March 3, 2006 Highlights

On March 2, 2006 the Legislature adjourned its brief three-week, mid-winter session. The Legislature will reconvene on Monday March 23 when Finance Minister Dwight Duncan is scheduled to deliver the 2006 provincial budget.

1. Education Minister Introduces Legislation with a Broad Range of Reforms

On March 2, 2006 Education Minister Gerard Kennedy introduced Bill 78, omnibus legislation that includes a broad range of long-awaited educational reforms. Highlights of the bill include:

New Teachers

• Repealing the Ontario Teacher Qualifying Test (OTQT) and replacing it with a requirement for new teachers to complete the proposed one-year New Teacher Induction Program (NTIP).
• Establishing an induction program for new teachers that will include orientation, mentoring with an experienced teacher, and a streamlined performance appraisal process.
• Streamlining teacher performance appraisal process for new teachers to allow them to complete the process after two successful appraisals in the first year. (Those new teachers who do not receive two successful ratings in their first year will have a second round of performance appraisals in their second year.)
• Reducing the rating categories for new teacher performance appraisals from four to two. (Similar reforms will be forthcoming for other teachers and school administrators.)

PA Days

• Increasing the number of Professional Activity Days (PA days) from four to six and establishing the regulatory authority to determine the purpose of PA days.

College of Teachers

• Increasing the number of elected teacher positions on the governing council of the Ontario College of Teachers from 13 to 19 and maintaining the current 14 appointed positions and four designated categories for principals/vice-principals, supervisory officers, faculty of education, and independent schools thereby giving classroom teachers a clear majority on the council.
• Restricting representatives from certain organizations, such as teacher federations, from eligibility for election to the college’s governing council.

Workload Minimums for Teachers

• Removing the current provisions in the Education Act that set out the weekly minimum number of minutes teachers are required to provide instruction and providing the regulatory authority to address this issue hereby providing more flexibility to reflect changes flowing from the Provincial Framework Agreement and the most recent round of teacher bargaining.

Ministry and Board Responsibilities

• Establishing the regulatory authority to set expectations about school boards’ use of resources, student outcomes, parental engagement, special education, student health and safety, and reporting to the public.

School Trustees

• Allowing school trustees to set their compensation within limits to be set in regulation.
• Allowing student trustees to participate in recorded, but non-binding, votes.
• Providing scholarships for student trustees in lieu of compensation.

For ETFO’s response to Bill 78, check this link: Education Reforms Support Teacher and Student Success - March 3, 2006

2. Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs)

Much of the focus in the Legislature this week was on the government’s legislation that proposes to decentralize the management of health care services to local health integration networks (LHINs). The Tory caucus has been critical of the legislation arguing that the local networks simply add another layer of costly bureaucracy to health care and threaten to reduce accessibility to services; the NDP has charged that the LHINs are part of the government’s move toward greater privatization in health care.

On February 28, NDP Leader Howard Hampton stated:

“You will set up LHIN boards and LHIN areas in northern Ontario that are larger than most European countries, yet you call this local decision-making about health care; you will give the Minister of Health the authority to order the privatization, for example, of things like hospital cleaning and hospital food services, which directly impact patient care; and you want to do this at a time when the public has spent most of the last eight or nine weeks focused on events in Ottawa.”

Premier McGuinty responded:

“What I believe to be unfair is when the leader of the NDP needlessly frightens Ontarians. I think we have a shared responsibility here to talk about the facts as they exist. The leader of the NDP says that this somehow represents some kind of a conspiracy to introduce more private delivery of health care. I want to remind Ontarians that this is the same Mr. Hampton whose government privatized services at the following hospitals: St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital in 1993, the Trillium Health Centre in 1994, the Halton health care centre in 1992 and the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital in 1991."

“I am proud to say that on our watch, as a result of investments we have made, there are now 13,000 more people working in health care in the province of Ontario. If anybody is committed to better health care for more Ontarians, it's this government.”

Bill 36, the Local Health System Integration Act that establishes the LHINs, received Third Reading on March 1.

3. Child Poverty

On March 2, Ontario Campaign 2000, the advocacy organization committed to addressing issues related to child poverty released its annual report.

The organization reported that the provincial child poverty rate “is stalled at 16%” and called on the Ontario government to adopt an action plan to address the issue by investing in child care, increasing social assistance rates, further increasing the minimum wage, investing in affordable housing, and expanding services for new immigrants.

For more information about the Ontario Campaign 2000 report, check this link: http://www.campaign2000.ca/

When NDP Leader Howard Hampton raised the issue of child poverty in the Legislature following release of the report, Community and Social Services Minister Sandra Pupatello stated her government had raised social assistance rates by 3%, increased the minimum wage, and stopped the clawback of the National Child Benefit Supplement. (The McGuinty government did not, however, roll back the portion of the clawback instituted by the previous Tory government.) The Minister suggested the Best Start plan for child care expansion in Ontario was now in question, in part, because the federal NDP supported the motion that defeated the previous Liberal government.

4. Writ Issued for Byelections

Premier Dalton McGuinty announced on March 1 that the three byelections in the ridings of Nepean-Carleton, Toronto-Danforth, and Whitby-Ajax will take place on Thursday, March 30. The vacancies were created when the three former MPPs resigned to run in the recent federal election.

For more information, check the website of the Ontario Legislature: www.ontla.on.ca