Letter to all federal parties: What will you invest in repairing & rebuilding Canadian public schools?

Fix Our Schools is sending the following letter to the Green, Liberal, NDP, and PC Parties of Canada; and to all Ontario federal candidates. Print it out to review with any federal canvassers that come knocking on your door or take it with you to a federal candidates debate.

To: The Green, Liberal, NDP and Conservative Parties of Canada

My son wore his winter coat at school this past winter because his classroom was twelve degrees Celsius.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident of disrepair in Canadian public schools:

  • In Vancouver, schools need approximately $1-billion of seismic upgrades to prevent collapse in case of earthquakes; and across British Columbia there are hundreds of millions of dollars in outstanding maintenance in public schools.
  • In Ontario, all 72 public school boards have repair backlogs, for a total of over $15-billion of outstanding repairs – many of which are deemed “urgent” by the Province.
  • In Montreal, almost 40% of the 226 schools in one board were recently deemed to be in either an “excessive [or] advanced state of decay”.
  • In New Brunswick, two public schools had to be closed in 2010 because they were unsafe, forcing that provincial government to invest more in school buildings.

The 5-million children who attend Canadian public schools deserve better – as do the countless Canadian children who attend childcare programs in these same schools. Voters across the country consider their local public schools to be community hubs, and expect these buildings to be safe, well-maintained, and funded as critical social infrastructure.

Federal infrastructure money has been used for hockey arenas, curling rinks and gazebos. Surely, Canadians would agree that federal investment in school buildings is equally important? So, our question to the Federal parties is this:

How much federal infrastructure money would your party invest in repairing and rebuilding Canadian public school buildings – a critical part of our country’s infrastructure?

Kind regards,

Krista Wylie – Co-Founder, Fix Our Schools

www.fixourschools.ca: grassroots, non-partisan advocates for safe, well-maintained schools