Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

David, I’ll move over to you. First of all, I want to say that I wholeheartedly agree that the funding formula is outdated and flawed. I do want to speak to ETFO’s advocacy for a fully integrated model. Recent data shows that nearly 46% of our schools face daily shortages of EAs, speech pathologists, OTs, and other professional support staff, because those people are actually moving toward private practice or ambulatory health care. So if the human capital—the EAs, the OTs, speech pathologists—doesn’t exist in the current labour market to provide a full complement, how does ETFO propose we stretch those limited resources without compromising student and teacher safety? We can’t continue to stretch. So what is your thought on that? And would ETFO be supportive, in the meantime, while we wait for an updated funding formula, of moving towards specialized hubs or centres of excellence to consolidate those limited supports?

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Mr. David Mastin

Thanks for the question. I can’t speak to the limited supports and why there are limited supports in the categories that you’ve identified. I can certainly talk about occasional teachers; I can talk about teachers; I can talk about early childhood educators—and our data would suggest that there’s not a shortage of them at all. There are plenty of certified members out there who are not working in the system because the system is not one that they want to stay in. The working conditions are not appealing enough for them to stay in that role. I can’t speak with any knowledge to your other points. Federico, who is online with me, might be able to speak to some of those points.

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Mr. Federico Carvajal

Thanks, David. On this, it’s not really a labour market issue—it’s more the situation that funding has eroded. What we have seen is the decrease over time, in school boards across the province, of those professional categories of support.

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The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

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Mr. Federico Carvajal

We have seen EAs being reduced; we’ve seen psychologists being reduced in schools. Obviously, what ends up happening is that that has a compounding effect on the working conditions of those remaining in the system, adding additional pressures, leading to additional burnout, and it starts compounding that exit from those jobs. Really, it’s much more of an issue of funding not being allocated for school boards to be able to hire for those positions, rather than the availability of professionals in those categories. I hope that helps.

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Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

I guess my fear is that they’re gone. It doesn’t matter, really, where they’ve gone. They’re gone. There is a thinning of resources that I think we need to recognize. We need to figure out how we deal with that while we wait for an updated funding formula.

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The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

MPP Racinsky.

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Mr. Joseph Racinsky

I’ll turn it over to Michael. We’re living in a very different age than we did a hundred years ago, with libraries. Looking ahead, what’s your vision for the future of libraries in Ontario? How do you see their role in the next decade?

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Mr. Michael Ciccone

That’s a big question. I do want to say, first and foremost, that books are still very popular. One of the issues we’re facing is that the increase in digital collections is astronomical, but the decrease in interest in physical materials is a very slow-moving slope downward. There’s still a lot of interest; specifically, for children’s material, because it never really translated very well to the digital form. We still have a lot of books, and we’re still circulating a lot of books. Just going back to what I was saying before—the library has become such an important space. We just had a renovation of our Sherwood branch in the Sherwood mall in London. The use of it, the visits, went up 30%, as compared to 2024 at the same time, in the last quarter of 2025, and they’re holding steady. It’s remarkable to see—it’s a big teen branch—how many teens are going to that branch. There are computers. We have a gaming room. We have all of these things to allow them the opportunity to be together in these spaces that they wouldn’t normally have. We’ve always had that aspect of it; it has just grown more important. We have meeting rooms for people to rent or use. We have study rooms for people to use. We still have computers. We still have a wireless network that is no strings attached—we don’t ask for anything; they come in and they connect. We are still one of the few public spaces available to members of the public, and I think people see that value. Really, use has stayed pretty steady over the last five years, I’d say. Ever since the pandemic—things went down, obviously, during the pandemic, but they have continued to rise, and I think you see that across the board. Certainly, in Toronto, you can look at their statistics and see how remarkable it is—how well-used that system is. You see that all across Ontario and even across the country.

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Mr. Joseph Racinsky

And with technology adapting—what kind of things are you taking on as libraries, and what innovation are you most excited about going forward?

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Mr. Michael Ciccone

I don’t know if I’m excited about AI, but we’re certainly exploring it. I think we do have a responsibility to start—there are a lot of complications with AI. There are copyright aspects of it; there’s misinformation, and so on and so forth. We are actually just at the starting point of starting to delve into it to see what we can share with the public. And then, just all the equipment—I mentioned virtual reality; all of these things that we can showcase at the library that people can come and use. We have recording studios. Podcasting is so popular now—everybody has one. We have a recording studio that people can come in and rent and use to record their podcast. We’re probably going to expand that service going forward, and I think a lot of libraries have already done so. There’s a lot we can do with the space that we have. We are that community connector, I think, first and foremost. I think in a recent podcast I just said, “Think of the person in the community you trust the most. We’re the equivalent in the community, in terms of service.”

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The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Further questions? You have 1.4 minutes. If not, it’s gone. We’ll go to MPP Bell.

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Ms. Jessica Bell

My questions will be focused on David from the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario. When you were talking about the rise of class sizes in schools, especially in the grade 4 to grade 8 age, alarm bells just went off in my head—it’s the key learning years. I actually took a look at the Education Act the other day, and it is shocking that there are no class caps. We are seeing in the TDSB—it’s an area that I represent—ultra-large class sizes, where teachers are just completely overwhelmed. They don’t have access to high-quality, relevant textbooks. They are buying their own paper. One teacher told me a few days ago that they have 12 kids in their class who have IEPs, and there’s one educational assistant for the entire school—JK to grade 8. So you know that educational assistant is never coming into that class—or if they do, it will be for 10 minutes to deal with a disruptive student, and then out they go to another crisis. Anyway, thank you for your work. I have some specific questions. I’m very interested in learning outcomes for students. How do we get kids reading, writing, performing well in math, reaching their full potential? I don’t love the EQAO, but I do look at the results. What we saw with the latest results that came out in December is that kids are not meeting benchmarks. They’re just straight up not meeting benchmarks, and the Minister of Education said, “I’m going to pay these consultants $1,500 a day to take a deep dive and look at the learning curriculum and try to work out why.” I’m thinking this is an opportunity for you to give the Conservatives some free advice on what we can do to improve learning outcomes.

