Welcome everyone to the OnPy podcast. I'm Steve Pacin

and I'm John Michael McGrath.

Today on the pod, well, Ontario's auditor general releases her annual look at how well your government spends your money and she's less than impressed with what she's discovered about our healthcare system.

The province has introduced new justice and crime bill. We'll tell you what they've got in mind.

Better call Paul again. Education Minister Paul Kandra has released the long-awaited EQAO scores and will appoint an advisory panel to make recommendations on the test because the progress seen he says ain't good enough.

And in your column, my column, I'll look at the latest twist in the [music] province's alcohol bottle recycling system.

And I'll shine a spotlight on yet another well-deserved tribute to former Ontario member of Parliament Ken Dryden. This time from his alma mater in New York State. It's Friday, December 5th, 2025. So, let's get to it.

JMM

Steve,

a little sugar. We're in December already.

I know. Where did the year go?

December sugar. Uh, I love the fact that you have an Imperial Stormtrooper on your chest today along with what do you call what do you call that? Uh,

it's a a Christmas sweater uh of the Stormtrooper and we've got a TIE fighter here.

A tie fighter. That's it. and various other uh Star Wars insignia.

And again, I'm always looking for a particular hook to the moment. Is there is there a particular hook to the moment for this shirt?

Well, it's the first week in December. It's the holiday season. You had to imagine that I would both own a a Christmas style sweater and that it would also be Star Wars themed, knowing me as you do. So, that's what I went with.

Okay, I got it. I got it. Well, I'm going to talk about a guy that I I don't think we've ever talked about on this program before. Uh his name is Howard Ferguson. And I'm going to do my little stand up so everybody can see what he looks like. There he is. That's Howard Ferguson. Howard Ferguson was the premier of Ontario a long time ago. He actually won his second consecutive election 96 years ago this week. He was our ninth premier. He served in total from 1923 to 1930. Won three elections during that time. Um, how do I put this? He called an early election during his second mandate and then won a third. Does that sound familiar at all?

It's it started to ring some bells. Yeah.

Pretty sure a guy named Ford just managed to pull that off earlier this year as well. Uh Ferguson was a bit well known for well for a bunch of things. Number one, he he defeated the Remember last week we talked about uh Ernest Drury who was the one and only United Farmers of Ontario premier. Yes.

He defeated Drury in 1923 after just one term. So Ferguson is famous for that. He's also well known, we're going to talk booze here for a second. He's well known for having a plebite on whether conditions for selling booze in the province of Ontario should be loosened up. He obviously wanted more tax revenue to support his programs and he thought if we sell more booze we'll get more revenue. We can offer more programs. The plebite passed and after that beer became known as Fergy's foam. [laughter] Fergie's foam. That's what they called beer back in the day. And he also then went on to create a new provincial institution that would sort of regulate and oversee the purchase and sale of alcohol in the province of Ontario. Can you imagine what that was called?

Uh was it called the LCBO at its

correct? There you go. Liquor Control Board of Ontario. The LCBO. We have Howard Ferguson to thank for that. After his career as premier was over in 1930, he actually kept going. He was the he got appointed to be the high commissioner to Great Britain. So his public life did not end after that. And I see Matthew Omera sending me a note here saying, "What's a plebicide? Explain what a plebite [laughter] is." Really, Matthew? You don't think people know what a plebbeite is?

A a non-binding referendum.

Well, it's a referendum. Yeah, exactly. Right. It had a provincewide vote about the thing. Okay. Okay, Matthew. Now we're we're all happy here. If you want to go visit Howard Ferguson, you can because like many other Ontario first ministers, guess where he's buried?

Over at Mount Pleasant.

He is at Mount Pleasant, half an hour walk away from here where we are right now. And if you hang out at Queens Park, there is something called Yeah, there's the picture of his headstone which I snapped one day. And if you go to Queens Park, there is a, you know, they got a McDonald block, a Hepern block, a Frost block, and they have a Ferguson block. And the Ferguson block is named after this guy right here, G. Howard Ferguson. And while we're on the subject, I'm not done yet. While we're on the subject, somebody passed Howard Ferguson in terms of time spent in office this very week. Yeah.

And that premier's name is Doug Ford. Doug Ford has now been premier for seven years, 5 months, and four days, I think, which means he has passed Howard Ferguson for the eighth longest serving premier of all time. We've had 26 premieres. Ford is number 26. He's already the eighth longest serving premier of all time, having just passed Howard Ferguson this week. Any other useless trivia you want to know or should we move on?

I think we can move on.

We're moving on. On to issue one.

Well, it's one of the opposition and media's favorite days on the Queens Park calendar, the annual report of the Auditor General on how well the government is spending the dollars you send to Ontario, Inc. The auditor is a nonpartisan appointee who reports not to the government but rather to the entire legislature and her mission is to send investigators into various ministries, pull back the curtain and ensure budgets are being well spent. JMM, what seems to have captivated the auditor and the critics of the government this year?

The report this year uh has sorry there's always a bunch of different chunks to the auditor's report and some of this is just like her statutory obligations to audit the province's books. Um but uh then there are always the um the juicier topics that the reporters like to to dive into. And so in this year they're calling them performance audits. They have in previous years they've been called value for money audits. But this is where the auditor looks at specific departments or agencies within the government and looks at how well uh the money is being spent. Are there uh redundant operations? Are there wasteful operations? Are there operations uh that are uh not meeting best practices in other provinces? And so this year uh the auditor really narrowly focused on health care with one exception which I I'll get into but there are multiple chapters about different types of uh what you could broadly call sort of health care issues.

