The Ben Mulroney Show - Ontario's education minister makes some changes/TDSB special ed funding

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

GUEST:   Paul Calandra / Ontario education minister GUEST:  TDSB SEAC Chair, David Lepofsky If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. It's Charles Barkleywood Wayfair. It's outdoor season, and my patio set up, that'll be ready to play.

That's what Wayfair wins. Patio seating, umbrellas and grills. All delivered, fast and easy. Shopwayfair.ca.ca.com.cair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. I will say this until I am blue in the face. I firmly and absolutely believe that the mission of public education is twofold and twofold only. One, educate our kids.

And two, support our teachers in furtherance of that first goal. That is it. And what I believe that we've witnessed in the province of Ontario and specifically in the city of Toronto is mission creep. Over the past few years, we have watched that mission, slowly creep and, morph into other things and drift into areas where teachers and the board and the schools do not belong. I want our teachers supported and I want our kids educated. Enter Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra, who I feel would believe that my vision

resonates. I know that a lot of parents, rather, feel the same way. And he made some bold moves over the past year in terms of resting control from trustees and boards that probably were doing exactly that mission creep. And now he's come out with a plan to really entrench these changes in a more official way. And we're very pleased to have the Ontario Education Minister Paul Kalandra joining us right now. Paul, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me again, Ben.

Okay, so yeah, big, big announcement today. So it felt to give our listeners an update, it felt that the changes that you had made a few months, ago were sort of emergency changes that needed to happen to stave off real big problems. And now it feels like the announcement today is sort of a sober look at the lay of the land and a more permanent version of the changes that you brought forth earlier. Yeah, yeah, good point, frankly. It really does build on Bill 33, which we passed late last year. So the two pieces of legislation have to be taken together.

Bill 33, which started the process of providing greater accountability mechanisms through the Ministry of Education. And then this one today, which then goes that additional step in doing exactly what you're saying. You know, you constantly hear this from teachers that they're just sick and tired of being put in the middle of battles between parents and school boards. They just want to teach. And that's it.

But also parents who say, look, you know, the boards are getting way more involved in the lives of their children. Yeah. And they're not focused exclusively on student achievement. Today's announcement is a big, big step. It won't be the final step. Let me just say that. Yeah.

But it is another step on the road of wrestling back control of education so that we can have a more consistent delivery of education across the province by supporting teachers and getting trustees, the divisive part of the trustees job out of the system. Yeah. And professionalizing boards across the province. So let's go through some of the key points that were brought up today. One, trustee power is going to be significantly reduced. The number of trustees at the TDSB, for example, goes from 22 to 12.

You're capping on arrariums, you're restricting expenses, and you're removing most of their role in budgeting decisions and central bargaining. So what was the problem you were trying to solve with that? Well, first and foremost, I mean, look, some of these boards, their budgets rival those of provinces, right? So they are a massive, massive entity. And we want to professionalize both the bargaining and the management of boards. So bringing a CEO in who has the business background, who has management, who can run large organizations.

You know, school boys are delivering on multi-million dollar capital projects. They've got huge staffs. And you need somebody who can manage not only a budget, but deliver on the big thing. So we're going to have a CEO who's going to be responsible. responsible for that. The CEO who will bring forward the budget of the board, provide it to the trustees. And the trustees can look at that, make some comments. Ultimately, they can approve it. If they don't like it, they can send it to the minister who will have the ultimate job of saying yes or no to the budget, but it is really professionalizing it. We're then removing

trustees from the local bargaining and putting that in the hands of the CEOs as well. Again, removing some of the divisive parts of what trustees have been doing. More importantly, there's the other aspects of it too, right? As it said, the delivery of curriculum. How curriculum is delivered. And that's what I wanted to bring. That's what I want to bring up next, Minister, because, you know, as I've said, I want my teachers supported. But there were stories that popped up in the news of what I felt were excessively politicized teachers who felt that they had

license and leeway to do things that frankly shocked a lot of parents. I want to play you a video that made the rounds a while ago. A very famous clip that the teacher in question took down, but fortunately some people kept it up. As a reminder that this is a mindset

of a particular type of teacher in the province of Ontario. The flag behind me seems to really trigger a lot of snowflakes. And yes, I am your worst nightmare. I teach about Marxism. I teach about socialism. I teach about trans rights. I teach about LGBTQ history. I teach about black history. I teach about the racial history of our country and the genocide that we've inflicted upon indigenous people. And because of the courses that I teach, all of this can be connected to curriculum. But beyond that, in Ontario, under the Education Act, teachers essentially have the right to teach whatever they

