Premier Doug Ford stood outside his office at Queen’s Park on Thursday speaking in sombre tones.

The topic was education, but not the strikes gripping the province. Ford was there to talk about scholarships in the memory of the 57 Canadians who died when Iran shot down Ukraine International Flight PS752.

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“Many of the victims were young people, were students attending college or university right here in Ontario,” Ford said, as he announced the scholarships.

Ford noted that many of those lost were students or academics who had connections to Ontario colleges or universities. Students, professors, researchers — all lost on that flight but not forgotten.

“We’re establishing 57 individual scholarships of $10,000 each to honour and commemorate each of the bright lights we lost. And of course, we want to hear from the families of the victims to determine how we best preserve memory of their loved ones through this fund,” Ford said.

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The premier said he would be in discussions with families on how best to honour those lost, specifically the 34 of the 57 with a connection to an Ontario post-secondary education.

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Now, while Ford was there to talk about education in terms of scholarships, most of the questions he faced were about the rotating strikes hitting elementary and high schools across the province.

Would he offer more money in terms of raises to teachers? No. Would he consider back-to-work legislation? Yes. Will he change his mind on implementing online learning? Not a chance.

“No,” Ford said bluntly when asked if he would go higher for teacher raises.

“You know something, we can’t have rules for the heads of the unions that represent the teachers, and rules for everyone else in the province.”

And that is especially true in education.

Two education sector unions have already agreed to deals that include a 1% raise. Bizarrely, if one of the education unions gets a higher raise, that raise gets implemented across the board with all the unions. That’s something Ontario can’t afford.

High school teachers in the public and Catholic systems have said they will not accept online learning being implemented in Ontario’s schools. The province had said it would require students entering Grade 9 this September to complete four online courses by the time they graduate, something that has been reduced two courses over four years.

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Still, the teachers say no, they won’t accept that. It’s like they think they run the schools, they don’t. The province says they will go ahead with mandatory online learning, with exemptions for some students, and it is part of modernizing the education system.

“I find it ironic that when the teachers have to upgrade their skills, guess what? They do it online. But it’s not all right for Grade 11 or Grade 12 students, to go online and take a course,” Ford said.

If you haven’t been around teenagers lately, they spend their lives online.

Giving them the skills to take online courses — which they will need to take in either post-secondary or in the workforce — only makes sense.

The teachers’ unions oppose it because they worry it might mean fewer jobs in the classroom — meaning they would collect less in union dues — in the future. It’s part of why I say these contract talks are all about money for the unions.

“We either stay stagnant and roll over like the previous Liberal government did, and give the unions whatever they want, or we be responsible and respect the taxpayer’s money and be fair,” Ford said.

Being fair to taxpayers instead of spending wildly like the Liberals, isn’t that what we hired Ford and his government to do in the last election?