So, uh, the auditor looked at access to primary care, looked at, uh, physician billing, uh, looked at how we educate family doctors in the province and, uh, procuring, uh, personal protective equipment for, uh, hospitals and long-term care homes. And, uh, you know, generally, if the auditor, uh, has has written a substantial chapter about an issue, it's not usually good news for the government. And so in this case, of course, uh in all of these areas, uh the auditor found cases where the government could be minding public money more carefully. Two areas that I think got the most attention from reporters, uh were uh physician billing and uh the procurement uh audits. Uh physician billing, of course, is a a long-standing issue in the province. Uh there have been uh at least I mean certainly since I started at Queens Park going back more than a decade uh there have been reports of uh doctors who uh you know the the way we pay doctors in Ontario is the doctor performs a service and then they bill OHIP uh for that service and there are reported cases of doctors uh billing the province for having done more than 24 hours of work in a day. Uh sometimes having uh build for doing more than 365 days of work in a year. these are the kinds of things that ought to raise red flags. And the auditor is careful to say that she can't, you know, directly say that these things are fraudulent. They might just be paperwork errors. Uh but the the key thing to understand is that the province doesn't actually have any automated system to uh flag these kinds of cases for further investigation. The province basically relies on uh uh tips and complaints from the public to determine whether there's something to to investigate. So, you know, why does that matter?

Well, we spent $20 billion a year on uh physician uh payments. Uh most of that, but not on entirely through the fee for service system. So, even if the government's estimate of something like 3 to 5% of uh billing might be potentially uh uh problematic, that's hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It's real money. So um again the issue is not that we can say directly that this is all fraudulent but the province doesn't actually have any system to check like the way you know my credit card company is is pretty on the ball if they think that there's been a a fraudulent or or an unusual uh purchase with my Mastercard. Uh I I I think maybe the the province of Ontario could reasonably be said to need something similar.

And just to understand the scope of her mission here, she does not actually have the authority then to go after doctors and and get them to repay if they've overdrawn. This is criticism of the health ministry's lack of due diligence. Is that right?

Yes, that's correct. The the Ministry of Health can and and has these measures and and does, you know, periodically find cases where they say to a doctor like, "Ah, nice try. Give us the money back." And and they say they've recovered something like $8 million over a period of several years. Maybe, let's be optimistic. Maybe Ontario is just running the cleanest public health care system in the world and there's there's no further fraud to be found. Uh or maybe the fact that we only have I think she said eight staff uh tasked with uh doing the these kinds of investigations. Uh maybe that's maybe the the the bottleneck and and maybe we should get a bit more aggressive with uh our investigations.

Okay, staying with healthcare. We all remember back in the days of CO the three letters PP became extremely famous personal protective equipment. What did the auditor have to say about the status of that? So the government created Supply Ontario uh for the purpose of making sure that we were never uh caught unaware as uh suddenly relying on other countries, other uh uh jurisdictions for the PPE that we needed cuz obviously people remember you know that that mad scramble to find masks and gloves and sanitizers in that first year of the pandemic.

And it it took a while to get the uh uh agency up and running. It was actually I think only formally uh given control of uh some of these stock piles after we had sort of all but declared the pandemic over in 2022. But nevertheless, it exists now. And um [laughter] wouldn't you know it uh we are actually uh getting rid of expired inventory faster than we are using it. I I.e. we are throwing stuff out or in at least some cases incinerating it uh because it has it has gone unused sitting in warehouses uh faster than it is being distributed to hospitals or long-term care homes.

Can I ask what I think is a reasonable question?

Yes.

How does that happen exactly? [laughter]

[gasps] So, in other provinces, uh, an agency like Supply Ontario would be the sole purchaser of, uh, PPE for hospitals and long-term care homes and and the healthcare sector, however you want to define that, right? And there are reasons why you would want to do that, right? A, a single agency could get bulk discounts, that kind of thing. We don't do that in Ontario. the hospitals procure their own PPE and then supply Ontario also engages in these long-term contracts to uh you know remember its mission is also to ensure that this equipment is made in Ontario, right? And so in order to give investors and manufacturers the the confidence that they are going to uh continue to have a customer that they're going to invest in building these things here in Ontario, you sign these long-term contracts. But as the auditor explained, given how slowly we are actually using this stuff and the hospitals have are all uh ordering their own uh uh supplies of this stuff uh at at the current rates we are in this sort of permanent uh disequilibrium where we are always going to be having more stuff expire than we are actually using. It's just it is not a um it's not currently a rational setup.

[laughter]

Okay, let's I shouldn't be laughing about it because it is anyway it is what it is. Uh let's do one more thing that the auditor general might have looked to. This government has spent a lot of time trying to tell people that they are doing a lot as it relates to connecting patients with primary care doctors. What do the auditor have to say about that?

Right. Uh the auditor is a bit more uh skeptical of some of the numbers that the government has put out if I could put it that way. uh they they think that the government is understating a uh how many people are going without uh a a primary care physician. Uh the government has used the number I believe of 1.3 million. The auditor general uh based on uh external research suggests that number could be more like 2 million. Uh and then consequently if there are more people in need of primary care then that also means we need to train more primary care doctors. And uh this is where you get into questions of for example uh are we uh educating uh have we created that pipeline to educate enough uh primary care physicians and there was a whole other uh section in the audit about that and there's some interesting sort of granular details about why that's not working as well as it should.

Uh but I I think one uh telling detail here uh the uh the McGinty government in 2009 uh created something called uh healthcare connect a service to try and match uh uh people to primary care physicians who are open to taking on uh new patients. And the relative good news is that um a substantial fraction of people are are getting connected with uh doctors uh within let's call it a a a not insane timeline. [laughter] Um but the the general sense in the sector is that the the healthcare connected tool uh is bad is not working uh is certainly not working as well as similar tools in other jurisdictions. And uh according to uh one document quoted by the auditor uh it is no longer fit for purpose and uh the the the participants in the healthcare sector do not want the government to fix this tool. They say it is so thoroughly broken and obsolete that they just want the government to start over from a clean sheet of paper.

Not fit for purpose. Yes,

that's a nice way of saying

uh just totally broken and beyond repair it down. I guess one last thing on this. We should say, you know, it is the auditor's mission essentially to go into these ministries, do their investigation, not for the purposes of necessarily naming and shaming people who've screwed up along the way, but because, you know, some of these departments are so massive. It is the case that a lot of people who work in these ministries don't know what's going on in their own ministries. The auditor goes in, investigates, lets the ministries know what's going on, and then theoretically what's supposed to happen is now that we found out about this, we can fix this. That's what's supposed to happen. And I think that actually does happen most of the time.

Yeah. I mean, I think with a handful of exception and well, I'll get to that in a moment. The government uh accepted all of the auditor's recommendations for uh changes in all of these healthcare sections. I've mentioned the the exception to all the healthcare news. The auditor did also have a chapter about uh recycling. Um and also uh again as part of her statutory work she is required to uh uh do a report on the functioning of the environmental bill of rights. Um there there were some as you might imagine this government has a um checkered uh history with environmental issues and uh the auditor had some criticism about how they have used or have gotten around the environmental bill of rights. Uh this was one of the few areas where the government did not accept the auditor's recommendations because she basically asked them to stop going around the e the the environmental bill of rights and they said no we we reserve the right to continue doing that

and and and legally they can do that and you know if they're prepared to pay whatever political price there is to pay at the next election. Sometimes there is sometimes there isn't.

Yes. And and we will see if uh some price is yet to be paid. It hasn't so far.

That is the answer to everything. We shall see. And with that, we're off to issue two.

The government introduced the Keeping Criminals Behind Bars Act last week and includes several legislative changes designed to do everything from reforming the bail system to protecting cats and dogs from animal testing. Okay, let's get into the nitty-gritty on this. Absolutely.

So I think that the headline item that the government introduced here uh it would require uh people accused of crimes to uh present cash security deposits for bail. Uh currently a person uh could be released on a promise to pay. So now they would actually have to put cash on the table. Um and they also want to introduce a a user fee for uh GPS monitoring devices. Um there are some interesting questions about the constitutionality here. I mean, it won't surprise people to learn that that there are already people uh speculating about a potential charter breach uh with this, right? We have said this before on on the podcast, and I will just remind people like uh people who are uh out on bail are uh not yet convicted of any crime. They are thus constitutionally innocent. Um and so there are questions about how you can uh treat people like that.

There's also an interesting issue about like generally speaking, the the the matters around bail are a federal criminal matter. And so, uh, there's a question here of whether a court will say that Ontario was simply intruding on a matter of federal jurisdiction or or as one lawyer I saw put it, uh, this bill might manage to be unconstitutional twice. Um, so, you know, we will leave that to the the courts, but I think it's it's a very um interesting one. You know, to the government's uh defense here or in the government's defense here, you know, matters of the administration of courts are also provincial jurisdiction. So, this is one of those areas where I could easily see a court going either way in in terms of um deciding the the constitutionality of this.

Uh the legislation is also proposing to make certain information from the Ontario Sex Offender and Trafficker Registry publicly available. This is something that uh various groups have advocated for. Uh I I I will confess that this is not something that a controversy I'm super read in on, but I do know that people have been fighting to uh get this information made public and both liberal and at least for several years before now the provincial uh conservative government uh resisted some of those efforts. Uh advocates saying that, you know, this information will will hold offenders accountable. Uh and of course now we get to the the cats and dogs. The legislation would amend the Animals for Research Act to prohibit uh invasive medical research on uh dogs and cats. It also bans the breeding of dogs and cats for research purposes at Ontario facilities. Uh although some critics have said uh those same animals could be sourced from pounds or other uh potential shelters.

Where did this thing come from?

This is one of those things where I think this is like the premier's personality. like every once in a while this comes out that he's like an animal lover and he he has proposed some of these measures. Um when there is a really um strong counter lobby you the the the animal lover side doesn't always uh win the day if I could put it that way right like a few years back they uh the government amended uh some farm legislation to make it uh harder to for animal rights activists to to document abuses. Um but that's because there's a very uh uh important agricultural lobby in Ontario. Right.

So back in August, the Investigative Journalism Bureau, which is associated with the University of Toronto, published a story that detailed experiments done on beagles uh in London, Ontario. Uh beagle's a cute dog, I guess.

Yes.

Yes. I'm allowed to editorial. I said beagles are cute, right?

Beagle is a cute dog. [laughter] That is correct. Um the the premier saw this story, spoke about it at a press conference um and and you

got a little choked up actually.

