create a barrier to them reaching your potential at a time where we need education to be the great equalizer, the one that we need to bring forward the potential of every student on all the people in our community so that we can build for a stronger, adaptive, resilient economy. Uh, we didn't get to the economy we had in the past and the the social stability of democracy by accident. These were purposeful choices around healthcare education uh and student uh secondary education. So these all sent, in my mind, create a trend, which is why I say it seems ideological. And there really isn't a good um economic argument for it.

Julia Pennella, Host 14:19

And, you know, when we are talking about how these ideas and um motives are being put forward, the government often says they meet with partners. So, what does a real seat at the table look like in this consultation um and collective bargaining processes for OECTA? And why is the current consultation process feeling more like a notification process? I have often heard, and both growing up and watching the media, sometimes teachers, trustees, and whatnot were finding out what the fate of their workplace is going to be through the news. So can you just share a little bit of what consultation has been like with the provincial government?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yeah. And everyone's had that boss uh we like to refer to as consult holding. All right, after the fact, here's what we're doing. Thanks for listening. Uh, they don't want to benefit from the expertise or the experience of the people, they don't want to listen to the needs of the community. It is a centralized management model, which is a bad management model. Even in business, that isn't really a good idea. But in terms of government, it's not. So if you think of government as a business and then you start making insider deals and you start operating with a centralized uh sort of a viewpoint, then you begin that. I'd like to point out though, when parents were consulted, this government started their mandate by saying they're going to take the biggest, best student parent consultation ever. And then after they did that and they did this wide survey, they started saying parents wanted certain things. And we were saying that that doesn't square with what we want to hear from parents. Well, they made a mistake in the courts, and we were able to force them to disclose the survey data. And when we got the survey data, it showed they were misrepresenting parents. And since then, they have not consulted with parents, they got caught misrepresenting their voices and they haven't consulted with them or us. And I'll make a personal invitation again: a public commissioner consultation with parents, students, community teachers, and others would be a really good step forward. It would show that you really want to put kids first and you really want to talk about what's best for education. Instead of going off on all these little annoying pieces, they're escaping the focus of the main uh issues. And I'll tell you what, if you bring all those partners together and say, let's have a consultation or commission, it's been done in the past, you will get a much better result and it'll build understanding and we'll be able to work together to ensure effective implementation. This government, even some of the ideas they get that might be right, they manage to get them wrong by bad implementation. And so, again, most people have had that kind of boss. And right now in education, that's what we see. And you can speak to parents about it, you can speak to communities about it. Bill 33, which uh part of what removed the trustees and stuff, it's involved in all that kind of a management style.

Julia Pennella, Host 17:08

As we're just wrapping up here, I think one of the beauty pieces of our democracy is having different pieces of accountability. So you mentioned parent and student consultations, we have the media, um, we have other stakeholders, but the biggest one is having the official opposition in place. So right now in Ontario, the official opposition is the NDP and liberals. I know your role, you're supposed to be politically neutral, but we know that education policy is inherently political. We've seen the opposition at protests and in the media, but there seems to be this growing frustration that they're just kind of complaining into the void rather than maybe forcing a real seat at the table. What advice would you have for the official opposition to maybe move past the rhetoric to present bold or collective policies that the government could actually, you know, get on board with and couldn't afford to ignore? Maybe if you can share some tough love advice you'd want to give and pass along to the opposition.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Yeah, well, I I will give the the liberal NDP Green Party with the government has made this political, very, very political. And our political stance has always been we support any party that supports public education. So we we're not neutral in that sense, but we don't uh like support just one party. I've met with all the parties, they have given us open doors. Each of them have spent more time talking to us and parents than the government has, and I think that's a good thing they're on the right track. The challenge, I think, though, is putting it in Ford doesn't seem to have an interest to want to talk. And if you were to imagine a Venn diagram, there's what's good for education and what Ford would listen to. And there's very little overlap in those two Venns. So probably the most bold attempt would be if I'm going to challenge the partners, I think they have a shared common interest. Could they all agree about a request or bringing forward a bill to require a public commission or public consultation on education, which would allow all of their voices, as well as parents and communities, because they have that in common with parents, communities, teachers, and each other. Each of those parties believes in quality publicly funded education. So that would be the challenge, I think. Uh then the second part is affordability seems to be what drives people at the pole. And so education has been forgotten that it is an affordability issue. Having a kid send your kids for tutoring or send them to private schools costs a lot of money. And I explained what kind of a good investment it's. And the cost in the long term is really high. We need to talk about the value proposition of public education because uh it has an affordability piece to it, and that's top of mind to most voters. So I think that's an area that would help them if they focused on that a bit. But like I said, I'm not so sure that whatever they say the Ford government has any interest in really listening or working with them. So keep up that effort though, regardless.

