'Real investments' in education, health care needed in Ontario budget, teachers, doctors warn
Muriel Draaisma | CBC News | Posted: April 26, 2022 2:29 AM | Last Updated: April 26, 2022
4 education unions, 1 medical association make their case for more funding
Organizations that represent teachers and doctors called for "real investment" in education and health care when the Ontario government brings down its budget on Thursday.
Four education unions, the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens (AEFO), Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO), Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association (OECTA), and Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (OSSTF), and one health care organization, the Ontario Medical Association (OMA), made their case for more funding at news conferences on Monday ahead of the provincial budget on Thursday.
When announcing the budget earlier this month, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy called it a vision for a "better, brighter future" that will be prudent and accountable but also invests responsibly.
But representatives of the education and health care systems said the government has underfunded both sectors since it came to power in 2018. The four unions represent more than 200,000 teachers and education workers, while the association represents more than 43,000 doctors.
AEFO president Anne Vinet-Roy said Ontario students need an education budget that makes their mental health, well-being and academic success a priority and includes a learning recovery plan.
"We are here, united, to demand that the Ford government chart a new course and reinvest in Ontario's world-class publicly funded education system," Vinet-Roy said.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ford government has refused to invest in measures that protect health and safety of students, teachers and staff, while allowing the province's school repair backlog grow, she said.
"The Ford government has made its priorities clear and publicly funded education is not one of them," she said.
The province's school repair backlog was calculated at $16.8 billion last September. Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced last week that Ontario will spend nearly $500 million this year to build and repair schools as well as create new child-care spaces across the province.
Lecce said that announcement is part of a commitment to provide $14 billion over a decade to support school construction and repair.
Address inequality in schools, Ontario urged
OECTA president Barb Dobrowolski said teachers see the devastating impact of child poverty every day in their classrooms and she called on the government to make poverty reduction, affordable child care and improved access to mental health resources a priority. Inequality in schools must be addressed, she said.
"All students in Ontario deserve a rich educational experience and learning environment," she said.
The pandemic has thrown a spotlight on the poor physical condition of many schools and investments in physical spaces and resources will improve physical and mental health of students and staff, OSSTF president Karen Littlewood added.
The unions called on the province to do the following:
- Scrap the plan to cut $12.3 billion from education over the next nine years, as projected by Ontario's Financial Accountability Office in May 2021.
- Support a multi-year learning recovery plan, including a commitment to smaller class sizes.
- Expand school-based mental health resources, supports and services to meet the diverse needs of students and educators.
- Address the repair backlog in schools.
Province must address backlog of care, OMA says
OMA president Dr. Adam Kassam, for his part, noted that the budget is the last one before the June 2 provincial election and is time for the government to outline how it is going to deal with a backlog of care created during the pandemic. It should also explain how it plans to fix cracks in the health care system that deepened in the past two years, he said.
Kassam said the OMA estimates there is a backlog of 21 million health-care services — including hip or knee replacements, cataract surgeries, X-rays, colonoscopies, ultrasounds and access to primary mental health-care services.
"This is the key priority that we have as a profession, as a system moving forward, so that we can ensure that patients get the care that they need at the time that they need it."
The province has also been making funding announcements in health care in recent weeks. On Monday, Health Minister Christine Elliott said the province will spend $1 billion over the next three years to expand home care in Ontario.
"This significant investment will ensure Ontarians can receive the care they need in the comfort of their own homes and alleviate unnecessary pressure on our hospitals helping to keep our province open," Elliott said Monday.
Kassam said the association supports calls by the premiers for the federal government to increase the Canada Health Transfer to 35 per cent of provincial-territorial health-care spending from the current 22 per cent.
Such an increase would give Ontario an additional $10 billion annually for health care, he said. Ontario needs to invest an additional $4.8 billion a year simply to reach the national average, he added.
"We all know you can't have a healthy economy without a strong health-care system," he said.
Ontario's per capita health-care spending is about eight per cent lower than the average of other provinces and territories, according to data from Canadian Institute for Health Information.
This drop was due to the decisions of successive provincial governments in the past 30 years, Kassam said.
But spending more money is not all that's needed, he warned.
"The province also needs health human resources — more doctors, personal support workers and other health-care professionals at a time when many are retiring or leaving the profession because of burnout exacerbated by working on the front lines of the pandemic."