think is beneficial to their students. There is obviously a boundary to that, but What I talk about in my classroom, what I do in my classroom will not break any of the rules. Just because you're a triggered Snowflake who can't handle gay people existing does not mean that what I am doing is by any means wrong. All right. This is a problematic teacher for sure. But I think the most alarming thing is saying, I can do all of this. Never mind the fact he didn't mention math as something he teaches, which in and of itself is a problem. But him saying that this is well within the bounds of what I can do as a teacher,

based on the law and the rules. Is any of that being addressed today? Well, yeah, look, and let me just say this, obviously, and I know we'd probably agree on this. He's not reflective of a vast majority. No, of course not. But not wrong, though, right? In a sense, is that for far too long,

I've said this right from the beginning, and it's for far too long, the ministry has decided to download its responsibilities to school boards. and trustees. And when you look at the curriculum, when you look at the curriculum today as opposed to what we used to deliver 20 years ago,

a vast majority of that curriculum is open for interpretation. And that can go two ways. Either a teacher has to fill in the blanks on their own or they scour the internet for resources. What we're saying is no, we're going to shift it. We're going to change it again, where the ministry is going to provide a vast majority of the curriculum that must be taught in the schools and in the classroom.

There'll be some parts of it that are open for interpretation, but we're also going to provide ministry-mandated resources to deliver that curriculum. We're going to go a step further and saying, okay, here's the curriculum that you will or can choose from, the learning materials that you will or can choose from on the system because we have to change it, right? And as I said, it goes two ways.

Teachers need help in delivering the curriculum. And again, you get a lot of them. We're just saying, look, man, when we have to do this, it puts us in conflict with a lot of parents, and we don't want to be there. But we're there because the ministry for the last 25 years has decided to exit that. And if you look at the kindergarten curriculum that we introduced,

far more prescriptive. If you look at some of the other curriculum, the history curriculum, again, far more prescriptive. and we're hearing from educators who are saying, these are good changes to the curriculum. Keep it going, right? So we're going down that path, and we're not going to allow trustees

to get themselves involved in areas that they never were supposed to be involved in. The last 20 years, we allowed them to be. Minister, last question for you. After the break, we are speaking with the TDSB, SEAC chair, David Lopowski, about this special advisory committee, this listening to parents' voices meeting tonight,

about decisions that the board made to reduce or restrict supports for students with disabilities. And I want to get your sense of what you're hoping to get out of this meeting. Well, look, if they're talking about special education resources and they're an important, the special education advisor committees are an important part of the system. They are still remaining within the system. We're not making any changes to that. we want to make sure that those committees, those special education committees in this instance, they're reflecting the true voices of the people within the TDSB and the people who are utilizing

the services or requiring the services within the board. So look, they're going to continue on. I think they do an important function. And, you know, we're always here to listen. But more importantly, you know, going forward, we will have an ability to better address issues in a more consistent in fashion all across the province so that we can provide the best for all kids, not just kids in certain parts of the province. Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra, thank you so much for your time today, sir. Thanks, Ben. Have a good day.

We are at a very interesting point in our history in this province and specifically in the city of Toronto as it relates to public education. I don't think you'll find a single person, taxpayer in the city, parent in this city whose kids rely on getting educated through the TDSB that doesn't realize that every single player, be it government, be it teacher, be it school board, has an important and indeed vital role to play in making sure that moving forward,

we do a better job and not just at educating our kids, but at supporting our teachers. And I'm very glad to be joined by David Lopowski. He is the TDSB Special Education Advisory Committee's chair. There's a very important meeting tonight. David, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Great to be here.

So talk to me about this meeting at 7 p.m. tonight. You've got 40,000 kids within the TDSB that rely on special education. And their parents are being given a chance to be heard tonight. So here's the deal. Our school system is largely designed and operated. for kids without disabilities. And yet there are lots of kids with special ed needs, special education needs. The teachers want to serve them.

The principals want to effectively serve them, but they're caught up in an education bureaucracy that's full of barriers. What do you do about it? Like what kind of barriers? Well, it's hard to find out just what programs and services are available at TDSB for kids with special education needs. We've been pushing for 10 years to find out. A lot of the buildings aren't accessible to kids with using wheelchairs.

There are times principals tell a child with a disability to stay home, which is a serious problem rather than come to school. There's a matrix of these different problems. And so TDSB, like all school boards, is required to have what's called a special education advisory committee. As you said, I chair the one for TDSB. We're all volunteers. We're parents and kids with special education needs. And our role is to advise the board what needs to improve. Now, when there were trustees, they were part of our committee, and we would give them advice.