Yeah. Yeah. Like like it seemed to really sort of animate him. Um and you know on the sort of more crass political side of of things, we can say like this this is an easy win politically. I don't think there's a lot of people coming out of the woodwork to defend animal testing on beagles. And in in fact the the lab in question did try to issue a defense saying that this is important medical research. And I'm sure that they're not doing it for cruelty's sake, but they seem to have lost the argument with the government. Let me put it that way.

We're going to make a bit of a hard turn here because we're going to talk about something quite tragic. Now, we're going to talk about something called Andrew's Law, which is a reference to Andrew Costello, who is the father of three who was killed by a driver charged with dangerous and stunt driving. This is the same driver, incidentally, who hit an OP vehicle that Premier Doug Ford was traveling in at the time. So, let's get the details on this if we can.

So, under Andrew's law, as proposed, anybody who is convicted of dangerous driving causing death will receive a lifetime ban from getting behind the wheel. Uh, police can also immediately suspend a driver's license for 90 days if they suspect the driver is driving dangerously. Uh, they are the government is also proposing to increase fines for those driving with suspended licenses and doubling fines for distracted driving if you're in a commercial vehicle. So it's not just members of the general public, people who are specifically operating commercial vehicles uh could uh see increased penalties. Uh and they also, and this I I think is maybe the the item that got the most attention, they are also going to consult the public on making um I guess a new class of penalty uh for impaired drivers who cause the death of a parent or a guardian. The impaired driver would then be responsible for financially supporting uh the victim's children. Hm. You I'm going to repeat what you just said a moment ago, which is to say that uh you know the none of these charges has been tested in court yet. Somebody is innocent until proven guilty.

But you got to be some kind of stupid if you go out and you you know sideswipe the premier of Ontario's car and then follow that up again allegedly by driving so irresponsibly that the result is the death of this father. That's the charge. The courts will render their verdict on whatever happens in the days ahead. But some days you really do have to scratch your head and say, "What the actual bleepy bleep is going on here?"

Yeah. I mean, I will make two points. One, sort of general, a bit more specific. A, in general, I I think we do not take automotive crime super seriously in the law. um you know uh speaking as a cyclist who when we talk about uh the debts of vulnerable road users um I think even with this law there are going to be large areas you know where we still do not take it seriously enough but um quite aside from my hobby horses uh the the more specific thing I would say is that I think uh a lot of um uh risky road behavior uh if I could put it antisocial road behavior uh got a lot worse during CO uh and like this isn't just me hypothesizing. There's like measurable data about uh you know speeding increased because you know we're talking about CO a lot in this this episode but like you know the roads were so empty for a while there a lot of people took that as license to just act like maniacs and I think a lot of that stuff has not been dialed back yet.

Um, and so, uh, I I certainly hope that this will be part of, uh, taking, uh, people's conduct on the road more seriously. Uh, but this is not, again, to editorialize, I don't think this will be, uh, enough on its own. I think we we need um more serious not seriousness not just from uh the laws that the government passes but going all the way down to you know what uh what kinds of behaviors police officers on the street are going to actually stop and punish.

Understood. And with that we're on to issue three.

The Education Quality and Accountability Office or EQAO as it's commonly known usually releases its scores in September or October. But Education Minister Paul Kandra had been holding on to the information to take a quote deep dive into the numbers. Now the numbers are out and Kandra says he will be appointing an advisory body to examine the test because he says the progress made isn't good enough. JMM, let's take our own deep dive into the numbers if you would.

Right. So very quickly, uh, the EQAO tests kids in grade 3, six, and nine. So for grade three students in Ontario, 74% of students met the provincial standard for reading, 65% for writing, and 64% for math. Uh grade six students, it was 86% for reading, 85% for writing, but only 51% for math, although that was a small increase from the previous year.

Uh grade nine students, this is not uh directly comparable because high schools are not directly comparable to the elementaryaries. Uh but 58% met the provincial standard for math. that was a 4% improvement uh for the previous year and 85% of students who wrote the Ontario Secondary School literacy test were successful. So, generally speaking, some decent numbers, some some good uh results for reading and writing, but students really uh struggling in some cases with math scores. Uh the improvements that we did see were small. And this is the the line coming out of the government this week that uh the uh progress that uh we are seeing is not fast enough for their liking.

Um and so uh this week uh education minister Paul Kandra announced that he will be uh naming two uh people to examine EQAO testing and provide recommendations to the government about how the system uh might be uh improved. Uh we don't know who those people are. He's got going to formally name them in the new year. uh they they will be paid uh these are not going to be volunteer positions as they never are. Uh they are going to be paid something like $1,500 a day for their work. Uh so uh we will see if we get our money's worth for that. [laughter] Um and you know meanwhile of course you know some groups have always criticized the the whole uh process of the EQAO. Um, you know, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, for example, uh, says that it these tests don't really add any utility to uh, the classroom don't really improve student outcomes on their own and the government should just scrap it and redirect those funds to classrooms.

