00:00:00.000class is in session hey how you doing welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session you just got
00:00:08.440me today guys just me myself and a lot of pent-up anger um what i'm going to talk about today is
00:00:17.900actually been going on in ontario canada right now and it's kind of popped off in the last week
00:00:24.840even though it has been building steam for quite some time. And obviously, I'm on social media a
00:00:30.440lot, sort of running my mouth as I tend to do. And I've been over on TikTok, because I love it there.
00:00:36.720And of course, I go over to Twitter. And Twitter's a very different animal. It's a very angry animal.
00:00:43.800It's not for the faint of heart. So let me first break you into what's going on in Ontario
00:00:51.420regarding teachers and regarding educational workers, and then I'm going to go through my
00:00:57.840perspective, sort of the anger that has hit me, and then what I think the solutions are. So here
00:01:04.820we go. First and foremost, what's happening in Ontario is that educational support workers under
00:01:10.400the union QP, so we're talking about educational assistants, ECEs, we're talking about administrative
00:01:17.860staff, janitorial staff, all of the educational support was everybody but teachers who are in a
00:01:25.740different union altogether. And that's a bit of a problem, in my opinion, but a different union
00:01:29.640altogether. They have been bargaining with the Ontario government for quite some time and have
00:01:36.280come to no resolution. They had a vote in their union, which is policy, and they got a very
00:01:42.900substantial strike mandate. And what that means is if as a union, you're able to go on strike,
00:01:50.860you need to have a significant body of your union itself vote to go on strike. So they have that.
00:01:59.420I can't remember the number, so I don't want to say them on here, but they had a significant
00:02:03.080strike mandate. Now, they demanded X amount. The government came back with nothing. To be honest,
00:02:11.380I think the very first problem is that the public is aware of what's going on behind closed doors
00:02:16.500at all. So the first and foremost problem is the fact that when you are collectively bargaining,
00:02:21.860which is a charter right in Canada, so it's a constitutional right in Canada,
00:02:26.340when you're collectively bargaining, it is supposed to be done in good faith. And when
00:02:29.700you say things are done in good faith, it's not supposed to go to the media.
00:02:33.460It's not supposed to be public knowledge. We shouldn't be talking about 11%. We shouldn't
00:02:38.260be talking about infrastructure spending as the public. We shouldn't know any of that,
00:02:43.380but somehow we always do. And it usually is the government releasing this information,
00:02:49.220which I don't understand how that happens and how that's allowed to happen. But bygones,
00:02:54.980let's move on from that. So the demands were made. The strike mandate was set. The government
00:03:00.420didn't want to budge. The union reduced how much money they wanted. Everybody was done. The union
00:03:06.660said, we're striking. So the Ford government, in an insane move, decided to vote and invoke
00:03:17.920something called in Canada, the notwithstanding clause. And without getting into it so incredibly
00:03:24.360specifically, because it is confusing, think about it like this. In 1982, when Canada created its own
00:03:30.860constitution, prior to that, we followed the British constitutional framework. But in 1982,
00:03:36.660We created and passed our own under Pierre Trudeau. Yes, Justin Trudeau's dad. And in that moment, a lot of provinces, a few key provinces didn't want to sign on to this new charter because they thought that this charter and these federal regulations could discriminatorily impact specific provinces more than another.
00:04:01.000Let me give you an example. So if I said something like there is, you know, the entire country is
00:04:08.200bilingual and everything has to be done bilingually. Well, Quebec could raise a question
00:04:14.400and raise a constitutional question stating that as a French province, and especially when they
00:04:20.520signed on to the constitution as a French province, they have to protect their French language rights.
00:04:25.520and we have given them credit to do so. So this kind of overarching charter right might start to
00:04:34.160discriminatorily, individually supersede their language rights in their province. And therefore,
00:04:40.160they might use and have used, Quebec has used the notwithstanding clause 21 times,
00:04:44.640and might use it to protect the federal government from particularly intruding upon
00:04:50.880their province in a specific way. Another province who could have a problem with the charter or with
00:04:57.060these kind of things would be Alberta, because Alberta obviously has a lot of our natural
00:05:02.020resources. So when it comes to distribution of money or distribution of wealth, Alberta could
00:05:10.100have a disproportional sort of need to protect a resource that Ontario doesn't have, right?
