Drug Fraud gets around to education

I remember a lot of folks—some even on the left—arguing that Drug Fraud would leave education mostly alone in his first term (other than ideological attacks such as the move to ensure that kids never find out about being gay or that they are allowed to give or revoke consent, which are low-hanging fruit) because cutting funding and firing teachers doesn't play well with the electorate. Of course this is dead wrong; there is no sector that Tories love to attack more than education, except maybe health care.

I was under the impression that legislation and funding had to be debated in a parliamentary democracy and not just spontaneously rammed through on the weekend when no one's paying attention, but to be fair, I was an anarchist as a tween when we were learning about how government worked, and I was kind of counting on living in some kind of communal eco-utopia by the time it was relevant to me. So I don't know, maybe the Ontario Legislature really decides things by having the premier tweet a policy, and then it happens. It's much more convenient than facts and debate and voting and such, after all.

At any rate, he has in fact gone after education on both a funding and ideological level. First, the funding.

The Ford government has cut millions in funding for programs that provide after-school jobs for needy teens, classroom tutors for kids, “student success” supports for racialized youth as well as a project focusing on Indigenous issues, the Star has learned.

The province’s 72 school boards received emails late Friday with the list of programs to be cut or that will see funding reduced, and have been scrambling all weekend to figure out the financial impact, given the specialized grant money was promised by the previous Liberal government last March and may have already been spent.

The TDSB staff were all called into work yesterday—that would be a Saturday—to make sense of the stream of nonsensical emails. Ramming this through on a weekend, right before Christmas, ensures that any resistance to this will be scattered and poorly organized.

But don't think it's just after-school programs for starving children; the goon squad is also interested in attacking post-secondary. They've finally come up with their FREEZED PEACH policy, which, along with axing the modern health and physical education curriculum, was the only education-related issue they mentioned in their platform. And it's a doozy, once again passed with no consultation or discussion.

It might as well be called the Jordan Peterson Fanboy Act, as it essentially protects the right of racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic white men to have free speech, while anyone who opposes them does so at the risk of getting funding cut for their entire institution.

It's obvious why Tories don't like public education. An educated populace sees through their shoddy economics, repressive policies, and overall shortsightedness. It'd be better for them if, as with the police force that is on its way to being Ford's own private militia, they could just, you know, make sure that schools and universities were propaganda mills devoted to beating the rebellion out of students. Sadly, teachers, administrators, professors, school trustees, and so on, are quite used to being the adults in the room. But now we are all dealing with a raging toddler intent on spraying the walls with projectile vomit and burning the room itself down, so it's time to recognize the extent of the threat, step up, and mobilize. Not just to ensure that he's booted out in the next election, but to stop him now, because democracy isn't just something that happens during elections, and there is a lot of projectile vomit that can be sprayed in four years.