04) DELIVER A NEEDS-BASED FUNDING FORMULA FOR QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION
Statement by Communist Party of Canada (Ontario), May 14, 2015
Premier Wynne promised to treat teachers and educators fairly when she cleaned up the mess from McGuinty’s despised Bill 115 in 2013. She promised to fight for students while a Trustee during the Mike Harris years, and in 2003 she was part of a Liberal government elected on a promise to deliver a needs-based funding formula for education. Since then a whole student cohort has passed through school on the Liberals’ watch with no new funding formula. She should have kept her word.
Instead, the Wynne government is sacrificing public education – students, staff and schools, to eliminate the $8.5 billion deficit they created with corporate tax cuts worth $19 billion and catastrophic reductions in the corporate tax rate. The Wynne government is also sacrificing hospitals, healthcare, cities, post-secondary education, jobs and services, because it refuses to raise corporate taxes to pay for its $130 billion infrastructure program. In fact the Liberals plan to drop the corporate tax rate even more.
The Liberal prescription for Ontario is austerity, privatization and attacks on labour and democratic rights as needed.
But Wynne had a choice. Instead of cuts and privatization, school closures and asset sales, she could have raised corporate income tax rates, restored the capital tax, repealed corporate tax cuts, collected deferred and unpaid corporate taxes, expanded the wealth tax, introduced an inheritance tax, and established a progressive tax system based on ability to pay.
Instead of attacking teachers and education workers, the Premier could have negotiated a fair provincial agreement, achieved settlements across the province, and kept schools open and operating through June, free of provincial pressure to close and/or sell upwards of 600 schools.
The whole public sector is affected by the Liberals’ wage freeze and “net zero” bargaining. Last month, workers at York University won a breakthrough agreement after a strike supported by many York students. U of T workers who struck at the same time, over the same issues are likely to get a similar settlement in arbitration. Today, secondary and elementary teachers and education workers are leading the fight to maintain quality public education in schools across the province.
The public will not support government attempts to increase class sizes and close schools to cut costs. Students are not widgets on a production line, and schools are not factories. With unity and solidarity, this is a struggle that can be won.
We call on the labour and democratic movements and all those who support free collective bargaining and universal, quality public education to condemn back to work legislation and demand the provincial government and School Boards negotiate in good faith. We demand the Wynne government stop the cuts and school closures and deliver the needs-based funding formula for public education promised in 2003. It’s the Liberals’ failure to deliver this funding formula that is at the heart of this made-in-Queen’s-Park crisis.
We salute teachers and education workers on the line to protect and enhance public education today. We will do everything we can to mobilize solidarity and support across Ontario.
(The above article is from the June 1-15, 2015, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)