Now we give the advice to staff. So we've said we want to have a public forum to invite these parents to come and tell us what barriers their children face and what needs to be done to address this. you would figure the TDSB senior staff would go, great idea, let's do it. In fact, they're against it. We've had to do this on our own. We've had to publicize it on our own. We've had to do all the organization. And we're volunteers.

Yeah. And that is actually emblematic of the problem. When you have senior officials at a board who are that disconnected, we need to make sure our voice is loud and clear. Now, we're there for one reason, one reason alone. hear from these parents make strong recommendations about what the board needs to do differently to better serve 40,000 kids with special education needs. David, I want to jump in because, you know, you've referenced, you know, quite a complex situation.

But is it fair to say that that complex situation has come to a head in the form of this flashpoint of these two specialized high schools, specifically Eastdale Collegiate Institute and Hayden Park, that have halted great. grade nine and in some cases, grade 10 admissions. And that's alarmed a lot of families who rely on small, high support environments. Is that the reason that everything seems to be coming to a head right now? That is one illustration, but it's just one. So, for example, last year, before the trustees were ousted, they want the staff at TDSB, the senior staff, wanted to raise the maximum size of a couple of categories

of their special education classes, one for kindergarten, one for kids with mild intellectual disabilities. Our committee advised, no, that's a bad idea. That'll hurt these kids. The staff went to the trustees, so did we. And the trustees decided we were right, and they voted not to raise those classes. What happens, not because of that, but for other reasons, the Ford government outsts the trustees and before the the the the supervisor who reports to Paul Calandra and he picked reversed the decision of the trustees and expanded the size of those classes there's several examples of these kind of things that are going on and they're not catching public attention and one of the reasons they're not

catching public attention is because our committee is now the only public place where parents and kids with special education needs can come and publicly raise their concerns with TDSB. There are no more trustee meetings. There's no trustee town halls. All of that stuff is going on. Things have gone behind closed doors. This is so important.

You know, we're living at a time where what used to pass, you know, 20, 30 years ago as a student who was distracted, we now know we can diagnose with a very specific special need or learning disability or or or somebody who simply needs more more attention and and commensurate with that ability to detect you know kids who are require a special attention a budget needs to be assigned to those things and so what used to just be some kid who doesn't learn very well is now somebody who requires more attention and so it's it's it's it's the bargain that we strike right if we're if we say we want to diagnose if we say we want to make sure that every kid learns the way they need to learn. We have to be able to budget for those things.

Well, ultimately, it's a combination of things. First, our special education funding is grossly deficient. We've been told by TDSB professional budget staff for a decade or more that the province gives them less money than they need to keep the lights on in the special education program. And they're not making up the numbers and I'm not in a position. And nobody's come up with better numbers. The province will say, oh, we give more money than ever before. But an inadequate budget plus one dollar is still an end up in adequate budget even though it is larger than ever before. Yeah. But it's not just money.

When the system is full of disability barriers, when parents have a bloody hard time just finding out what's available, or if they want to advocate for their child's needs because they're concerned they're not getting what they need, they run into bureaucratic systems that are really hard to navigate. These are issues my committee's been pressing for well over a decade. It's not unique in Toronto about this. Then whatever money you're spending is rendered less efficient. So there's much better ways of doing this. And it's not a liberal thing, a conservative thing, an NDP thing. It's a let's take care of kids in our schools to ensure that their learning needs are best met. I think it's everybody's issue.

I completely agree. And David Lopowski, the TDSB, special education advisory committee's chair. You said that you're having a tough time getting the word out about this meeting. So I'm going to give you the last word here. Tell the listeners of the Ben Mulroney show what they need to know about this meeting if there's any part of them that's interested in participating. We are in person, open to the public at 5050 Young Street, Shepard Nyeong, the headquarters of TDSB, starting at 7 tonight.

Now, unfortunately, they're no longer live. streamed by the board because the foreign government is ordered that we can't live stream our meetings anymore. That also hurts our kids and makes it harder for the public to know about this, but you can come in person. We'd love to have you there. David, thank you very much. I wish you all the very best. Thanks so much for covering this. Welcome to Survivor 50. Wednesdays on Global. We chose you to represent 25 years of the greatest adventure on television and all we want is everything this is the survivor coliseal it's do or die light your torch and be a part of history survivor all new wednesdays at eight

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