Bonnie Crombie keeps bitching about teachers in Ontario getting a raw deal

Teachers don't teach any more, they indoctrinate our kids

Ontario has 134,000 full-time teachers in primary and secondary schools, and 21,621 part-time teachers.

Bonnie Crombie complains the Ford government doesn’t spend enough money to fund the teachers causing higher class sizes, and claims provincial funding is going down. In fact, funding is rising.

Reality is a bit different than Liberal leader Crombie’s claims. Teachers are well-paid and benefit from indexed pensions. Average wage rate for teachers of $39.37 in 2022 was ~20% above the Ontario average for all workers.

In its current budget, the Ontario government has allocated $34.7 billion for education, up from $32.4 billion last year, an increase of 7.1% or about double the current inflation rate. It is the teachers’ unions, not government, that has limited the number of teachers, as reported by the National Post April 26, 2024.

The average class size in Ontario today is 23 students. In the 1960’s it was typically over 30 and there were few “educational assistants” except for special needs classes.

Relentless strikes and aggressive bargaining by teachers’ unions taking advantage of the political value of using their strike power against a deep-pocketed government reliant on voter support to extort higher wages and benefits have driven the costs of education higher while the quality of education declines. Students today are subjected to DEI nonsense, Marxist ideology, and claims of gender fluidity while grades keep inflating to where an “A” average is almost meaningless. Everyone gets a trophy, no one is failed, and many students get a high school diploma without learning basic skills in English, mathematics and science. But they get their “pronouns” right and are encouraged to think the October 7 massacre in Israel was fake news and that Israeli’s plan a genocide of Palestinians.

Crombie is an impressive woman and will improve the leadership of the Ontario Liberals in her new role as Liberal leader, but she needs to drop the leftist claims of climate change, underfunding of health and education and relentless attacks on Doug Ford since to be effective she needs to support policies taxpayers can afford and find some common ground with the Conservatives who hold power. Politics is the art of the possible, not a debating stage for ideological dreams that can never come true.

Ford is far from perfect but his popularity is undeniable and its roots are in his practical approach to issues and willingness to change course when he senses the electorate wants change. Bonnie Crombie will be an effective Liberal leader when she spends more time promoting positive changes and less time criticizing the incumbent government without any indication of how she would do a better job.