The pay is $15 a day. You work in downtown Toronto. Meet the premier and other big wheels. Get an insider’s view of high-stakes politics. No parents to boss you around.

Not bad for Grade 7 or 8.

This is the life for about 140 Ontario schoolchildren a year selected to be pages in the legislature, where they can be seen in their black uniforms and white shirts delivering messages, documents and glasses of water to MPPs.

That’s when they’re not in class being tutored on the math they’re missing in school and taking other lessons in a unique earn-while-you-learn program.

“Any teacher will tell you kids learn best from field trips and this is like a field trip for weeks where they’re working and learning independent skills,” says page program co-ordinator Erin Tedford, a certified teacher.

As former pages readily admit, the best part of the job is getting a front-row seat to the workings of democracy and rubbing shoulders with the people making the decisions.

Progressive Conservative MPP Monte McNaughton (Lambton-Kent-Middlesex), a page from 1991, is a case in point.

“It gave me a better understanding of the world at a young age. It was life-changing for the fact that it opened my eyes to provincial politics and set a passion in side of me to make a difference,” says McNaughton.

A budding Tory at the time, he and his young colleagues delivered former premier Bob Rae’s controversial first NDP budget — with a big deficit aimed at fighting a recession — to all MPPs in the legislature.

“I remember going home the weekend after and talking to my dad and telling him we were meeting Bob Rae the next week,” recalls McNaughton, the son of a Home Hardware Building Centre owner in Newbury, southwest of London.

“Dad said, ‘Monte, you ask Mr. Rae how a business can survive spending more than it takes in.’ So I did, and Rae’s answer was government is different from business.”

There are lighter moments, too.

When New Democrat MPP Michael Prue (Beaches-East York) signals for water, pages flock to his desk, because he reaches inside to hand them full-size chocolate bars.

“They always want to bring me water,” Prue chuckles, adding he often asks several pages for help carrying things back to his office — even just his eyeglasses — where a table is filled with candies and chocolates.

McNaughton is just one of several former pages who made their way back to Queen’s Park as adults, along with Government Services Minister John Milloy, former Nipissing MPP Monique Smith, who is now Ontario’s trade representative in Washington, one-time Nickel Belt MPP Shelley Martel and Bradley Hammond, director of communications for Energy and Infrastructure Minister Bob Chiarelli.

For kids interested in government and politics, a stint as a page — which now lasts from two to five weeks depending on the legislative calendar — can really sink the hook in a lot of ways, from learning how laws are created, debated and passed to being in the big city taking the TTC or GO Train to work, usually paired with a fellow page.

“You’re pretty young. It’s a tremendous experience. For me, it was a game-changer,” says Hammond, a spring 1997 page who later did a Grade 11 exchange program in Germany. “It helped me narrow my academic interests in high school and university.”

A more recent page says she reaped the benefits quickly after starting Grade 9 in the fall.

“The page program is all about working together and helping each other out, which really helps when you get to high school because you’re meeting new people and you’re working in groups on projects,” says Emily Kostiuk, who was in the program last March.

The 14-year-old from John Cabot Secondary School in Mississauga is the daughter of Julie Rosenberg, a former TV reporter at and civil servant at Queen’s Park.

“She gained poise and confidence and it really opened her eyes to the world beyond the school system,” says Rosenberg, now communications manager at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

For now, the experience helped Emily to be named an apprentice ski-racing coach and who knows what in the future, Rosenberg adds.

“It taught her to reach for the stars and they gave them a letter of reference so she’s already building a resume.”

Milloy, who was a page in 1978, recalls bringing water and papers to a young St. Catharines MPP back then — Jim Bradley. The two are now cabinet colleagues, as Bradley is environment minister.

“We were paid the princely sum of $50 a week back then,” recalls Milloy, who lived with an aunt and uncle near Woodbine and Gerrard — pages must find their own local billets — and served a long stint from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

“I thought I had won the lottery,” adds the Kitchener Centre MPP. “I had very much identified with the Liberals by then . . . Bill Davis was (Progressive Conservative) premier then and they seemed to be accomplishing things and holding the government to account.”

Milloy came back to work at Queen’s Park as a political staffer as a young man, went to Ottawa as legislative assistant to former prime minister Jean Chrétien and earned a doctorate in modern history at Oxford.

Competition to become a page — and to carry on a tradition that dates to Confederation, when boys aged 10 to 14 did the job (girls were not taken as pages until 1971) — is stiff, with the next recruitment cycle beginning in mid-April.

Grade 7 and 8 students who are interested must submit a 750-word essay detailing what community and other experience they have to demonstrate leadership, responsibility and interpersonal skills, complete an online application form and a consent form signed by their parents, home-room teacher and principal.

The essays are graded and the highest ranked children made offers, says Tedford, who notes there are usually 500 to 800 applications for each recruitment period.

“They’re all A students, just to apply. It takes a special kind of kid who’s already interested in politics or government,” she adds.

“Once they’re here they all bond so quickly. Some are from farms, some are downtown kids, some are French, some are English, they’re from all religions and they all learn from each other.”

And they all tend to keep in touch.

Emily’s page group has a Facebook account, and McNaughton’s holds reunions every three or four years.