00:05:17.940Different provinces have different needs, and they have different things they're bringing to the table.
00:05:22.200So I understand the notwithstanding clause being used in that framework.
00:06:29.860No, they all went on strike on Friday.
00:06:32.620Everybody walked out and everybody is upset.
00:06:36.780So first and foremost, I go into social media, obviously defending two things, defending the incredible importance of EAs and ECEs and defending the importance of obviously custodial staff and janitorial staff and all of those individuals, defending the importance of a strong administrative body that runs schools and makes everything run smooth.
00:07:04.420all of those things are necessarily important. And EAs for a very long time, and I'm going to
00:07:10.340get to something that EAs do, but EAs for a very long time have been significantly underpaid and
00:07:16.400not just underpaid because they do such an amazing job. And I'm comparing what their pay is compared
00:07:23.220to what they do. Underpaid because that's how the government has set it up because they've done the
00:07:28.640same kind of crap in the healthcare industry. Let me be clear. So back in the day, we used to have0.96
00:07:36.860streaming, right? We used to have kids with different learning abilities, different capacities,
00:07:42.160different potential, maybe with hearing impairments, visual impairments, maybe with
00:07:47.100physical disabilities, maybe learning disabilities. And all of these kids back in my time,
00:07:55.340yes, I am 47, they would have been put in another room. They would have put in lower academic
00:08:00.780classes. They never would have been integrated into the sort of regular stream classes. They
00:08:06.480would have been segregated and said, we have to deal with them over here because the standard
00:08:11.460streaming can't deal with all of those exceptionalities. In the last, I would say,
00:08:17.26020 years, longer since, but really in the last 20 years, we've seen a significant push away from
00:08:24.420that. Understanding a few things. Understanding that just because a kid doesn't learn in the
00:08:31.380static way that the educational system has been set up, i.e. sit down, take notes, write notes,
00:08:38.100eventually memorize them all, and then regurgitate it on a test and exam. Just because a kid can't
00:08:44.300perform in that capacity does not mean they're not intelligent, does not mean they're not capable,
00:08:49.440and does not mean that they don't have a firm grasp on the information
00:08:54.080and the level of education that they should have a firm grasp on
00:08:59.240in order to do well in that class and move on.
00:09:02.560So in the last 20 years, we've come to a lot of different sort of acknowledgements,
00:09:06.940A, different learning styles and different learning capacities, right?
00:09:12.480You'll hear people who are auditory learners, visual learners,
00:09:16.600who are bodily kinesthetic learners, all these different kind of learners. Now, can we accommodate
00:09:21.140for them all? Absolutely, we can't. I get it. We can't. Can we accommodate for more? Yes, we can.
00:09:30.560Absolutely, we can. If a kid can't sit down and write a test for some reason or another,
00:09:37.300whatever the processing difficulty is, yet can stand in front of me and talk about World War II
00:09:44.740with the depth and level of articulation that would be impressive to anybody, why wouldn't
00:09:53.260that kid get the mark? Why wouldn't that kid be understood? And why wouldn't that student be passed
00:10:00.300and be given good marks and decent marks in order to go ahead and be successful? There's no reason.
00:10:05.840The only reason in the past was the standard answer. This is how we do it. And if you can't
00:10:10.740it the way we do it you're not right so a lot of those kids back in the day and a lot of people
00:10:15.380are wondering why is it so different well i'll tell you why it was different because 20 30 years
00:10:18.900ago those kids were kicked out of school those kids would fail out of school those kids would
00:10:24.260be deemed to be problem kids troubled kids those kids would be they would people would make
00:10:30.580assumptions about their level of intelligence and capacity and relegate them to open courses
00:10:36.500They are never going to college. They are never going to university. We had done a huge disservice
00:10:43.180to a whole bunch of kids. And I sometimes sit back and wonder, I wonder how many geniuses we lost.
