Crawling from the wreckage

Readers of The Times were graced with the insight of former deputy minister of education Charles Pascal, last week in an op-ed headlined Mindless cuts to education puts our future at risk. In it, he offered a scathing assessment of the current provincial government and its proposals to cut the cost of education. Pascal doesn’t mince words. He calls the cuts damaging and short-sighted. He had particularly sour descriptions of Premier Doug Ford, and ventures further, encouraging Ford’s cabinet to foment revolt.

Pascal is well-steeped in the issues animating public education in Ontario and he is rightfully proud of his accomplishments—particularly in early childhood education. The data are clear. The investments made in all-day kindergarten are major achievements that will pay dividends—for individuals and for our community for years.

And while his criticism of Ford’s tentative steps to curbing the cost of education may be fair, if a bit overwrought, it all seems misplaced.

There is something unseemly, and likely counterproductive, when the folks who were servicing the machinery when it blew apart, chirp from the sidelines afterwards. It seems unhelpful to heap scorn up those working now to fix it.

For here is the thing: the cost of public education exploded by 50 per cent in the 10 years after the Liberals were elected in 2003. From $17.7 billion to $25 billion by the 2013. Enrolment meanwhile declined by 4.6 per cent. Costs ballooned while the number of publicschool students fell. This is a broken machine.

Worse, the trends are staggering. According to a report prepared by the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy (IFSD) at the University of Ottawa last fall, spending on public education will rise from “$30.0 billion in the 2018-19 school year to $42.7 billion in 2028- 29. By the end of the IFSD’s long-term forecast in the 2063-64 school year, we anticipate spending by the Ministry of Education to reach $140.3 billion.” Meanwhile the report anticipates enrolment rising only marginally from 2 million to 2.75 million over the next four and half decades.

This doesn’t work. We are clearly on the wrong track. That’s not my assessment. The (Liberal) federal government’s Parliamentary Budget Officer also weighed in on Ontario’s education challenges last fall concluding it is “not fiscally sustainable”. The PBO went further, prescribing “that the province of Ontario will need to reduce spending and/or increase revenues by about 0.9 per cent of GDP to return to sustainability.”

Charles Pascal knows all this. He claims no disagreement with the need to reduce the province’s debt load. His complaint is that he doesn’t like the way the Ford government is going about it. He is troubled that the Ford government’s approach is devoid of “the leading- edge change management acumen that involves collaborative and transparent ways of determining priorities and timelines.”

He may be right. In truth, if I were to choose between prescriptions offered by Ford or Pascal, I would surely lean toward the latter. But here is my problem: Where was this outrage when the system was expanding beyond all proportions? Where were the scathing language and dire warnings a decade ago? Arguably that is when some restraint and change management acumen might have avoided the need for chainsaws now.

And here we get to the most worrying aspect of political debate currently. As we huddle more fearfully with our chosen tribe, we feel more comfortable hurling stones at those on the other end of the political spectrum tossing around terms like “unthinking premier” or “spineless cabinet”.

I get the frustration. Especially from an architect of positive reform to the education system in this province. Ontarians would be served better, however, by smart folks, like Charles Pascal, working with the current government— rather turning his flamethrower on everything the Ford government touches.

We will need to find common ground in order to implement enduring solutions. We will have to work together to make our politics and our institutions work better. Otherwise we will devolve into a ceaseless cycle of tearing down what the last folks built—and getting nowhere. Voters are getting weary of this. Increasingly they are voting for none-of-the-above—hungry for another type of message.

Most Canadians, I suspect, exist within touching distance of the centre of the political spectrum. Our political discourse, however, urgently compels us to gravitate to the poles.

We can all do better in this regard. First, we need to put down the stones. Then we can perhaps prescribe workable solutions. This is harder than it sounds. But we must try.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca