OTTAWA — Building a tariff-proof province starts with schools.
That was the message from Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles on Tuesday, during a campaign stop at an Ottawa community centre, where she outlined her party’s plan for the province’s education system.
“This is about building our future, and it’s also about strengthening our economy,” she told reporters from Maison de la Francophonie d’Ottawa in Nepean.
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“Ontario’s schools are more than just buildings. If you walk through any high school in any community, and you’re going to see generations of students in the class photos along the hallway walls … you’ll see thousands of lives changed forever by the quality education that they received in our public schools.”
Stiles outlined her party’s education platform, which includes spending an extra $850 million yearly for clearing repair backlogs in Ontario’s school boards within a decade, hiring more teachers and staff, establishing a provincial school food program, improving access to transportation and furthering efforts to de-stream Ontario classrooms.
“Right now our schools are literally falling apart,” she said, speaking of the province’s over $20 billion school repair backlog left behind by the LIberals, and left to grow under the PCs.
“Schools without heat in the winter, schools with leaking roofs, conditions that make it impossible for our kids to focus and to learn. New Democrats will fix our schools, so kids have a nurturing and healthy school environment.”
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