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Mr. David Mastin

Well, that’s at the heart of everything that we focus on as well. We have 84,000 people in this province who are concerned about that as well. That’s why they came into this profession. So it’s incredibly important. You talked about EQAO, and I’ll just touch on that for a moment. There are many, many, many ways for us to make sure that the system is accountable. There’s a lot of money that goes into public education. We all understand that. There need to be accountability measures. There are ways of doing that without targeting communities; without making communities feel small; without ranking schools; without some of the pressures that are downloaded onto school boards, onto administrators in order to bring the test scores up in a false or a sort of less-than-organic way. So there are lots of things that we could offer on that. I’ve actually had a sit-down with Minister Calandra and suggested that I’d like to have a sit-down and talk about EQAO and what we can do to talk about accountability without still having some of those inappropriate tangential pieces that come with EQAO testing. Grade 4 to 8 classes—you brought that up earlier. The class sizes are too big. The teachers are stretched too thin. The kids are struggling too much. Investments have to be made. We’re focusing on class size right now, but we have about 10 items that we’re going to bring to the bargaining table that are focused on making the system better. This is one thing that I wish people understood: It used to be that when we went to the bargaining table, we would talk about salary; we would talk about prep time; we would talk about benefits; we would talk about things that are basically worker-centred. Now we’re finding ourselves talking about student-centred things that should be just taken for granted; they should be embedded in the system. We shouldn’t have to fight for a child to have their needs met in a school. That’s not what collective bargaining should be—but we’ve found ourselves in that position, where we have to negotiate, actually, the learning conditions, rather than the working conditions for our members. We know they’re tied—but we’re more focused on the learning conditions, because these kids are hurting so badly. Our members, who are desperately wanting to improve those lives—they can’t, and so they’re hitting the bricks.

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Ms. Jessica Bell

My second question is really focused on the Minister of Education’s, I’d say, unnecessary fixation with school board trustees.

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The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

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Ms. Jessica Bell

In the Toronto District School Board, we now have an unelected supervisor who gets paid $350,000 a year. Parents have nowhere to go when they’ve got a complaint or a concern. What are you hearing from teachers who are operating in school boards that have been taken over? What changes are you seeing?

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Mr. David Mastin

We’re hearing about rapidly increasing complaints and changes that are happening. This is fairly new, still, so when you make a change at that level, it takes a little while for our members on the ground to really see that. But we’re meeting with our local leaders in those takeover school boards once a month, and we’re getting updates. The things we’re hearing about are just mind-blowing: firing of teachers; firing of directors; governance decisions that are made by one person who’s not accountable to the communities that they’re working in, making exorbitant sums of money—almost exceeding the money that the trustees—

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The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you very much. That concludes that question. It also completes this panel. I want to thank the panel very much for taking the time to prepare and to come and present it to us today. We will take the information forward as we proceed through this program. Are there any questions or any comments from the committee? If not, that concludes the public hearing for today. I thank everybody for their participation. As a reminder, the deadline for written submissions is 6 p.m., Thursday, January 29, 2026. This committee now stands adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, January 22, 2026, when we will resume public hearings in Niagara Falls.

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The committee adjourned at 1658.

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STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

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Chair / Président

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Hon. Ernie Hardeman (Oxford PC)

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First Vice-Chair / Première Vice-Présidente

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Ms. Doly Begum (Scarborough Southwest / Scarborough-Sud-Ouest ND)

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Second Vice-Chair / Deuxième Vice-Président

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Mr. Rob Cerjanec (Ajax L)

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Ms. Doly Begum (Scarborough Southwest / Scarborough-Sud-Ouest ND)

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Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady (Haldimand–Norfolk IND)

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Mr. Rob Cerjanec (Ajax L)

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Hon. Ernie Hardeman (Oxford PC)

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Mr. Logan Kanapathi (Markham–Thornhill PC)

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Mr. Joseph Racinsky (Wellington–Halton Hills PC)

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MPP Bill Rosenberg (Algoma–Manitoulin PC)

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Mr. Brian Saunderson (Simcoe–Grey PC)

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Ms. Sandy Shaw (Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas / Hamilton-Ouest–Ancaster–Dundas ND)

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Mr. Dave Smith (Peterborough–Kawartha PC)

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Ms. Effie J. Triantafilopoulos (Oakville North–Burlington / Oakville-Nord–Burlington PC)

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Substitutions / Membres remplaçants

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Mr. Robert Bailey (Sarnia–Lambton PC)

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Ms. Jessica Bell (University–Rosedale ND)

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Ms. Peggy Sattler (London West / London-Ouest ND)

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Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes

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Ms. Stephanie Bowman (Don Valley West / Don Valley-Ouest L)

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Ms. Lee Fairclough (Etobicoke–Lakeshore L)

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Mr. Terence Kernaghan (London North Centre / London-Centre-Nord ND)

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Mr. Adil Shamji (Don Valley East / Don Valley-Est L)

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Clerk pro tem / Greffière par interim

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Ms. Thushitha Kobikrishna

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Staff / Personnel

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Mr. Alex Alton, research officer, Research Services

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