Steve Paikin: Welcome everyone to the OnPoli podcast. I'm Steve Paikin.

John Michael McGrath: And I'm John Michael McGrath.

Steve Paikin: Today on the pod, the province will not eliminate school board trustees after all, but they're certainly taking away much of their authority. For the first time ever, two Ontario colleges have decided to merge. We'll talk about why that's a sign of the times in the post-secondary sector. The leader of the Green Party, Mike Schreiner, is here for more on Ontario procuring renewable energy projects. We'll also get his take on budgets and Billy Bishop. And in your column my column, I'm going to focus on those changes to school boards. And I've got a postmortem on the Liberal national political convention that took place in Montreal this past weekend as Canada's so-called natural governing party celebrates its move to a majority. It's Friday, April 17th, 2026. So, let's get to it.

Steve Paikin: JMM, hello from across the pond. I come to you today from the canton of Geneva, Switzerland, where I am here for a few days um amidst I guess what we would call wonderful mayhem. I'm visiting three grandchildren, all of whom are under the age of five, and I have somehow managed to find one peaceful moment in the day to get behind my laptop and do this show with you. But uh you know what? It could all come crashing down on our heads at any moment now, so we should probably get the show on the road here. What are you Oh, you got a streetcar on today. What's the significance of that?

John Michael McGrath: >> t-shirt again uh because uh our our guest later is of course among other things a transit advocate par excellence, so I thought I would honor that.

Steve Paikin: Very nice idea. Well, today I am wearing Let me just stand up a little bit here. This is You know, you can see the flag of the province of Ontario superimposed over an outline of the province of Ontario, and I'm doing that because it was 61 years ago this week that the Ontario legislature passed a bill that officially created an official flag for Ontario. We did not have one before 61 years ago. Now, there's a bit of a story as to how we got this flag, and I'm going to bore everybody with it right now. Actually, you know what? I've actually had young people come up to me and say, "Steve, keep doing that boring stuff you do off the top. We love all these walks down memory road for you, and we learn a few things." So, okay, I'm going to do that here.

Steve Paikin: You will remember No, you wouldn't, John Michael. You were not alive. You were 20 years away from being alive. Yes. But >> [laughter] >> But 2 months before we got our official flag, Canada got its new flag. There was a massive controversial debate about it in Parliament. We knew that Conservatives under John Diefenbaker wanted to keep the old flag, which was called the Red Ensign, which essentially looked like the Union Jack in the top left corner and the Canadian coat of arms beside it. There's a good picture of it right there.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah. And that was the flag of Canada from 1867 until we got our new flag, which of course was the and is the one we use today, the red maple leaf in the middle with the two red bars on either side.

Steve Paikin: And John Robarts, who was the premier of Ontario at the time, got an idea. He said, "We're going to take that discarded Red Ensign. We're going to take the Canadian coat of arms off it. We're going to put the Here we go, right here. We're going to put the coat of arms of Ontario on it, and we'll have the Union Jack in the top left corner and the Ontario coat of arms, and now we will have an official flag." And Darcy McKeough, who was a well-known cabinet minister back in the day, said apparently at a cabinet meeting, "Premier, are you sure you want to do this? I mean, do we want to stir up all the whole flag flap all over again here in Ontario? We just went through it federally." And his answer was, "Darcy, it's all going to be fine, and besides that, it's great politics for us." And it was great politics for Ontario back in the day because of course we were not, 61 years ago, the multicultural bastion we are today. We were very much a white Anglo-Saxon province, and the white Anglo-Saxons in Ontario, who many of whom supported keeping the old flag, uh would have been happy to have uh echoes of the old flag uh in place for Ontario's new flag, and it all happened in the legislature 61 years ago this week.

Steve Paikin: So, there we go. So, I was looking this up because I had thought that at the same time that we adopted the flag in '61, that that was also when we adopted the motto, uh which in Latin and pardon me, I have to read it to cuz I haven't brushed up on my Latin. It's Ut Incepit Fidelis Sic Permanet, which means uh loyal she was born, loyal she remains. Uh I thought we had also adopted the motto at the same time, but apparently no, no. The the coat of arms and the motto date back to 1909, and it was uh those were what were then put on the flag in 1961. I had this this idea in my head that the the motto was also kind of like a jab at the the new flag, the federal Liberals, all of that drama as well, but it actually substantially predates all of that drama. So, I I learned something this week as well.

John Michael McGrath: >> [laughter] >> Let the record show I am not the only nerdy old-timer here going down memory lane [laughter] with a chapter from Ontario's long-ago history.

Steve Paikin: So, yes indeed, 61 years ago on this week, we got the new flag, but we already had the motto in place. And JMM, loyal I have been to you, loyal I shall remain, [laughter] and with that we're off to issue one. Absolutely.

Steve Paikin: For the longest time, it looked as if the Ontario government was leading up to a decision that would eliminate school board trustees altogether. But this week, the Minister of Education announced, "No." The role would stick around, but there would be significant changes in what trustees could do and how much they would be paid. JMM, we've talked about this before in as much as trustees, they are the oldest political role in the country. They predate members of Parliament. They predate members of the legislature, but the government has plans. What do they intend to do?

John Michael McGrath: So, this is Bill 101, the Putting Student Achievement First Act. Uh this bill does a bunch of different things like many of the bills introduced by this government, but in broad strokes, it really diminishes the role of elected school board trustees for the English language boards specifically. Um it caps their number. It shrinks one school board outright in Toronto. The The Toronto District School Board will shrink to 12 trustees. Um and it expands provincial control over procurement in both in-class materials as well as large capital projects. Obviously, one of the biggest things that school boards do is build new schools. Uh the province is going to impose new oversight and control over those projects. And you know, if we zoom out for a moment, you know, we could say this is part of a very long trend in Ontario politics where the provincial government has really exercised more and more control over education policy uh certainly since the 1990s and arguably going back to the 1960s. Um so, Bill 101 is certainly part of that trend. It continues that trend, but that doesn't mean that some of these changes aren't notable in their own right.

Steve Paikin: Well, let's go through some of them, and uh as Woodward and Bernstein said back in the 1970s, we're going to follow the money. Let's start there. The government started down this road after a series of well, I don't know what else to call them other than huge, controversial, headline-grabbing examples of certainly what the government considers to be terrible misspending by certain trustees. So, tell us what the bill has to say about that.

John Michael McGrath: Right. So, uh discretionary spending by trustees is going to be subject to uh new regulations with the province forbidding some types of uh expense payments altogether. Things like uh uh school boards will be forbidden for uh from paying for personal electronics or uh some kinds of personal travel. Right? If a school board trustee needs to be paid to travel for their duties, right? Like just as an example, uh you know, the school board would still be allowed to reimburse trustees for mileage if they have to drive long distances to an actual meeting of the school board. Uh but you know, some of the examples that were making headlines last year like the the school board that where trustees flew to Italy to inspect statuary. Um uh those will no longer be permitted. Uh you know, the province is is clearly trying to keep a very tight leash on school board spending as things go forward. Um the province is also capping honoraria. Right? People might recall that uh once upon a time school board trustees were paid like public sector salaries the way that we pay city councilors and MPPs and MPs. Uh that has not been the case for several decades now. They are instead paid a an honoraria. Uh the in the case of some GTA cities, those can be pretty substantial in the you know, $25 to $35,000 range for uh the sort of the basic salary of a a school board trustee. I said I said salary, but of course these are not salaries. Um and uh for uh school board chairs, those can go higher. Uh the province is setting a new cap that uh the honoraria can only be 10 or can only go as high as $10,000 per year. So, that is a very substantial cut for at least some school board trustees in the province.

Steve Paikin: This is a great reminder among some of us anyway of a certain generation that everything old is new again. I remember 30 years ago when Mike Harris became premier of Ontario, one of the first things his government did was come in and make some changes to the trustees, and one of the biggest was to knock down those salaries to I think the maximum was something like $5,000 a year because it was the Harris government's view that they very much wanted this to be a part-time position, and their concern was it was becoming, because of the better salary, a full-time position. So, here we go again. The salary's going to be knocked down to $10,000 because in some cases the salaries did creep up over the years. But that's $10,000 a year to in some cases oversee school board business in school boards where well, for example, the Toronto District School Board has 230,000 students to oversee. I mean, that's almost twice as much as the population of Prince Edward Island entirely. I mean, the Ottawa School Board looks at 75,000 students. That's bigger than the entire population of North Bay. Any concerns over that math?

John Michael McGrath: Well, the the good news so to speak for trustees is that their jobs are going to get a lot smaller. The The other thing that Bill 101 does is as we alluded to earlier is that it it shrinks their role substantially. More of the work of running the school board itself including creating the board's budget would now be done by a chief executive officer who would replace the position that that currently currently exists of the director of education. The CEO would be responsible for the business side of the board's operations as I say, putting together budget, managing the spending, those kinds of things. While pedagogical issues you know, more education policy focused issues would be handled by a chief educational officer. Both positions would be hired by the board of trustees themselves. The boards would not be allowed to fire the chief executive officer. So the the government says outright they want to protect the role of the CEO from any potential reprisals from school boards if for example, the CEO recommends a budget that they don't like. There is one issue that I want to flag in particular that the CEO would have the power to write the budget for the English public school boards. The trustees would basically only be able to sort of say yes to the budget. If they were to say no, if there was a dispute between the CEO and the trustees, the provincial government would be the one to wade in and and break the impasse. And at least under the current government, you could imagine how that power would be used. They would presumably come in and side with the CEO at least if the CEO was making policy in line with what the provincial government wants.

Steve Paikin: Let's talk labor relations for a second here because of course over the years, the province has really taken unto itself a lot more of the power to negotiate contracts with teacher unions and so on and left a lot fewer of those responsibilities to individual school boards. What's going to happen now with labor relations going forward?

John Michael McGrath: Well, that is also changing in a big way. Again, for the English language school boards, instead of trustees, the school boards will now be represented at the bargaining table by an umbrella organization of these CEOs, these chief executive officers. There is still going to be a role specifically for Catholic school trustees where any decision might impact the specific religious nature of the Catholic school boards. Because of course the Catholic school board does have that constitutional protection in our constitution. That said, you know, in some ways as much as there are other big things that are going on in Bill 101, I do think that this is this might be low-key the biggest change in the bill because it really does away with even the sort of polite fiction that the school board trustees are the ultimate employers, right? ...formally actually the the provincial government didn't get a a formal role in labor negotiations with unions until gosh, I want to say 2014, maybe 2015. ... And now we've just seen this take another step where we are entirely sidelining the elected school board trustees as representatives in that collective bargaining. ... The government has chosen not to eliminate school board trustees entirely, but they haven't left them a lot of work to actually do.

Steve Paikin: >> [laughter] >> Let me do one more go round with you on this and and I've really been thinking a lot lately about why despite giving every indication that they were seriously considering eliminating the trustee position altogether, they obviously at the end of the day thought that was a bridge too far and decided not to do it and instead I love this word, they have sort of defenestrated the powers of trustees that they have enjoyed since Confederation. You still need someone to call if you've got a problem. I don't know, what do you think?

John Michael McGrath: Well, I do have some thoughts about this that I'm going to share in the your column my column segment. But I I will definitely cosign what you just said about I don't think the Minister of Education wants to personally be getting angry phone calls from parents when the school bus in Haliburton Highlands is late on a Tuesday morning. Agreed.

Steve Paikin: And I look forward to more of your comments on this when we get to your column and my column. But in the meantime, we're off to issue two. Ever since the Ontario college system was created more than six decades ago, it has pretty much only ever done one thing. It has grown. It started with just a few hundred students at Centennial College in Toronto and has now boomed to the point where there are 350,000 students at 24 colleges on a hundred different campuses all around the province. But that changed this past week when two colleges, St. Lawrence College in Kingston and Fleming College in Peterborough announced they will merge their operations to create a new soon-to-be-named entity. The two colleges insist they're not going to be closing any campuses, but a lack of funding has clearly prompted this move. So JMM, they are presumably looking to save some money in other ways. What do we know?

John Michael McGrath: Well, like a lot of institutions of higher learning in Ontario over the last few years, both of these colleges have really struggled with the changes to both federal and provincial policy. The elephant in the room continues to be the changes to immigration policy and specifically international students. Both of these colleges have have made really substantial cuts to their programs already before this most recent announcement. Just looking at the numbers here, Fleming College since 2023 has suspended or cut at least 50 programs. And St. Lawrence College had also suspended 50 programs earlier this year. So both of these colleges dealing with falling enrollment and and clearly getting very creative in thinking about how they address that. You know, in one sense of course this could be good for students and staff, right? ...this might be a genuine way to cut costs and keep tuition costs down for students if it does in fact lead to lower administration costs, a smaller administrative burden.

Steve Paikin: Now of course anybody who's a faculty member, an instructor, a professor, other staff members at these colleges, they're represented by unions. And we know that the unions that represent these people have been upset so far because they were not given a heads up on this. They were not consulted. They were not brought into the decision-making process. What do we or do we know anything for certain about how staff will be affected by this merger?

John Michael McGrath: We don't know anything in detail so far. CBC reported that the staff at both St. Lawrence College and Fleming were blindsided by the announcement ... One obvious fear that the unions are concerned about is that while we talk about consolidating the administrative side of this, it could also mean closing maybe one or more campuses. ... I think it's fair to say given all of what we have seen in the post-secondary education space in Ontario for the last few years that nobody feels terribly secure in their employment right now. ... you know, particularly in a city like Toronto, there is undeniably more school floor space under the management of the TDSB than there are students to fill it. ... the baby boom is no longer in the public education universe ... And you know, the the situation with colleges is a little bit different where I don't think enrollment is falling quite as severely, but it is also certainly not growing the way it once did ... Are we building it for Ontario students? Are we building it to cater to international students so that we can use them to subsidize the the students?

Steve Paikin: >> Well, exactly, right? ... Now, while we're talking about this sector, we should also bring folks up to date on another fairly significant development that took place this week. Why don't you bring us up to speed on that?

John Michael McGrath: Right. And this was another part of Bill 101 which we referred to earlier. The government is disbanding the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. Now, this was a provincial agency that was created in 2005 to conduct research on the the quality of higher education in Ontario. ... Sort of the name does what it says on the tin. ... They are now saying that the Ford government is now saying that actually the the Ministry of Colleges and Universities is now gathering that data effectively enough that this council is sort of redundant, is no longer necessary. ... one aspect of this is that the Ford government had in 2018 imposed a regulation on universities and colleges that required them to adopt free speech on campus policies and made the Higher Education Quality Council responsible for assessing the the nature of those policies ... With this council being disbanded, the Ministry is going to take over that specific role on its own. ... I am flagging this for us to keep an eye on it for the future.

Steve Paikin: I'm calling you on one thing here and that is to say JMM, niche issues are your brand. Who are you [laughter] trying to kid here, my friend? And with that, we're off to issue three. This week the provincial government announced more than a dozen wind and solar projects will be built in Ontario. The target completion date is the year 2030. Many of the projects are in northern Ontario including sites around Thunder Bay, Searchmont which is near Sault Ste. Marie, and Timmins. Experts say the project is expected to supply energy for about 350,000 homes. This and other issues to discuss with Mike Schreiner, the MPP for Guelph and of course the leader of the Green Party of Ontario, whom we welcome back to TVO. Mike Schreiner, good to see you and JMM get us started if you would.

John Michael McGrath: Now, before we get to the important topic of renewable energy, I do want to give you an opportunity. You were not able to come with a t-shirt to the On Poli show, but you did bring themed socks. Could you describe those for us?

Mike Schreiner: Yeah, you know what? It's tough to have a t-shirt on when you're at Queen's Park, but I did bring my Wyndham House socks which is a great organization in Guelph that's well on the path to eliminating youth homelessness. They have a house key on it because everyone deserves a human right to a safe, affordable place to call home. Fantastic.

John Michael McGrath: So, the government did make this announcement about a bunch of renewable energy projects. This of course comes eight or so years after they canceled a bunch of renewable projects. That was among the first things they did in government. They they seem to have turned a corner. What do you make of this development?

Mike Schreiner: Well, it's a good news story and it's a step in the right direction, but it is far too little and the reason being is these renewable energy projects are coming in substantially cheaper than new nuclear and gas. But unfortunately, this government's been putting their thumb on the scale to ramp up gas plants, invest in new nuclear, and instead of the lowest cost source of electricity which is wind, solar, and battery storage. That's why you saw $2.3 trillion last year alone invested in the green energy transition globally. Ontario's missing in action. That's costing us jobs. It's jacking up our electricity prices and it's increasing climate pollution.

Steve Paikin: Mike, I do remember the Ontario government's initial explanation behind the cancellation of those projects they inherited from the previous Liberal government was the cost was going to be far too much, the cost per kilowatt-hour was going to be far too much, and therefore they canceled them and they have said you can agree or disagree, but they have said the procurement costs for these renewables are much more in line with what we can afford and therefore we will see cheaper electricity costs cost down the road. What do you make of that explanation?

Mike Schreiner: Well, the cancellation of those contracts eight years ago cost hundreds of millions of dollars, hurt Ontario's business reputation around the world, has meant we're not attracting capital investment in renewables which is so sad because they're the cheapest source of electricity. So, yes, the government's right. They are the cheapest source. So, why are they procuring so much gas and nuclear, jacking up electricity prices by 29% last year alone? ... Well, if the government was actually using fossil gas plants as emergency backup, that would be correct. What they're doing right now is they're trying to keep they're running gas plants 24/7. Matter of fact, the Portlands plant in Toronto is running so often the builders can't even build high-rise apartments around there because there's so much air pollution in the area.

John Michael McGrath: ... Um thank you. >> Well done. Uh but you mentioned air pollution in the Portlands there, and I'm going to broaden out here a bit to non-energy topics, or at least not directly. The premier has in effect moved to take over Billy Bishop Airport in downtown Toronto, the island airport. Uh for he wants to expand it, allow jets to operate out of the airport. What do you make of that?

Mike Schreiner: Well, I think he's going to intensify Billy Bishop Airport and ruin what people love about Billy Bishop. People love Billy Bishop cuz they can get in and out quickly. They're not in long lines. There isn't a ton of traffic to go there. If he's going to expand the island airport, increase the number of jets in and out of there, it's going to lead to more gridlock, more traffic in the airport. ... It makes absolutely no sense. And I have to tell you, people outside of Toronto should be outraged. People in Thunder Bay should be like, "Why aren't you investing in our airport instead of Toronto's island airport?" Or people in rural communities are having to shut down roads and bridges cuz they don't have enough money to pay for their maintenance. And the premier's talking about a tunnel under the 401, expanding Billy Bishop Airport, building a fantasy island for a new Toronto Convention Centre. I'd say to the premier, we have a whole other province out there that desperately needs infrastructure investment, and the government's ignoring them.

Steve Paikin: Mike, let me do a quick follow-up on that. ... I was surprised to hear the mayor of Toronto never mind not only not come out and oppose this planned expansion, but she said she actually agreed with the notion that the runway needed to be longer at Billy Bishop, and she quoted the federal transportation minister as saying that for safety reasons it needs to be longer. Uh did that come as news to you?

Mike Schreiner: I think there has been support even for people who just want to keep the airport with existing types of propeller jets that there needs to be a slight expansion of the runway for safety reasons. But there is major opposition, including from the Ontario Green Party, to expanding the runway to accommodate jets. ... I'd like to see a bit more opposition out of the mayor. I remember one of her progressive predecessors who was very opposed to expansion of the island airport.

Steve Paikin: Okay, forgive me. Let me sneak one more in here ... namely St. Lawrence in Kingston and Fleming in Peterborough. What do you make of that? ... Now, admittedly, it's been a couple of weeks since the Ontario budget came out ... and I wonder if, with the benefit of a couple of extra weeks of hindsight, you you think there were any missed opportunities in that budget that you wish had been in there.

Mike Schreiner: The biggest one is on housing, and that's exactly why I have my housing socks on today. 85,000 people experiencing homelessness in the province of Ontario right now. You know what was in the budget for supportive housing to move people out of encampments into housing? 435 supportive housing spaces over 3 years. 141 a year. That's a drop in the bucket. This government just announced that they're going to spend billions building new jails at a cost of 3.5 million per jail cell. You know how much it costs to build a supportive home? 125,000. Costs 180,000 to operate that jail cell. You know what it costs to operate the supportive home? $10,000 a year. Let's invest in people. ... And the premier continues to say no to legalizing multiplexes and mid-rises, which is the fastest way to build homes that people can afford ...

John Michael McGrath: ... I wrote about Bill 101 and the changes to school boards ... And my my supposition here is basically that people in the premier's office decided that education is never really a winning issue for Tories ... and I just get the sense that they decided at the end of the day that they did not need to pick this fight to accomplish what they wanted and what they wanted was really just to stop making irritating headlines based [laughter] on trustee misspending ...

Steve Paikin: ... something unprecedented happened in the country. ... a government went from having a very large minority position in the Parliament of Canada to a very small majority position ... the spirit in the hall in Montreal was almost unlike anything I've seen before. ... Mark Carney's speech on the Saturday afternoon in which interestingly enough he never mentioned Donald Trump or Pierre Poilievre ... but he gave a kind of very big picture here is the task at hand. ... the highlight of the weekend for me was having a chance to have a conversation with a 19-year-old McGill University student named Samantha Lowe. ... It kind of restores my faith in Generation Z ...

Steve Paikin: ... With that, we don't have a mailbag this week ... that uh leaves us just in the nick of time to say that is the On Poli podcast for this Friday, April 17th, 2026. ... Bye-bye. Bye-bye.