The Ben Mulroney Show - The money our Government is wasting on funding education

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

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apply see nissan.ca for details. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time. We appreciate your ears. And in this segment, we want to hear your voices. So in the Doug Ford budget, the most recent one, a record amount of money for education was announced, $30.3 billion in school funding. And now the teachers union is saying, surprise, surprise, that's not enough. And to which I have one word and one word only in response, audit, audit them all every single school board in the province. We have heard a variety of stories over the years of

mismanagement and trips that should have been taken and purchases that shouldn't have been made and taking kids on field trips that they shouldn't have gone on. Don't tell me that these school boards and these schools are being run as efficiently and as optimally as possible. Thirty point three billion dollars is a lot of money. And before any discussion over is it enough is had. Let's figure out if the money that is being spent is being spent as well and as efficiently and as

effectively as possible. I do not, we don't have enough money to take even a penny and throw it down a rat hole. And I think it's incumbent on these school boards to show us that there are no rat holes. Show us that you are leading by example. Show us that you have what's called clean hands in this debate. And then we can say, okay, now that we know that you are spending the money as effectively and as efficiently as possible, now we can ask is $30.3 billion enough? Because if we know that there is no waste, no graft,

no useless spending, no redundancies, if we know that the money is being spent in the way it is intended towards supporting teachers and education and parents, if those things are being done, then yes, we can have a conversation as to whether or not $30.3 billion. Sorry, let me rephrase a record. $30.3 billion is enough until that comes. I'm not changing my position. Show me that you are running a tight ship.

Then we can decide whether the money is enough. And I want to hear from you. When is enough enough? Why is the answer at least in the case of education, why is the answer always a bigger check? Just give us more money, more money. We need more money. You've got a $58 million shortfall at the TDSB,

I'll remind you, right? So you couldn't even, the money that you had before wasn't enough. So you're telling me that we're gonna give you now more, and that's not gonna be enough. We'll give you even more. That's not gonna be enough. It will be enough if we eventually get to a place

where we know we're running a tight ship. Give me a call, 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. I'm looking for accountability here, right? And I'm looking for mutual respect. The taxpayer wants to give you $30 billion. Show the taxpayer respect, enough respect that you say, I see that that's a big nut.

I see that we see that that is such a big nut. We are going to show you that we respect that you're giving us that money by spending it in a respectful way. We are not going to waste it. We are not going to take stupid field trips and indoctrinate our kids. We are not going to go to a, we're not going to buy statues statues we don't need. This is what I want to see. In fact, I think this is what I deserve to see as a taxpayer and as a father who's got three kids in the TDSP. George, welcome to the show. Good morning. How are you doing? Well, thank you. Ah, good. Listen, I always seem to have an opinion on anything and everything, but I was just saying

to your, your producer there that I went through my Facebook memories today and like seven years ago we're having the same conversation. Yeah. Exactly this conversation and it's like you know like I think that public service unions and I'm going to say the part out loud are a conflict of interest. How so? I'll tell you why. Because the fact that they can hold everybody hostage all the time, the kids hostage, the strikes and things like that.

And first of all, hold on. George, let's turn it down a little bit because nobody's talking strike right now. Nobody's holding anybody hostage. The position I just don't think is as helpful as it should be, George. Like, for example, the school boards and the teachers are the ones with domain expertise. They're the ones that go to conferences. They're the ones who are on Facebook groups with other teachers from around the world. They are the ones who are living that experience every day. So when I hear that's not enough money, that's not good enough for me. You should be bringing more to the table. You should be bringing things to the table. For example, like, hey, we as an organization have been made aware of an AI technology that has been adopted in regions X, Y, and Z. And the outcomes have been tremendous. Here's how much it costs. But here's what the

benefits are. We think you as a government should should take a look at it, because we think it will yield positive results for the students, it will free up time for the for the teachers, and it will end up saving us more money than it costs. And then the government can say, thanks so much for the tip, we'll investigate. But I'm not hearing any of that. I'm just hearing, give us more money.

Exactly, and that's sort of like the heart of the point is that every time it's more money, more money, more money, this is the biggest expenditure on education in Ontario's history. Yeah, and for the takeaway to be not enough money is not good enough for me. George, we've got lots of people to get to,

but I thank you for being our first call. Let's join Chris. Chris, your wife is a school teacher. So tell me where, what the conversations are like in your home. So Ben loved the show. My wife teaches, but she does learning support for the Tampa Valley board. and yeah, accountability really, really

there. Yeah. Because we have a lot of special needs kids. Yeah. Don't get the support they need. And you have unaccountable administrators. So just pull disclosure. The directors of education of these school boards, they don't answer to

anyone. They are not accountable to the school board itself. They can, there is no means for the trustees to remove them. They have no power of removal of these people when they make arbitrary decisions that just blow budgets up. Yeah. Well, that's why I go back to my one word response, audit. Thank you very much for the call, my friend. Who's next? Stanley, Stanley, tell me what the root of the problem is. Well, good morning, Ben.

Good morning. Always nice to hear you first thing in the morning. One thing is we're forgetting, we're looking at what's hitting us now in our face. This goes back over two decades. This goes back when Kathleen Wynne was, wasn't she education minister for a while? You're jogging my memory. I'll take it. Your word. She put, she put certain people in place, you know, certain culture, certain agenda,

and they feel they don't need to answer to anybody. When you have stuff like this going on, you know, you can't have accountability, you got to go in there and clean house completely. So what you said? We need a doge. We need a doge up here. Well, listen, I wouldn't advocate for something that extensive in our education system. Listen, front line, front line teachers. $500 for putting up pencil sharpeners, remember that?

No, no, so what we're, listen, you're saying, I'm gonna end almost every call the same way. Audit, thank you Stanley, I appreciate it. And again, I think it needs to be said, I am not criticizing our teachers. I love my kids' teachers. I know how hard they work. They inspire my kids.

I'm in awe of my teachers, but the teachers aren't the ones talking here. The union is the one talking. The administrators are the ones talking. The board is the one talking. Those are two separate beasts. I think we got time for a couple more before we take a break. Sonja, Sonja, your son is a teacher.

I'm so glad we're getting these teacher families calling us in, welcome. I agree with the gentlemen. It starts from the top, the teachers hands are tied and they're at the bottom of the food chain. Yeah, shortage of teachers, they're all on medical leave, because they're not getting the support from their administration. So don't tell me there aren't enough teachers. It has to start at the board and they got to clean up. And the trustees, everybody's lining their pockets, except the people that need it at the board and they got to clean up. And the trustees, everybody's lining their pockets, except the people that need it. The support that they need for all these spec

ed kids, the ones that they've integrated into a 30 person classroom, that's okay. But there used to be classes separate. Most of those teachers don't have the time and they have to stop the whole class. All right, Sonja, say it with me, Sonja. Audit. Thank you, Sonja. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but more of your calls on this very important topic when we come back on the Ben Mulroney Show. When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners? Like that woman over there with the Italian leather handbag, is that from Winners?

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Winners find fabulous for less. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show, and we are going to continue taking your calls on a very important topic for everybody in the province of Ontario, and it's about education funding. A record amount of money is about to be given to public education in this province. Thirty point three billion dollars and the reaction from the powers that be on the other side of the equation is that's not enough. Now it

may not be enough but we'll never know until we know how effectively the money in the past has been spent. Audit the heck out of these school boards so we know how optimally the money has been spent, we know where the waste is, and only then will we know whether $30.3 billion is actually enough. That's my perspective. I want to hear from you at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK.

And let's kick things off with Frank. Frank, what do you think? Am I off base here? Good morning, Ben. Good morning. I said, where I see the major? Good morning, Ben. Good morning. Where I see the major problem is with the elected school board trustees. They essentially carry the weight and the power to hire the director of education, the superintendents

and the teachers and make recommendations for teachers. I think that to be able to put in measures and safeguards in place to ensure they follow through with budgeting the money appropriately. There should be, the Ministry of Education should be involved and negotiating goal setting with the different municipalities, the different school boards, and that they should use that as a follow-up

maybe twice a year just to see whether or not those goals are being met. If that doesn't happen, then these school boards are going to run amok. Yeah. And they're going to think that they've got cart bombs to do whatever they want to do. And if there's a problem with the specific school board, as was the case with the Toronto school board, you get to supervise your oversight involved by the province. Yeah, look, I don't know if it's, I've said before about the healthcare system. It may hold true in education.

It feels right, but I don't have the data to support it. But in healthcare, I've said never before in the history of Canadian healthcare, have we put more money into a system that has led to worse outcomes. So the answer isn't just more money. And something tells me in education, it's gotta be close to that.

We've never put more money in. I don't know if these are the worst outcomes we've ever had, but they're certainly not the best we could be having, which tells me there is something wrong with the process. And this is not a knock on the teachers who are the hardest working people, who care deeply about their students,

who wanna do a good job, who wanna work, who want their kids to succeed. There is something else going on. And the only way to figure it out is to air out the whole system and have maybe a good faith third party come in with no agenda except to get the best results, come in, take a look at the school boards

and see how we could better do the job. That's, that's what I think. And let's see what Dan thinks. Dan, where is the problem here? Good morning. Good morning. Well, socialism, eventually the money runs out, right. And but that's not my main point is when you listen to these governments, these ministries, whether it's the education or healthcare or health care or it's the police in the city or anything like that. And they say, well, we've just given 150 billion more, 300 million more. We have record funding for this program.

It all goes, 90% of it goes to increased salaries, union obligations, pension obligations. That's where it goes to. So you think the public is hearing, oh, another $3 billion went to education. My little Timmy's going to get more teachers. No, it goes to pension. It goes to those workers that settled with the union that are, instead of laying them off, they're at home collecting pay for three years or they're on disability. And it goes to increased wages that they just settled. And the politicians are too cowardly

to let them go to strike. Well, Dan, all the more reason to have an independent third party go over it, so it doesn't look like it's a political process, right? You get somebody separate from the system who comes in and who knows how to do a forensic analysis of where the money goes, someone who's an expert in the education system, find somebody who knows about the best practices elsewhere.

Maybe there is a model for school boards that is efficient and effective, as well as, you know, somebody, like, I really don't want to get into the minutia that I don't even know about these, the contracts and the pensions and all that stuff. My point in this conversation is we don't know how the money is being spent. All we know is more money is going in

and what's coming out are not the best versions of our kids, not the best educated versions of our kids, not the kids with the best test scores. And because of that, I think it is incumbent upon everybody to want to get to the bottom of it. I think the school boards should want to know why that is happening despite record amounts of money coming in. If you truly believe that the end result determines whether or not you've been a success, whether the grades of our kids, the success rates of our kids, the graduation

rates of our kids, where they go to college, the jobs that they get ultimately, those are the metrics by which we should judge is $30.3 billion enough. Let's welcome Mason to the show. Mason used to have a contract with the TDSB. Mason. Yeah. Good morning. Good morning. So I did, but I want to preface what I'm about to say with the fact that I have three kids at the, in the Peel region school board and they have some really awesome teachers. Yeah, that's no, no, you know, we're both on the same page there. Much love, much respect to our teachers.

Yeah. And I think the temp teachers get a bad rap because they come in and they don't really know what to do and how to do it with the particular classroom they've been given. I don't, from my experience, I don't think the support is there for the temp teacher, but the full-time teachers that all three of my kids have had have been absolutely phenomenal. Right. I had a contract with the TDSB for 10 years. This is going back over a decade. Now, can you tell us in what in what field?

Office furniture. Okay. Okay. I can give you one and an antidote. one example of why was training somebody to take over on the dip the delivery side of things and on the basically the the order execution okay so i started to go through the last couple of months of orders and i noticed something from one particular place where

the same employee had ordered the same chair four times in two months, which was a, you know, not necessarily an anomaly, but as I went through all the records, I've been many more times than we were aware of because we would just take an order and execute. Right. Yep. So I said, you know what? I got to go there and I want to actually find out why.

Maybe it was in a clerical era, I don't know. So, I mean, these are $250 chairs. Again, we're going back over a decade. Those would be $500 chairs now. And I went in and I said, I'm here with this particular item, but this is the situation. And they brought out the, basically the vice principal,

I believe it was at the time. Mason I'm gonna I'm gonna need you to get I mean you get there quicker. You said oh a caster which is a wheel broke on each of the chairs that you previously delivered. I said where the because they have a five-year warranty we threw them out. Ah there you go therein lies the rub because of a two dollar wheel right yeah okay but see that those are examples that are, and thank you for the call, I appreciate those. That's an example. And I'm sure that is an example that has been repeated

dozens, hundreds, thousands of times across various school boards, across various years, across various governments, across this province. You put all those together, that's not an insignificant amount of money. And all of a sudden, that is a savings that could go to helping our teachers who help our students. That's all I'm saying. Maybe Joanne agrees with me.

Right in Hey, I am actually wanted to say love your show. But also, Todd McCarthy is my MP in Durham. And I talked to him about a month ago, and he advised me that an audit is started in the TDSB. And an audit is started in the other board, the one where they bought the $80,000 or whatever it was of art. Yes. Yeah. So they're both having audits. And I hope, I hope enough is revealed. I'm sure it will with the TDSB because why I actually phoned was when they say they're changing all the names

of the schools. Yeah. Because I went to Sir John MacDonald, and I'm thinking, well, how much money does that cost? And he's exactly- Well, Joanne, listen, they did save money in that they didn't hire any historians to help them come to that determination. They just did it on feelings. And that to me is, again, a bridge too far. I'm paying for the school.

Parents should have been consulted. Somebody should have been consulted. Just because you as a group decided that you want to be so woke, you're insane. Doesn't mean that you get to do things like that, especially because as, as Greg Brady likes to point out, there's still a school named after Julie Payette, who had to resign in shame from being governor general because she bullied people in the 21st century. Anyway, we got time for one more call.

John, welcome to the show. Yeah, I don't know why we have all of these school boards. If you're a student in Sault Ste. Marie or down in Toronto, you should be teaching the same curriculum. Let's get rid of them, Madam. I'm going to guarantee you can save at least tens of millions, maybe a lot more than that. You should have one for the Catholic school primary schools, one for public school, and one for secondary school, public and Catholic, four school boards at the most. Then you get into the area.

I don't know enough about it to know whether that's how it works. But there's, like I said, there's got to be a best practice somewhere in the world where somebody is doing something that we're not doing that is more efficient, that is more optimized, and that leads to better outcomes. Somebody, someone somewhere has got to be doing it. And why aren't we researching that?

And everything should be on the table. Anyway, I want to thank everybody for participating in this conversation. This is the Ben Mulroney Show, and it feels like we're having sort of a mini, a mini show within a show about education on the Ben Mulroney Show. We just talked about the funding of the public school system in Ontario. If we cast our eye to Alberta, they're having a different conversation, but still, I think, pulls on the same heartstrings and people react from the same emotional place. The Alberta government is set to create guidelines

for what they call age appropriate books that would be allowed in the K through 12 schools. And this is coming in reaction to some books that some parents have flagged as inappropriate. And there's a back and forth going on here, like what is deemed appropriate? From what I saw in a news story, one of the books that was highlighted was a one about,

it was quite sexual and that had drawings of oral sex. I don't care if it is straight or gay or whether the cartoons are of animals or aliens or fictitious beings or human beings. I don't want my kids seeing that at school. Like that's something for me to determine as a parent. So to me, that's easy, low hanging fruit. However, if we're being fair, we've seen stories,

especially in the United States, of people on the right coming for certain books that they didn't like either. And it seems like this, unless this is properly defined, unless this is a well circumscribed procedure, unless this is a well circumscribed procedure, then this is rife for abuse for people who are on either side of the political spectrum looking to get rid of something that they view as problematic to use the parlance of our terms.

And so, for example, like I just gave you an example of overly sexualized content. But here is the Alberta Minister of Education taking questions from the press about, you know, a book that the right probably wouldn't have a problem with, but that somebody on the left might. What if somebody complains about the Bible because there are, you know, not graphic depictions,

I don't believe, but there are written accounts of things like rape and murder and some things that probably are not topics that are not necessarily appropriate for elementary schools, to your point. An individual has the opportunity to raise any objection that they have with any book found in a school library. They can do that currently.