00:10:48.460I wonder how many brilliant kids we actually let slip through the cracks and ignore, not even slip
00:10:55.500through the cracks, actually kicked out the door because we didn't have a system that could
00:11:00.500accommodate and that could change and that could be a little bit more fluid in its application of
00:11:05.280education. I wonder that. And now we have a money problem. So back in the day, they were in separate
00:11:12.300places. And at some point in the mid 70s to pushing the 80s, we started realizing that
00:11:19.580individuals with different abilities, back then it was called a disability, but with different
00:11:23.680abilities, had the potential, had the capacity to do better and to do more. And in order to see how
00:11:31.100they were going to work in this world, it made sense academically to integrate them into mainstream
00:11:38.700classes. And when we did that in high school, there's one effect. When we did that in elementary
00:11:43.500school, we had a problem because some of these kids either socially, physically, sometimes mentally
00:11:50.220couldn't quite integrate quick enough or well enough or smooth enough. And so educational
00:11:56.780assistants were put into that classroom in order to help, you know, improve their chances of
00:12:02.600becoming successful. Now, there's two reasons we did that. We did that to help the kids get
00:12:08.340successful. Absolutely, we did. I think there's also a motivation here and an underlying motivation
00:12:13.700that did this. We also wanted a good teacher to student ratio. Now, teachers in Ontario have been
00:12:20.360paid very well. I'll be the first person to say that. I think they deserve every cent, but they
00:12:25.660have been paid very well. And a union and the fight of a union has been a big reason for that.
00:12:32.100Now, if I'm going to put 20, 25, 30 kids in a class with no exceptionalities,
00:12:38.820that's not that hard as a teacher. Are you with me so far?
00:12:46.040It's not that hard to regulate that kind of class, to teach that kind of class,
00:12:50.300to understand that everybody's going to be on the same page and I can have one learning style and
00:12:54.640one set of expectations and I don't need to adjust. I don't need to accommodate. I don't
00:12:58.460need to change my methodology for anybody in that room. But as soon as I start integrating into that
00:13:04.720class, as soon as I start having different exceptionalities, kids that are battling through
00:13:09.880autism, kids that are dyslexic, kids that are visually impaired, hearing impaired,
00:13:15.500all of those things, by the way, do not in no way, shape or form limit the level of intelligence or
00:13:24.200capacity in that student, but what will limit the level of capacity is how much we are willing to
00:13:30.120accommodate and shape a system in order to get the best out of them. Now, the public system
00:13:36.660doesn't want to hire more teachers. Why? Well, we're expensive. That makes sense.
00:13:44.860They don't want to have fewer kids in a classroom. As you guys all might know, I work in a private
00:13:50.500school i teach kids with different um learning abilities i teach kids that are on the spectrum
00:13:57.060with dyslexia with all of these things yet yet i have class sizes that are 10 15 students
00:14:05.780so what i can do is i can do all those magical things that a lot of teachers can do if their
00:14:11.220class sizes were small enough if they're not and you have 20 25 30 kids in a class then you need
00:14:18.740help. You need help to help the students who aren't necessarily on the exact same path as
00:14:25.620everybody else. You need help. They need help in order to bring them up to speed, to make them feel
00:14:30.340confident, to make them feel empowered, to give them a fighting chance to be successful in the
00:14:36.880ways that you need them to be successful in. So all of this is true. But the brilliance they did
00:14:42.540with EAs is they did this. They told EAs they need less education than a typical teacher would.
00:14:50.400And since they needed less education, they would be paid less. Since we were going to slightly
00:14:55.520change their expectations, they wouldn't have the same pay grade. This is a brilliant way to
00:15:02.560put more adults in the room who are completely capable and amazing and dedicated to those
00:15:09.200students, but one of those adults, we can pay as the public board, 50% less, 60% less in some cases.
00:15:21.640So it's a way you save money, right? And I often look at these EAs and what they do and how amazing
00:15:29.020they are. And by the way, I haven't even got to, and I'm not going to speak to it in depth because
00:15:33.760I don't have as much experience, but I haven't even got to. The physical job they have. The
00:15:39.420Ontario government has just downloaded more healthcare responsibilities to EAs. So they
00:15:45.700have to deal with kids that have physical outbursts, that have other issues, health issues.
