Ontario Politics

The last month in Ontario has been a wild ride for the Ontario Eduacation system. In March 2024, the Ford Conservative Goverement release their budget for 2024. The budget consists of money for health care which is much needed for the province of Ontario, and there is $1.3 billion is building new schools in the province which is much needed, but who will run these schools if there are no teachers or support staff to run them. What the budget did not allocate for was more funding of special education students and staffing needed to help run special education programs. In Ontario and the rest of Canada there is staffing shortages, and most provincal goverments are not addressing the staffing shortage and allocating funding to help address staffing shortages. There is talk in Ontario and Canada that charted schools want to enter Canada and to intice partents to enrol their child in an expensive chartred school, therefore taking tax dollars away from publicly funded schools.

The one thing that boggles my mind is the lack of proper funding per student in Ontario Schools. For the 2024-2025 school year, it looks like there will be $1357 less per student funding. Meaning that there will be less money for text books, lab material, staffing, and other matters or materials that will help students achieve their best possible education in their schools.

On Sunday, April 28, 2024, Education Minister Stephen Leece, announced that there will be a cell phone and vaping ban starting September 2024. There are many issues with this ban…vaping is illegal to anyone under the age of 19, and cellphones and electronic devices are used to help students access materials online like their Google classroom are to look for books to read online. There are many students in Ontario that don’t have access to text books and have to use their cellphones or their personal devices to access text books online. I understand that cellphones have a negative effect of the brain, especially children’s brains, but we have to remember that schools are underfunded and we need techology to made sure that they can access materials.

June is Pride Month in Ontario and while it is supposed to be a joyous celebration of someones sexuality, and freedom as a individual but there are been this anti-queer hate centred towards the queer community started by alt-right, white suppremacist groups that have come up from the United States. In the last year there are been a lot of hate towards members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community in Ontario. The hatered first started towards drag queens reading stories at publicly funded libraried in Ontario. Many of these haters called drag queens “groomers” or “indoctrination of the rainbow mafia” towards children. Many parents that took their children to story time with drag queens were happy to get their children out of the house, and get their children to interact with other children and other adults and to have fun. Parents also supported their local library, and drag queens are also gig workers, so having them read a story at a public library helped them buy groceries or pay a bill. I was at a counter protest in Ottawa in Feburary at one of their public libraries fending off so called Christians that where trying to harm the drag queen that was outside the library asking the protesters to leave the area in peace. In my little area of Ontario the local Catholoic school board held a board meeting to vote on rasing the Pride Flag for Pride Month. Students and teachers that were at that meeting were treaded as they were a disease and had hateful comments hurled at them. Some student trutess that the meeting felt unsafe, and were crying when the meeting was over. We are 10 days into Pride Month and that Catholic School Board has still not raised the Pride Flag, and are not backing down on their decision. There are two municipalities in Ontario that have decided not to raise the Pride Flag, and it was due to the fact that two municipalities have councillors that lean more towards the convervitived side with a alt-right leaning. What bothers me is that many Ontario towns are having the Pride events in June, the summers and into September, and many of these Pride evenets will be under attack by alt-right protesters, and will have little funding for police protection. I’m also fearful of Pride events turning violent, which I hope it is just my paranio kicking in.