Provincial Politics

It has been some 25 years since Ontario last had a minority government.

Earlier this year ETFO leaders took a bold step: we approved a controversial public relations campaign  to run during the provincial election campaign.

Donna Dasko is uniquely positioned to talk about women and politics. She is the senior vice-president of public affairs at the Environics Research Group, one of Canada’s best known and most highly respected public opinion research firms.

Members of provincial parliament met with ETFO presidents and executive members at an informal breakfast gathering.

Critics,  especially  those  on  the  right, take  pride  in  denigrating  public  education. They want us to believe that our schools – and by implication, you, our members – are failing our children.

“It is  not  enough to  be busy. The question is:  What are we busy bout?” When Henry David Thoreau  made this  remark he was not relating them to the activities of OTF,  but his words resonate.

You may not have a disability now but you will probably have one eventually. That makes persons with disabilities “the minority of everyone,” says David Lepofsky.

Over the  past several years there has been a significant increase in the number of literacy and numeracy initiatives that ETFO members are expected to implement. These initiatives come from the Ministry of Education, individual school boards, families of schools, or individual administrators.