Message from an Ontario student
A 5 a.m. meeting triggered by the provincial government’s use of back-to-work legislation woke up members of Ontario’s legislative assembly recently.
It gave them a brief window into the sobering lives of the province’s educational support staff. They got a glimpse of the single mother who has to get up bright and early every single morning seven days a week. The single mother who has to work 12-hour days just to be able to help those she cares about. She has to go through the day, changing diapers, being the target of physical violence and mopping up urine-stained floors in a special-education classroom.
All this for $40,000 a year. What keeps her going is her true passion and sense of duty. Her willingness to serve her community and ensure that all children can succeed.
Unfortunately, this Conservative government is preying upon these workers. It is taking advantage of people’s kind spirits and passion for the jobs they do every day. It is suppressing the voices of the stretched and overworked support staff that the government may not see, but students like myself, rely upon on a daily basis.
They silence the voices of the already marginalized and underserved in order to create a false narrative that their “funding for classrooms” is actually improving educational quality.
A false narrative that they can just hand out $200 to every parent in Ontario, but not afford to give a $3 an hour raise to workers who can barely afford to keep food on the table.
A false narrative that says everything in education is OK, when in reality it is being defunded in favour of billion-dollar highway projects that threaten our food security even further.
The truth must come from within. An awakening that comes not from teachers, who the government has been trying to vilify for the last four years. Not support staff who are the government’s new targets in their war against workers, but students — the ones who the government claims they are fighting for.
As a student within one of the largest school boards in the province, I can tell you this government is not advocating for us. They are using us to sow division in our schools, and using teachers and educational assistants as scapegoats for their shortcomings.
Let me be clear: it will not be a one-day strike that will set back students’ learning. It will be the lack of air conditioning in the sweltering spring, the inaccessible entrances for students with disabilities and the overheating portable projectors that will disrupt our learning.
Next week we will not just have to deal with the realities of an education system overlooked by a misguided government, but support workers, whose kindness, compassion and civic duty make up for our abysmal resources. Their voices are silenced by a government that undervalues the service they provide.
I challenge all members of the legislative assembly to take a $43,000 annual salary until a labour agreement is reached between CUPE and the provincial government. Then they can see the struggles every education worker has to endure on a daily basis. No longer will they be able to sit back with their cushy $140,000 salaries.
Then, it would be their families, their homes, their lives on the line, instead of education workers suffering in the dark while logical fallacies and rhetorical clichés are spewed by Conservative members who make four times the amount that they do.
Conservative members who will never have to change the diaper of a 16-year-old child. Conservative members who will never be assaulted by a behaviour issues. Conservative members who will never have to worry if they will be able to feed their families. Conservative members who are able to go home at the end of the day and spend quality time with their families and not have to work a second job through the wee hours of the night.