I don't know if that's true or false. I just I just don't know. But I know how we got these tests in the first place, which is you got to go back about 30 years to the Mike Harris government, which looked at the education system in in the province. And I think Premier Harris asked a reasonable question, which is how do we know whether or not our students are actually getting well educated? How do we know if they're improving? What independent metrics can we look at and say, "Oh, we are better now than we were 10 years ago." And the answer apparently that at least the story I've heard, the answer that came back to him was, "Well, we don't have anything." And as a result uh I think on the recommendation actually of a former New Democrat education minister named Dave Cook whom he appointed to head up a panel uh the Harris government came in with the EQAO and decided to put these tests out every year which of course has begat a whole other series of criticisms like well now teachers teach to the test and they don't re it's really not a good indication of how well kids are doing one way or the other.

Anyway, uh it's a humongous debate, has been for 30 years, not going to go away anytime soon, but we press on. One of the reporters, speaking of pressing, one of the reporters at the press conference asked whether the government could ignore the recommendations from the panel, much as they did with the blue ribbon panel on post-secary education, whose recommendations they ignored. It's possible that the panel could come back and echo what the teacher union said. You know, smaller class sizes, more funding, hire more teachers, scrap the test. That's possible, I suppose, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a big old world. Uh lots of things are possible. Uh the minister did not want to rule out um any specific uh outcomes. He he did seem to want to leave a pretty uh open uh poss you know wanted to leave those possibilities open about the only thing that he did explicitly rule out was the idea of scrapping EQAO itself. He he said he he doesn't expect that to be uh in in the uh uh offing well if the minister said usually the way this works is you can recommend anything you want but if you recommend this forget it ain't going to happen. So you know stick to your lane is usually the way these orders go out.

There was a kind of a funny moment at the press conference, you know, speaking of Better Call Paul, as in Paul Kandra, uh, which we have taken to calling him because he seems to be, you know, every time the premier's got a Paul problem, Better Call Paul, unlike Better Call Saul, the old TV show. But, um, you know, there's been a great debate about the advisability of allowing students to have cell phones in classes. And, uh, you know, this government has banned the use of cell phones in classes, but that doesn't mean [laughter] that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. as we shall see from this moment in Paul Kandra's news conference. Roll it, please.

But my daughter called me. She's a grade 12 student and she called me from her class because she needed help on something. And I asked her, "What are you doing?" You know, can you just help me on on something? I said, "But you're not supposed to have the phone in the class." She says, "Well, it's just for this one thing." I said, "You know, I'm the Minister of Education. I ban phones in the class, right?" Says, "Just for this one thing. Nobody will notice. And then can we go back?" And I said, "So I gave her the answer." Um, you know,

wasn't [laughter] I don't know. She didn't get mad at me,

but it wasn't EQAO. But, but [laughter] first of all, kudos to him for fessing up cuz there he is just being a normal parent like everybody else whose kids call from class and they're not supposed to. And he gave anyway. Um, that was kind of funny. So, we just thought we'd play that. But,

yeah. No, I I I'm not sure which side of this I love more. the like the the father uh struggling to to uh uh impose any kind of discipline or order on their child. Uh the the minister of education struggling to get his policies actually adhered to by school board.

Someone in his own home.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I I I loved all of it and it was why I I recommended that we use that clip.

Good call. [laughter] Good call. Now also during this press conference, Paul Kandra mentioned that the Near North District School Board that includes Perry Sound, Nippasing, North Bay, it is the latest school board in the province of Ontario to be put what they call under supervision. Essentially, it means we're taken over and uh Mr. Kandra has suggested that there was widespread incompetence by trustees and board members. So once again, better call Paul.

Yes. And now this is the sixth board to be placed under supervision in the province this year I guess or um the controversy in this case and and this I first got wind of uh back uh in August when uh we were at AMO uh with the TVO doing the production there. Um I I was once again fortunate enough to um uh moderate the ministers forum what we call the the bear pit where uh people pelt cabinet ministers with questions not rotten fruit [laughter] and um the this came up this issue of uh the near north uh school board because uh a a local municipal counselor, not a school board trustee, a municipal counselor was complaining because this uh uh school board had started construction of a new school that was supposed to accept uh high school students. The school was not ready. It was not going to be ready in time for the new school year. And so uh the school board had to send the uh student body to at least some of them got sent to the partially demolished old school uh while they were waiting for this new school to be complete. And moderating the minister's forum is is like it can be very distracting. There's lots of things going on. But that was one of those times where I heard that from the floor and I looked over at the minister and I was like, "This is not going to be the last time we hear about this story."

And sure enough, uh this uh this is, you know, this the latest school board to be put under uh direct supervision. The minister will actually then later name a a a supervisor who will take it over, but at the moment it's literally the minister of education uh issuing the directives uh directly. [laughter]

And what happens now? Uh well so the the uh as I say the province will appoint a supervisor. Uh they will have to um uh you know undergo the work to to to uh write the ship of not exactly a ship of state but [laughter]

ship of municipality.

Yeah. Writing the the the ship of the the school board. Um you know the director of education who is sort of the um the the head civil servant not not an elected trustee uh within the school board system. Uh they have been put on leave according to the minister uh this week. Um, you know, we've mentioned before that the supervisors again, they don't work for free and uh the the costs of the supervisors uh sometimes exceed the costs of the the scandal that prompt them being uh appointed. I I don't know exactly what the costs uh of of everything going on in uh Near North School Board are here. So, I I don't I don't I don't want to prejudge that outcome here, but I I just mentioned it because we've mentioned it before. Um, you know,

but you know what the supervisor is going to get paid?

Yes, we do. That something like that uh they can charge up to $350,000 a year if if uh the similar practice that we saw in other school boards uh will continue. Um and of course, this is not all happening in a political vacuum. Uh the minister did allude to uh legislation he will be be bringing in the new year uh that could affect the fate of all at least English language public school boards. He seems to be uh leaving the question of Catholic school boards alone. That is a hot potato or a third rail he does not want to touch. And he's also uh not wanting to to disrupt French language school boards because they have charter protections. But uh he did say once again uh at this week's press conference that I'm trying to remember the exact wording he used, but it was something like nothing he's seen in the last year has changed his mind about the fate of uh school board trustees and that the the governance of school boards uh does is not being well served by elected trustees.

I would make one observation which is if you go back a hundred years and to today whether it was resolution 17 banning the teaching of French in schools whether it was extending public funding to Catholic schools in 1984 whether it was offering faith-based funding to public schools in 2007 as a former progressive conservative party leader tried to do the mixture of religion, politics and education in Ontario rarely ends well. So you got to be careful on that one. Absolutely.

And with that, it's off to your column, my column.

Time now for our regular feature, your column, my column, in which JMM and I reminisce about the columns that we wrote for tvO.org over the past week. You can always go find them. We chat about them here in the hopes that it will encourage you to go online and look for them. What did you write about this week you want to bring our attention to?

I'm actually going to bring uh a column that I wrote last week in uh because I didn't get to talk about it last week. Uh but the we have a settlement between the government, the beer store and the grocerers. And we've been uh keeping an eye on this topic for a while now, all year. Uh the question was, what would be the fate of the Ontario deposit return program? This is the program that allows you to return empty uh beer and wine bottles and cans to uh the beer store, collect your nickels, and uh it's it's an incredibly successful recycling program, but with the sale of uh beer and wine in uh grocery stores and corner stores, this has been an open question. What would the fate of the deposit return program be? Uh and we we now know that uh grocery stores are going to pay the beer store to continue operating the uh deposit return program. And on the one hand, the government says, "Hey, like this is good news. Deposit return will continue. This was always something that was uh in the cards or at least a a potential vision of how this program would uh continue with basically just the grocery stores paying the beer store to just continue the operations of the program.

But the question that I have and the question I raised in this column uh it looks to me a lot more like a retreat. The government is substantially expanding the uh radius uh that each individual recycling point will be allowed to serve. They used to seem to say that uh if you were more than 5 km away from a beer store that a grocery store would have to accept empties. They're now saying that uh the vast majority of Ontarians will be within 10 kilometers of a recycling point. Uh now uh

well this is getting pretty into the nitty-gritty here.

Well, you know, here we are at Young and Eglinton in Toronto in Midtown Toronto. If there were a beer store under our feet, um that single location could be uh could serve almost the entire city of Toronto and and the beer store would get to say that they were in compliance with this new standard. M

I'm not actually worried about Toronto though, right? What I'm worried about is mostly towns in northern and rural Ontario. We've these are places where uh in some cases the beer stores have already closed down or they are likely to in the near future. And these are places where you're not talking about having to drive an extra 10 minutes to find a recycling point. You're talking about there being no recycling point anymore. And what that means is that this, as I say, this incredibly successful recycling program is going to stop working in big chunks of the province. And that's going to mean that a lot more stuff ends up going to landfills. That is going to be eventually something that is paid for by taxpayers. Um, maybe I'm being overly alarmist. Uh, maybe everything will work out fine, but it is a concern that I thought I would raise for our readers.

You overly alarmist. Never

me focused on some obscure point of municipal policy.

What podcast is this? [laughter]

How about you?

Well, um I wanted to talk about Ken Dryden again. Okay. Ken Dryden, of course, the Hall of Fame goalender for the Montreal Canadians, former president of the Toronto Maple Leafs, former member of Parliament, former cabinet minister, uh died a few months ago quite unexpectedly of cancer, age 78. Ken Dryden has been honored by his former colleagues on Parliament Hill. He was given tributes in the House of Commons. He was honored at the Bell Center because of course six cups in eight years. Wow. We'll get you that when you're the goalender for the Montreal Canadians. And recently he was honored by his alma mater which is Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The guy who's uh I think the dean of arts and sciences is a guy named Peter Lohen. And Peter used to be at the Monk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

Peter called me up one day and he said, "You know, we're going to do a tribute game to Ken Dryden because he was such a star here." I think Ken Dryden was the goalender for three seasons at Cornell and had a record of something like 80 wins, three losses, and one tie. Something like that. I might be a tiny bit off on the numbers, but it's it's that dramatic. So, he said, "We're going to do a a big tribute to him. Do you want to come down and and see the game with me?" I thought, "Damn right I do." So, drove five hours to go to Ithaca for this game. Ken's presence is all over the arena, right? He played there in the 1960s, so it's been a long time. His presence is all over the arena. Here we go. We're going to go through some pictures and I'll describe for those listening on on podcast what we're seeing here. These are the rafters in the arena in Cornell's home arena and you know among the ECAC championship banners and so on. There's number one retired for Ken Dryden. He wore 29 with the Habs but number one at Cornell. One of only two NHL players to have their numbers retired by Cornell. Joe Newandike and Xle Leaf being the other one. And let's take a there's a closer look at it. Number one, Dryen in the rafters. It just stands out. You can't miss it when you walk in. And if you look at the walls of the arena in the lobbies and so on. There's Ken with his very famous pose, chin on top of his gloves as the hockey stick is standing straight up. And what else we got? There's Dryden's number one. Another pennant somewhere else in the building indicating that. And another picture on the walls as well. These pictures are all over the arena.