00:15:52.240And I'm not going to go into all of them right here, but other health issues that should be held
00:15:56.400or should be dealt with by healthcare professionals. But they're not. They're now
00:16:02.800being downloaded to the EAs. The EA is getting more work and now the EAs and now this group of
00:16:08.280people are starting to demand to be paid more. And it's not just pay, by the way. There was a
00:16:13.480whole list of demands, again, which we shouldn't have seen during negotiations that seemed
00:16:18.880relatively rational to me. So all this comes to a head. And the response by the Ford government
00:16:26.380is they're essential. They're essential. How dare they, right after COVID and after all this,
00:16:32.800how dare they keep kids out of the room? They don't care about kids. They don't care about
00:16:36.180kids. And the Ford government keeps pushing this agenda. My initial response is make them essential.0.60
00:16:41.900A lot of people don't understand this. Nurses are essential. Firefighters are essential.0.99
00:16:48.400Police officers are essential. Why? Well, they were made essential and they're all unionized,
00:16:53.520which means they cannot strike. Because if they went on strike, the power they could wield
00:16:58.500And the dangers would be physical, right? Life and death dangers, physical dangers that they could wield. And that's way too much power for a union to have. But here's the tradeoff. Since they can't strike, what happens is when, let's say nurses, when nurses can't come to a contract negotiation conclusion with management, an arbitrator is called in.
00:17:22.260And this arbitrator will sit down, will look at both sides of the equation, look at what's being asked, look at what management wants.
00:17:29.000They will then look at precedent and labor law, and then they will apply a fair and just contract.
00:17:37.200Why not do that with educational workers?
00:17:40.200Some people would say, well, it's not life and death, Joanna.
00:17:47.220However, have we not spent the last two years, the government anyways, professing that it is?
00:17:54.600Have we not spoken about how kids being out of school is actually such a significant mental health crisis that kids' lives were being lost?
00:18:09.660And if that's the case, if that's the case, can we not now make teachers essential?
00:18:16.620and educational workers essential this is an essential part mental health is an essential part
00:18:23.900of our physical well-being it is life and death so why can't we make that so i'll tell you why
00:18:32.460they don't want to make it so and there's one really good reason because the government would
00:18:36.540lose calling in an arbitrator would mean that the government and what they're offering
00:18:44.620is so bare bones that the arbitrator would never agree with the government. And the government
00:18:53.500doesn't want to roll that dice, so they won't even consider making them essential. And going
00:18:58.620through this kind of constitutional arrangement that we would have to change the nature of
00:19:03.380education, well, maybe now's the time. Maybe now's the time. I will not sit here and say
00:19:11.980what a person's job is valued at, that's an incredibly difficult, very, very difficult
00:19:19.940thing to do. And a lot of people outside of it are very quick to say they're not worth it.
00:19:26.080Do you know what I get paid? Whatever. And a lot of people are very quick to say that. I don't know
00:19:30.800if I can say that, but I know who can. Somebody who is an expert in that vicinity, right? An
00:19:37.980arbitrator, studied labor law, educational law, has studied precedent, understands the value of
00:19:45.880labor and how to apply that accordingly, give the power to them. I'm okay with that. But again,
00:19:53.260I ask you, why do you think the government isn't? Right? And I sit back and I watch everybody get
00:20:00.300angry and draw comparisons. And heaven forbid, I'm not going to go into comparisons with
00:20:05.520the bouncy castle people. I can't. I can't. I supported their right to protest. Absolutely.
00:20:13.280Absolutely. I support their right to protest, but they didn't protest. They moved in.
00:20:18.680And their demand, one of their primary demands was that the prime minister resign,
00:20:24.340a democratically elected prime minister who just was recently elected. These are not the
00:20:29.440same categories of things. But if you want me to do one on that, I will, even though I have in the
00:20:34.700past. So now we sit here, right? We sit here with people that have a fundamental disdain,
00:20:43.640which shocks me considering what it was like when they were home, kids were home for two years. And
00:20:49.820I thought there would have been a level of respect for what teachers actually do. But now we sit in
00:20:56.480this position where there's such a disdain. And I think the disdain is for two things, teachers,
00:21:03.600100%. People have had disdain for teachers. Why? Two reasons. Primarily, they relegated us to being
00:21:11.060babysitters, which is asinine, but they're also really, really, really angry about the two months
00:21:16.160off in the summer. They just don't think we put in enough hours to get the pay we get. I can argue
00:21:21.400that separately. But here's another thing. I think people are really, really mad, really angry at
00:21:29.000unions and the only people that are really angry at unions are people that are not a part of them
00:21:36.760and i've i've heard a lot i've gotten a lot of vitriol especially on on twitter about about
00:21:43.080well do you know what i get paid you know what i go through i don't get this this and this and
00:21:47.720all i hear in my head even though you can't have a rational discussion on twitter very often0.98
00:21:51.880All I hear in my head is, dude, you're getting screwed too.0.98
00:22:00.620It's like if they don't have protection, if they don't have this kind of support, if they can't enforce this kind of healthy labor law imbalance of power, people are so angry they don't want anyone to be able to do it.
00:22:16.840especially when, and let's acknowledge this, especially when, when they do go on strike,
00:22:23.140your kids are at home. And if your kids are at home, somebody needs to stay home.
00:22:26.440And I understand the, you know, difficulty, if not impossibility of that particular situation.
00:22:36.020I get it. And again, remember me over here, make them essential. I agree with it. Make them
00:22:41.880essential. But the union factor is interesting. And I want to talk about that for a second,
00:22:48.480because a lot of people are really bitter about unions. But let me be clear.
00:22:52.400Most of everybody else's job, whether you have a, if you don't have a union, is still contingent
00:22:58.940upon what the union in other professions has done, and the standards they've set,
00:23:04.960and the labor precedences they've set, and the way that a lot of those fights have been
00:23:11.080translated into provincial and federal law. Let me give you one example. Post office workers,
00:23:17.400postal workers went on strike. Oh gosh, I'm going to mess up this year. I want to say the 80s,
00:23:24.320went on strike for 42 days or so, and they won a 17-week maternity leave, paternity leave.
00:23:34.16017 weeks, they won that. Paid paternal leave, maternity, I think just at the time.0.75
00:23:40.340And eventually what that translated into, eventually what it translated into was the federal government acknowledging the need and the human right and the labor law precedent of establishing it for everybody in Canada.
00:23:57.920So you see these unions doing the hard work, not getting paid for 42 days. And we would have been
00:24:03.740so mad about our mail and so mad about the inconvenience and so mad and so mad and so mad,
00:24:08.800yet we don't understand that what they fought for, we benefited from. Let me do another one.
00:24:14.080Teachers, I work in a private school. I say that very, very clearly. The work that public school
00:24:20.860teachers have done, the benefits, the pay, everything that they have gotten translates
00:24:26.540into the private system. Why? Because if a private school doesn't acknowledge that pay,
00:24:32.620doesn't acknowledge those benefits, doesn't acknowledge those working conditions,
00:24:37.500nobody is going to work at the private school. So the private school has to mirror that if they
00:24:43.280don't want two things, A, if they want people working there, and B, if they don't want people
00:24:49.260organizing a union within their facility, which is completely legal across the country.
00:24:54.480I'll give you one more example. The same thing happens in nursing. Nurses union has unions all
00:25:01.540over the place. SickKids Hospital is not unionized, but those nurses and that collective bargaining,0.70
00:25:07.860sorry, the management and the way in which they deal with their nurses somehow mirrors and
00:25:14.480beautifully reflects what the Ontario Nurses Association fights for and gets for unionized
00:25:21.480nurses across Ontario. So kids doesn't want a union. So what do they do? They mirror what the
00:25:28.080union has fought for. So when people say, I work in a non-unionized environment, I'm a non-unionized
00:25:35.580teacher. I don't need a union. I'm treated well. Wait a minute. You're treated well because your
00:25:41.620employer knows they have to. There's also labor law that unions have pushed in that have made
00:25:49.020these, these legal agreements across the province and across Canada, all of those things have
00:25:54.620happened, but it's also just more, you know, subtle than that. It's the notion that
00:26:00.860a private school setting is going to have to mimic a public. It's going to have to make sure
00:26:08.860that those workers are treated well. And that's not just because the owners are being nice guys.
