National Post (National Edition)
Unions as bad as lockdowns for students
If the virus didn't get our kids, the unions will. Children throughout Canada have suffered greatly as a result of pandemic school closures, perhaps no more so than in Ontario, where students missed nearly 30 weeks of in-person learning — more than in any other province and most jurisdictions throughout the western world.
The impact this has had on a generation of schoolchildren is only starting to become clear. Recent results from Ontario's Education Quality and Accountability Office show that standardized test scores dropped across the board since 2018, with only 52 per cent of Grade 9 students meeting provincial standards last year, compared to 75 per cent before the pandemic. There have also been huge increases in rates of anxiety and depression (though perhaps parents are partially to blame for raising a generation of wimps).
Meanwhile, parents spent two years scrambling to find alternate childcare arrangements when school closures were announced at the last minute, juggling their own careers while supporting their kids' online learning and struggling to pay the bills because they couldn't hold down a job while taking care of their children full time.
This year, the situation looked markedly better. The province had removed its pandemic restrictions. The COVID-19 Science Advisory Table signalled that all efforts should be made to keep schools open. Perhaps most importantly, the public appetite for lockdowns and school closures had vanished.
This was the backdrop when parents with children in the Toronto District School Board received an email on Sunday informing them that if the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents 55,000 Ontario education workers, doesn't reach a deal with the province by Friday (Nov. 4), “CUPE education workers across the province will be on a full strike,” and that, although it was “continuing to assess the impact a full withdrawal of services will have on our schools,” students and caregivers “should be prepared for all possibilities.”
By Monday, the board's tone was considerably less optimistic when it announced that, due to a CUPE strike planned for Nov. 4, “the board will have no option but to close all schools for in person learning” on that day. On Wednesday evening, it admitted that schools would be closed indefinitely.
So … here we go again. Only this time the threat to Ontario's schoolchildren comes not from a potentially deadly virus running roughshod through the population, but from a greedy public-sector union.
Knowing that CUPE was considering strike action after months of failed negotiations, the government tabled legislation on Monday that would impose a deal and institute fines for walking off the job, in an effort to ensure that “nothing at all, now or in the future, could prevent a child's right to be in a classroom learning,” as Education Minister Stephen Lecce put it.
To ensure the back-to-work legislation does not fail a legal challenge after the Supreme Court of Canada read the right to strike into the charter's protection of the right to freedom of association in 2015, the Government of Ontario chose the nuclear option of invoking the notwithstanding clause.
Normally, using Sec. 33 to bypass constitutionally protected rights is pretty egregious. But in this case, it's designed to protect students from further disruptions to their education against a “right to strike” that is not actually found anywhere in the text of the Constitution.
As always, the effectiveness of going down this road will depend on whether the public is on board (any invocation of the notwithstanding clause expires after five years, specifically to give voters an opportunity to express themselves at the ballot box). Yet after a tumultuous couple of years, it's hard to imagine parents having all that much sympathy for the union.
Especially considering that CUPE is demanding an 11.7 per cent annual raise, which is well above the current rate of inflation, and would set a dangerous precedent if inflation returns to the Bank of Canada's target of two per cent.
It certainly left many Ontarians scratching their heads wondering why employees that are already making an average of $26.69 an hour — itself above the province-wide average of $25.31 for educational services workers, according to StatCan data — think they're entitled to such a hefty pay hike, when average workers have only seen their salaries increase by an average of 2.6 per cent over the past year.
Add in CUPE's other demands — related to overtime, vacation, etc. — and the government says it would have increased education workers' compensation by 50 per cent, which is untenable in a time when government finances and the economy are on shaky ground, and the province is in the midst of contract negotiations with four teachers' unions.
To be fair, it's not as though the education workers are completely off base. The new legislation would provide a 2.5 per cent annual raise for employees making under $43,000, and 1.5 per cent for anyone making more than that. With inflation running at nearly seven per cent, however, this means that workers' purchasing power will continue to drop, and it comes after having been limited to one per cent increases in recent years.
If the union had simply demanded that wage increases be tied to the rate of inflation and kicked the rest of its wish list four years down the line to a time when the government's balance sheet is hopefully in better shape and the pandemic is well behind us, it probably would have received a lot of support from Ontarians.
But as soon as CUPE threatened to force another round of school closures, it lost the PR war. The union was betting that it could get what it wants by holding the province's schoolchildren hostage, perhaps even more so given that no one wants to see more school closures. Hopefully, the Progressive Conservatives will hold strong and finally send a message that this type of behaviour will no longer be tolerated.
HARD TO IMAGINE
PARENTS HAVING ALL THAT MUCH SYMPATHY FOR
THE UNION.