As we go through the next couple of months in engaging on the development of these policies, our intent is to ensure that extreme offenders such as these ones that have been identified do not make their way into a school library. Is it a challenge to have a book that has commentary about violence? Probably not. Is it a problem to have a graphic novel that has graphic depictions of oral sex? Probably. So that's where I think we need to work to draw some of those lines. Yeah, look, when I was a kid and I went into the school library, I don't remember parents worried about the content of the books that were in there.

I think we're living in a time and it's just my own personal feeling, but I'd love to hear from you at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. It feels to me like there are agenda driven people within these systems that are trying to normalize certain things and certain, or it's not normalized because there's like a same sex marriages and relationships are normal and should be treated as such. But normalizing access to sexually explicit material by young kids is wrong. And that wasn't a problem 30 years ago. It is a problem today. And I, and I know for a fact that if somebody, there's a person from a certain type of political background that if they hear me say this are going to call me regressive and anti this

and a foe above that. And that didn't exist 30, 40 years ago. That is the new thing. That is the new thing. And that is, to me, that is the thing that needs to be addressed. Because some people are saying there's no problem with books being, you know, having a question about it. But the question is the system that allows these books to end up in a school. How did it get there in the first place? And it got there because there were certain people looked at and said, yeah, kids need to see this. That's the problem that I have. George,

welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Hey, good morning, Ben. Well, I mean, this this topic, we've been talking about it now for what over two days about a decade now a decade and a half. You want to you want to fix this you want to get rid of it. It's a huge battle. I think we've lost the battle. Because when this was brought up on talk shows, I call all the time and and mentioning it and saying how it's not the right thing and we

shouldn't be going down this path. I was called a homophobe. I was called every name a racist. You know what I mean? But now my daughter gets to know how to flip a condom on a dildo at school, which is great. And that's what we want to endow you. Look, if parents want to teach that to their kids, if they want to go out and buy the... Nobody is suggesting banning books, by the way.

I know that there's certain people in this debate in Alberta they're saying oh it's a slippery slope on the way to banning books. Nobody is suggesting that. This is a grassroots, from what I understand, process by which parents can highlight books that they feel are inappropriate and then there's a system by which to determine if in fact it is inappropriate. I don't see the problem with that. Again, because parents should be the backstop. Parents should be the backstop. And their voice, with all due respect to school administrators, should carry a hell of a lot more weight than an administrator. But thank you very much for the call. And Chris, welcome to the show. You've been in this fight before. Yeah, yeah.

But myself personally, this is a crazy story and it's a great thing for talk radio. Big fan of your dad. Thank you. And great. I'm very passionate about this subject. Thank you. Yeah. So here's what happened.

The parent went to the school last year, just outside of London Catholic School, a primary school, and basically, once the library was right by the office, saw the big pride thing, took pictures, the books in there, they had witchcraft books, the pornographic books you're talking about, and you know, they talked to the bus stop, they did their Facebook checks, and, you know, this brand new principal has this, you know, child that's confused. And so they're like all in on it with all the flags. Long story short, wouldn't talk to the parents, the board got involved. I got trespassed from the school.

It was insane. Had to get had a letter sent last day of school. They had to apologize dealing with the board, but like these principals are out of control. And here's the thing, although the curriculum is controlled by like approved by the Catholic school board, the libraries are exempt. And, and these crazy rogue activist educators, they're, man, you got to, you got to stay on them. Yeah, you do have to sell and Chris, thank you so much for sharing that story. Look, our kids do not need any more help. They already live in a hyper-sexualized environment, right?

They are subject to all sorts of stuff we can't control on the internet. For the love of God, can we please have some controls in the one place we should, in the place we pay for, the public school system. But can we at least agree on that? Thank you to everybody for participating in the conversation. To celebrate the Days of Our Lives 60th anniversary, W Network and Stack TV invite you to enter for a chance to win the ultimate fan experience. By watching new episodes of Days of

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