00:26:15.060That's not just because the people that run SickKids Hospital want to treat their nurses well.
00:26:22.520Because the precedent has been fought for.
00:26:25.880Blood, sweat, and tears by that union to get those rights, to get those benefits, to get those working conditions.
00:26:31.460And they now translate into non-unionized environments that are comparable.
00:26:37.900What we should have seen through this whole thing, we should have been fighting for more unionization rather than taking it away.
00:26:44.240Because the number one place during COVID that was treated horrifically yet still open, grocery stores and pharmacies, all of those places still stayed open.
00:26:59.920all of those predominantly women predominantly you know uh mothers and and students
00:27:07.120worked in those places with no union with no sick days with no benefits with nothing
00:27:15.520the retail industry is probably the most taken advantage of industry period there is no unionization
00:27:25.600across any board and instead of advocating for if they don't get it i don't how about we start to
00:27:32.720understand that what we need is more solidarity through all sort of job markets right we've seen
00:27:43.360inflation go through the roof and people love to talk about that but why are profits up 70
00:27:48.960percent why when you look at the statistics why when you look at corporate profits over this time
00:27:56.240and they're claiming inflation and they're claiming it's just because everything costs more
00:28:01.040why why have their profits risen exponentially to what they were pre-covid corporate greed is a real
00:28:10.640thing now when you translate all of this back and let's get back to teachers unions and let's get
00:28:15.760back to the EAs for a second and CUPE workers, here's where it's really problematic for people
00:28:21.660to swallow. Because it's not a corporation. Because it's not a private entity making money.
00:28:27.340It's government money. And what people are really upset about is their tax dollars being used
00:28:33.460inappropriately. And so a lot of people outside of the business just don't understand and don't
00:28:39.520want their tax dollars going because we know they're limited, right? We know the province
00:28:44.340has huge debt so there's the fight here's the conversation and here's what politicians don't
00:28:52.340say well we're going to have a pool of money we're going to take x amount of tax dollars from you
00:28:59.380and we're going to put it places to get jobs done if you want more serve social services if you want
00:29:06.820them to be better and this is a simple reality it's going to cost more if you elect a government
00:29:14.340who reduces your taxes. The only thing that's going to happen is you are going to get less
00:29:21.640social services than you were getting before. Any government that says, I'm going to reduce
00:29:25.880your taxes and give you more, they are lying and common sense dictates so. A lot of people,
00:29:31.400especially in Ontario, say, where are we supposed to get the money? I have an idea.
00:29:35.860How about all of the license plate sticker money? In Ontario, every year, you pay $130
00:29:42.880dollars to get a little sticker on your license plate. You register your car every single year.
00:29:47.320It's a tax. And that money totaled about a billion dollars a year. Well, not too long ago,
00:29:53.840shockingly, right before the election, Doug Ford says, I'm canceling it. I'm giving it all back.
00:29:59.460And not only did he cancel it for the year, he actually gave back pay for two years.
00:30:05.420that money is 1 billion dollars a year 1 billion he decided to give back every canadian that money
00:30:16.100on their sticker money so in total right now that's 3 billion dollars that was siphoned out
00:30:22.880of the tax base and then he has the audacity to sit and say we don't have the money you just
00:30:28.560You had the money. You used it to bribe people. You used it. You used it to say, here, I'm giving
00:30:38.020you this tax money back because we're so inefficient with our money. We don't need it.
00:30:41.900We're doing great without it. Of course, we're not. You cannot lower taxes and expect more out
00:30:47.020of your social services. You just can't. And when it comes to education, a lot of the vitriol I'm
00:30:53.640also receiving is, well, when I was a kid, when I was a kid, there was 40 kids. Well, we've already
00:31:00.280gone over that. You didn't have the same kids in your class. And I'm going to take a step further.
00:31:05.880The education system was worse. I know a lot of people are saying, no, it wasn't. We did great.
00:31:11.320Look at how we're doing. You know what? First of all, different time, different place. Second of all,
00:31:18.980As a society, we get smarter and we get better.
00:31:23.060And if we can understand, I believe there are seven, there might be more now because
00:31:26.900I'm not old since I've been to teacher's college, but there's seven different learning