Teachers union throws support behind Horwath
‘Historic’ endorsement comes after years of Liberal support
Ontario’s elementary educators want to teach the Liberals a lesson.
On Thursday, their union officially endorsed Andrea Horwath and her New Democratic Party for the upcoming election, saying that elementary teachers, like Ontario voters, are looking for new leadership.
“It’s clear that Ontarians believe it’s time for change after 15 years of Liberal government,” Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), said at union headquarters in downtown Toronto where Horwath made a campaign stop Thursday morning.
Horwath called it a “historic endorsement” and an “incredible moment.”
Although ETFO has never officially thrown its support to any one party, for decades the Liberals have received widespread support from teachers. But Hammond said union members “were quite frankly blown away by how progressive and solid” the NDP platform is, “and that it was all costed. That was very important to us.”
As well, Hammond said concerns about relations with the governing Liberals have been growing. “For some time now, our members, our executive, have felt that the Liberal government has not been working closely with us for the betterment of students and publicly funded education,” he said. Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne played down the endorsement.
“We’ve been working with teachers, we’ve been increasing teachers’ salaries,” Wynne told reporters during a campaign stop at the Hospital for Sick Children.
“We’re putting more teachers into schools,” she said, recalling walking picket lines in solidarity with striking teachers in Toronto in 1987 when she was a parent activist.
“The unions, the federations, they make decisions on an election-by-election basis. We haven’t always had, as a party, the full support of all of the unions or the federations. That’s not the case.”
The NDP has pledged to cap full-day kindergarten classes at 26 students, review the education funding formula, scrap and replace standardized testing, ban kindergarten-Grade 1 split classes, hire more teachers and school staff, and put $16 billion into school repairs. Horwath also said an NDP government would keep a moratorium on school closings and promote turning underenrolled schools into community hubs.
ETFO says that in elections between 2003 and 2014, it supported NDP and Liberal candidates to keep the Progressive Conservatives out.