This was the I guess it's not so big that I should call it a jumbotron, but it's a fairly big screen. Inside the actual arena itself, they ran a two-minute uh video of highlights of Ken's time. Look how young he looked there. Boy, my goodness. Anyway, that was uh something they did there. You know, at the beginning of a hockey game, they do a ceremonial puck drop often and it was a friend of Ken who came out to drop the puck and normally the team captains do it.

This time they had the goalies do it, which was just beautiful. They had two goalies come out to take the face off. And the goalender for Cornell, his last name is Corno,

which I see you with a quizzical look on your face, which means that means nothing to you. But John Michael,

to those of us who watched and were occasionally um destroyed by how well the Habs played in the 1970s,

uh Ivon Cornw is a former captain of the Montreal Canadians and teammate of Ken Dryden. So, the fact that the goalender taking the face off, the fact that his last name was Cornw was something I found quite amazing. There's Ken's son, Michael, who's holding up a an honorary number one Dryden jersey, which the team gave to him. And there's me with my Leaf jersey on cuz I'm not wearing a Canadian's jersey, not even for Dryen. [laughter] There's me with my Leaf jersey and that's Linda Dryden, Ken's widow, who was at the game as was his, as you just saw, son, Michael, and daughter Sarah. and one of Michael's kids, Blake, they were all at the game at Ithaca, New York, and it was a wonderful, wonderful evening in tribute to Ken Dryden. So there, and the column is about all of that. And one more thing, as long as we're speaking of the dear departed among us, there is a tradition at Queens Park where when a former member of the legislature dies, members of all the parties get up and say, you know, five minutes of tribute, pay five minutes of tribute to them. And that happened this week for Jim Bradley. uh the second longest serving MPP of all time at Queens Park, more than 40 years a member of the Ontario legislature. Mr. Bradley, of course, was chair of Niagara region when he died earlier this year. Um uh underwent medical assistance in dying and uh there was lots of lovely things said about him at Queens Park earlier this week. Let's have a look at that. Shelton, if you would.

I can't tell you how many members of the Bradley gang who I've had the privilege of working with on environmental issues over the years who told me they were inspired by Jim. I had the honor of attending Jim's celebration of life and I want to put on the record what I told Steve Pacin that day and I quote Mike Shriner. Jim Bradley was the leader of the Green Party before there was a Green Party of Queens Park.

Today I rise and we stand with the community of St. Catherine and the region of Niagara to honor a man who shaped our city and our province with every step he took, every hand he shook, and every note he wrote and and every moment he gave. For more than half a century, the Honorable James Joseph Jim Bradley didn't just serve St. Catherine's, he loved St. Cathine's. And in return, St. Cathine's loved him right back. It's safe to say that Jim Bradley's legacy, his leadership, and what he left behind has had a greater mark on the Niagara region than any other politician for the past century. Jim was a gentleman. He was a humble man. He was a man of faith and of conviction, of tireless interest in his community and his constituents. He was a man defined by a lifetime of service and excellence, and unfailingly a kind man. Jim was just all heart inside. He was, you can tell because he made sure people got Christmas cards. He didn't forget things. He cared about people. Yeah, he could be grumpy and rough and speak his mind, but at his core, he had a big heart. He had a big heart for this place. And he had a big heart for the people in St. Catherine's and all of Niagara and indeed all of Ontario. And I I am just so proud to be able to say a few words and uh to call him a friend and colleague. I want to say thank you to the family for sharing him with us. Uh he was a great man. He's unique. There will never ever ever be another Jim Bradley. Um and that's okay. Thank you very much. [applause]

Jim Bradley, the former member for St. Cathine's. Uh, long may his memory be a blessing to us all.

And with that, let's go to the mailbag.

If you've got a burning question or insightful comment, please send it to us at onpolitics at tvo.org. JMM fire away.

Uh, today we have a letter from Maurice Oshanaughy in Armpire. Steve and JMM, before Doug's commercial on US tariffs, he was running ads on the ring of fire. I found this ad delusional as the one or two of the First Nations oppose this development and the Adaposiscat First Nation has already set up a camp in the area and are apparently blocking any current activity there. So, how does Doug Ford plan to get around this little problem and the expectations inspired by this ad? Mauricio Shaughnessy on Prior Ontario.

Well, just in case not everybody who is watching or listening to us right now has seen or heard this ad, why don't we play that first? Absolutely. Shelton, if you would. As Canada faces economic [music] uncertainty, we have a plan to secure our future. And it starts in the Ring of Fire. By developing [music] the land in partnership with First Nations, we'll create economic growth for indigenous communities. That's how we [music] protect Ontario. Made from the Ring of Fire. Now, in fairness to Mr. Shaughnessy, is it Mr. Shaughnessy? Is that the name or Oness? Excuse me. In fairness to Mr. O Shanosy the premier's government has inked several deals with several first nations community along the proposed route into the ring of fire. Martin Falls Webquay Aeroland first nations as the most recent examples. There is significant resistance to mining developments. Let's put that on the record. Members from Adawapcat and Neskantaga First Nations have created a settlement near to a proposed bridge that would link the Ring of Fire to roads that the Ford government is hoping to build. So what's the government actually I mean those ads are you know lots of upbeat music and pictures of action and you know yada yada yada what's the government doing to make this ad a reality?

Well, if I could just put this in context, I mean, we're talking about a part of the North where there have been uh certainly no less than six and I think at some points uh as many as 20 First Nations involved in various discussions because it's not just a question of uh you know a road directly to uh the Ring of Fire itself. We're talking about a network of uh connections that would include lots of other First Nations. And when you have that many parties involved, negotiations get very complicated. And so one of the things this government has done in contrast to uh the win government, I would say one of their uh one of the ways they've tried to move negotiations forward is really focus on like one-on-one negotiations. Like they're not signing big, you know, 20 uh person agree or 20 uh uh party agreements with multiple First Nations. They're like nailing an agreement with one one or two First Nations at a time. Um and on that point,

money solves a lot of problems in politics, right? Uh both Martin Falls and the WebRe First Nation received close to $40 million in exchange uh for environmental assessments for the proposed roads that they are looking to build. Um of course the we're talking about allseason roads. Uh the province does fund winter roads in the north. Uh but the one of the the economic promises that the Ring of Fire holds for uh remote First Nations is getting them connected to a permanent road network, something that will uh last in the summer. Uh the the winter road season keeps getting shorter and shorter thanks to climate change, but that's a whole other podcast. Um in Martin Falls, they are also uh looking at money to upgrade uh infrastructure, including a uh a wastewater facility. Uh Martin Falls has been under a boil water advisory for 19 years apparently. Um it's not normally provincial responsibility to deal with on reserve water quality issues. That is usually a federal responsibility and of course the federal government has been trying to make progress on uh water quality issues on reserves. But provincial money spends just as easily as federal money. So they are going to uh get some money for uh again that wastewater facility. So some deals are being made with some communities but others not. So where are we at?

Right. So some uh different first nations have asked for uh permanent environmental protections to be put in place. We are talking about a part of the province where uh there's um uh a great deal of pete lands. Uh these are areas of uh uh you know cooler wetlands that that sequester a bunch of carbon in the soil. Uh but as you break open those soils to get at you know precious metals underneath uh you can release a lot of the carbon uh that is is locked up in there. Um I will also point out that uh a warming earth will also release a lot of carbon from the pete lands. This is all kind of ironic given that one of the uh most recent reasons we've used to uh uh justify the the exploitation of of the ring of fire uh is about the need to uh get critical minerals for among others electric vehicles. Uh so we are uh greening the earth but or greening our industry at least but uh in uh parts of the province where there are undeniable environmental sensitivities um maybe there are ways for industry to to move forward in ways that are not uh disruptive and destructive as some of these First Nations fear.

Uh the government is pretty gung-ho about this stuff and it's not entirely clear to me that they're going to wait for uh uh all of the environmental nicities to be observed. Uh and of course uh both the uh certainly the provincial government has has really highlighted the ring of fire as uh an area where they want to use the powers they gave themselves under Bill 5 uh to to expedite um both uh the environmental approvals side of things while also for example and while we're talking about indigenous lands here uh they exempted or bill 5 allows them to exempt projects from uh things like uh archaeological assessments right so one reason why this so relevant to indigenous uh people is that like uh there's concerns about disrupting um uh traditional indigenous uh burial sites and what kind of obligations people would be owed under provincial law. Currently, if you're digging anywhere in Ontario and you you you find human remains, I mean, if it looks like it could be an indigenous burial site, you've got to stop and you've got to assess that um at least in theory, Bill Five would allow uh a mine in the Ring of Fire to be opened without paying attention to that kind of thing.

Mr. Roshanaughy, we hope that answers your question. And in the meantime, uh you want to give the email address in case anybody else wants in on this? Once again, if you'd like to ask about content on the show, you can always email us at onpolitics@tvo.org.

I'm just having a moment here. Did we do sugar off the top?

Does anybody recall?

Yes,

we did do sugar. Greg Greg says we did sugar. Okay.

I had this moment where I thought, did I forget to do sugar?

Did we miss our good luck charm?

Let's do it again just to be safe. Okay. Because I'd hate to think that I forgot to do it. Somebody actually emailed me one week saying, "You forgot to do sugar off the top." Then I went back and looked at the tape and I did do sugar. They were wrong. Like that time I got accused of saying lieutenant governor.

But you actually said left hand.

I actually said left hand.

Good for you. As one should. As one should. [laughter]

Uh that is the OnPaly podcast. We better get out of here. Okay, that's the OnP podcast for this Friday, December 5th, 2025.

You can follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you get notified each time a new episode is available. And you can see the video version of the podcast on the TVOT Today YouTube channel.

Any feedback you have, we're always happy to hear it, good, bad, or indifferent. Write us an email at onp politics@tvo.org.

Please include your first and last name and where you're from. [music]

This week's episode was produced by Matthew Omera. Editing by Colin Kish.

Production support from Jonathan Hallowell and TVO's digital media services team.

Lorie F is the executive producer of digital. John Ferry is the vice president programming and content.

We need to hire somebody uh to ensure that the sugar takes place. We [laughter] need a new quality control sugar adviser on this program.

Deputy assistant producer in term in in respect of sugar.

Exactly. Right. Maybe maybe someone on our wonderful crew can assume that responsib Well, Greg was Greg was on it. Greg has got his hand up. He's in charge. Okay. Uh thanks guys for as always setting up the studio and helping us out with making this video podcast happen. And until next Friday, everybody, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.