ADAMS: A Call for Accountability in Ontario’s Public Education System
Ontario's classrooms are overheating, public dollars are disappearing, and our education system is stuck in the past. It's time to demand answers and a public school system that works for everyone.
A group of bundled-up students walk on a snowy sidewalk next to a row of yellow school buses on a cold winter day. Photo credit: Pioneer Press
My sister is in elementary school. Her classroom, like thousands across Ontario, has no air conditioning. None. She spends her school days in a stuffy, overheated environment that regularly reaches 40 degrees. And every afternoon, she comes home physically exhausted and emotionally drained, telling us the same story:
“it’s too hot to think.”
It's hard enough to learn in the best of conditions—how can we expect young children to thrive in sweltering classrooms that lack even basic ventilation?
This isn’t new. We’ve known for decades that Ontario’s schools—particularly those in the public system—are crumbling. Parents, students, and educators have been raising the alarm for years. The pandemic should have been the wake-up call. In 2020, as COVID-19 exposed the deficiencies in our infrastructure, especially around ventilation and air quality, the federal government sent an estimated $59.6 million to Ontario to address precisely this issue. The intent was clear: invest in safe learning environments, upgrade old HVAC systems, and ensure every school—not just a privileged few—had clean air and climate control.
So let’s ask the question directly: where did our money go?
Today, across Ontario, most Catholic schools have access to modern HVAC systems and air conditioning. But countless public schools, the ones most of our kids attend, do not. This isn’t just an equity issue. It’s a transparency issue. It’s a governance issue. And frankly, it’s a moral issue.
Despite being on his third majority government, Doug Ford’s government has repeatedly deflected scrutiny by blaming others; whether it’s bureaucrats on the sunshine list, local school boards, or MPP’s who served in the cabinet of previous provincial governments. But last year, this same government found the money to launch a $30 million initiative to combat vaping in schools, focusing on punitive enforcement that’s impossible to actually enforce in practice, rather than practical solutions like restricting vape store zoning near schools. It’s hard to take “student health” seriously when the same kids struggling to concentrate in a heatwave are being surveilled by hallway security guards chasing after flavoured nicotine.
Let’s be clear: if this had happened under Kathleen Wynne, the right-wing establishment media would’ve exploded. But Ford? He opened the LCBO on Sundays and let you buy beer at the gas station—so apparently, that’s good enough..?
But it’s not good enough for me. And it shouldn’t be good enough for any Ontarian who cares about our future.
I care because I pay taxes. I care because I vote. I care because this is my province too, and like every resident of Ontario, I have a stake in how public dollars are spent. I may not be a parent, but I am a citizen—and every citizen deserves to ask these questions. Every student, every teacher, every family deserves better.
Which brings us to the bigger conversation, one that political leaders have avoided for far too long.
Why Are We Still Funding Catholic Schools?
This dual system—one secular, one religious—is expensive, outdated, and unjustifiable in a modern democracy. Ontario is the only province (outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan) that still maintains a parallel Catholic school board funded by taxpayers. The cost of this redundancy is enormous—according to Centre for Inquiry Canada, an estimated $1.5 billion annually that could be redirected to improve classrooms, ventilation, mental health supports, and teacher salaries in a unified, inclusive public school system.
Catholic school boards are often complicit in anti-LGBTQ discrimination. They’ve hosted assemblies where children are told abortion is murder. They actively resist inclusive sex education and undermine the Charter rights of students. It is no coincidence that many of the candidates who run for fringe, religious fundamentalist parties like the Christian Heritage Party or the Ontario Party come from—or serve on—Catholic school boards. They use public resources to elevate their personal ideologies, often in direct contradiction to the values enshrined in Canadian law.
These are not abstract concerns. These are real, ongoing harms enabled by public funding.
We need to be principled about this: if private families want to educate their children in religious environments—whether Catholic, evangelical, Islamic, or otherwise—they are entitled to do so. But they should do it on their own dime. Public money should serve the public good. It should not subsidize indoctrination, discrimination, or religious instruction of any kind.
No vouchers. No exceptions. No public dollars for private ideology.
We also need transparency. The Ford government must face a public inquiry into how federal pandemic infrastructure funds were allocated—and why so many public schools remain in such unacceptable conditions. This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a basic question of accountability. We deserve to know what happened.
And here’s the good news: this isn’t a zero-sum game. We can fix our public schools. We can address outdated and unnecessary religious funding models. We can ensure equity across every community in this province. But we need the political will. We need leadership that puts evidence, compassion, and integrity first—not cheap populism and photo ops.
We don’t have to choose between air conditioning for kids and fairness in education funding. We can have both. We deserve both. And it starts with asking the right questions—and refusing to accept silence as an answer.