Devaluing Teachers Fuels Staffing Crisis

Julia Pennella, Host 19:55

Yeah, it's difficult when there is a supermajority uh in play. And thank you for acknowledging the Greens. I forgot those two uh seats, but the Greens have been doing, I think, phenomenal communications around bringing up what issues are. And I personally will say I think the NDP and liberals need to mirror some of that to get the public motivated. So very well said. And, you know, as we are looking at this in a bigger picture, do you think the profession of teaching is being devalued politically? And what impact does that have, do you think, on public morale when they look at public education?

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Absolutely, they're devaluing and uh they're uh disrespecting teachers. Again, if you look at the playbook on the ideology of the American kinds of systems, when you introduce them, you want to undermine parent voices, community voices. You want to attack the professionals who defend the students because our teachers look the kids in the eyes every day. They spend their career coming in day after day after day to look after kids so they see what's happening and they can't help but fight for that. And they don't want to hear that. So you have to actually undermine them and you actually have to um disrespect them. And that that seems to be a pattern when you see governments do this. So I'm not surprised to see that. I think the important note would be is that it has had an impact. We don't have enough teachers. There are regularly classes that go uncovered, they have people who are unqualified covering classes just to put bodies in them. We currently have 70,000 teachers who are currently certified with the Antero College of teachers who are not working in education. So there isn't a shortage. The government sometimes talks, that's a misdirection. This is a recruitment and retention issue. If you disrespect them and you make the conditions bad in any workplace and you treat people that way, you they're gonna not want to work for you. Teachers are champions in that they have hung in, they continue to fight for their kids, but this is making it really hard because it breaks the heart of people who see what's going on in schools. And so that's a really tough one. But blame and distraction is a pattern with this government. And for every issue, there's someone to blame and there's a distraction. This is the same. And it's bothersome to me because they pick on singular things that and they go after issues that really aren't important. I use the analogy. It's like you're facing a bear charging down on you. It's going to eat you. And you're like, oh, I should put on some bug spray. The bugs are annoying. A mosquito can be annoying, but it's not really what's going to hurt you. And that's the equivalent right now in education. The government is using bug spray and they're worried about the mosquitoes while they're leaving the bear there, eating the system and the kids alive.

Three Policy Fixes And Closing Ask

Julia Pennella, Host 22:32

Wow. Appreciate that visual. As someone who's grown up in the Catholic public education system, I can definitely attest to how much passion and inspiration and confidence that the teachers put in their students. I am like a byproduct of that. I wouldn't probably be or explore even this podcast if it wasn't for some of the great cheerleaders and educators I had along the way. So I'm very pro fund public education, fund our public libraries. I try to always incorporate that in my podcast here. But my very last question for you, Renee, is what are three immediate policy shifts that you want to see beyond just restoring the money that students, schools, and educators really need in this moment?

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Three things. I would say number one, we need smaller classes and more supports for kids and for mental health. Number two, kids need to be safe in schools. And that includes us addressing the threats of technology, screen time, social media addiction, and uh online gambling, which uh cell phones, all of these things, plus the physical conditions in the school. Kids' safety mentally, socially, and physically needs to be attended to. And I guess the third one, what since I mentioned earlier, was a public commission, some sort of a broad consultation by everybody, parents, community students, teachers, others, business. I have some of my business friends, and when we have conversations that some of them are conservatives, we have so much we agree on when we sit at a table and talk. If you don't sit at a table and talk, you don't find what you agree on. And we need to do that because we need others to help us fight for the kids and grandkids and communities. And we all, I think, have a shared interest to put the kids first. And I think it's time to shift the page. We have a chance to imagine the classes we would create. What does world-class education look like rather than what are we living with as this government erodes the world-class education that they got? There are plenty of countries that we could be talking about, and the government's not talking about those. So let's shift the dialogue to those good examples because Ontario can be better and we deserve better.

Julia Pennella, Host 24:38

Very well said, Renee. And uh I'll have to have you back because we're there's so much we also didn't cover because this is such a massive topic. There's so much happening. You know, I've had previous uh guests come on, talk about the rising violence in schools and um the misperception that we think around that, the rise of AI and what is that doing with education and how can those tools be integrated? So uh still a lot to unpack. So we'll be sure to have you back. But Renee, I just want to throw it to you. Any last words you want to share with the listeners?

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Yeah, go visit the school, talk to a child about what's going on in school, uh, come into school and meet with the teachers. We're also stressed. Families are stressed with all of the things that I mentioned that impact student safety and wellness. We need to work together to support each other. This is a bigger project than schools. Schools are reflection of the communities. We need parents to partner with us. The government keeps calling on sort of the worst of people on one side. They they want to be watchdogs or feel like they need to like watch teachers. We need partners, right? Parents need partners. We understand what they're going through. Parents, if they come in, they'll understand what we're going through. And we share the most important things in common, which is that their kids get a fair chance. And if we work on that together, we'll all be better off. And so we can't let ourselves be divided and caught in this distraction and blame game.

Julia Pennella, Host 26:00

Very well said. That was a really strong note to end it. Um, so that was the president of the OECTA, Renee Jensen Indual. And uh Let's Talk Politics is a firm advocate to fund public education and our libraries. So make sure to tune in for a next special episode of Let's Talk Politics. We'll catch you there.