Doug Ford’s ‘education consultations’ leave parents behind

NDP Education critic Marit Stiles says that after months of delays, the Ford government’s education consultations are already off to a rocky start.

“People are concerned about the rollback of sex education to the last century, the stopping of the Indigenous curriculum writing, and the cancellation of this year’s grants to parent councils that would allow parents to engage other parents in the education of their children,” said Stiles.
“But on Thursday, people in northwestern Ontario were given less than 24 hours’ notice of their education telephone town hall. And if they somehow found out that the sign-up link was active, they had just five hours to register before the cut-off deadline.

“To make matters worse, for those very few who did manage to get on the northwest regional town hall, less than 15 minutes were dedicated to input on the health and physical education curriculum, which is the supposed reason for the entire consultation taking place.
“The scope of these consultations has only grown while the means of participating seems to be shrinking.”
Stiles put the question directly to the Ford government Monday at Queen’s Park.
“How can Ontarians trust the outcome of these consultations if the process is already showing such serious flaws?”

No clear answers have been provided by Ford.