TORONTO — The Ford government says a set of proposals from Ontario’s high school teachers’ union could wind up costing more than $7 billion by 2021-22, if each proposal on the table is also granted to all the other education unions across the province.

“The reason why we publicize this, we believe, is it’s in taxpayers’ interests to know,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce said.

Meanwhile, OSSTF president Harvey Bischof accused the education minister of inflating his numbers and inflaming his rhetoric — noting that his union didn’t bargain on behalf of the whole education sector, but rather for their own members.

The $7 billion figure, which was released on Tuesday afternoon in a data sheet compiled by the government, encompasses asks for cost-of-living adjustments to salaries and benefits — which would contradict the provincial PCs’ recently passed public sector wage cap — as well as requests around maintaining class sizes and other measures on the table such as a pitched parental leave top-up.

READ MORE: Ontario high school teachers’ union announces one-day strike next week

According to the data released by the government, the union’s proposed cost of living adjustment to wages, salary grids and position of responsibility allowances on an annual basis would cost the province $63.7 million for secondary teachers in the next year, and $406 million if applied to all teachers in Ontario. Those numbers went up when factoring in education workers, as well.

The ask of a six per cent increase in benefits was estimated to cost $19.5 million next year for secondary educators, and $108.8 million if applied to all educators in Ontario. In 2021-22, the total cost of the secondary union’s salary increase ask would be $1.22 billion, if applied to all educators; the total of the benefit increase ask would meanwhile be $293.5 million for all educators.

However, the government’s overall figures assume that every aspect of OSSTF’s asks would have to be applied out to all educators in the province, including those represented by CUPE — which has already ratified its deal with the government. The CUPE deal has a me-too clause around salary that allows them to be granted increases in that regard if such increases are given to other unions, but on other matters at the table, it’s unclear whether the requests would each have to be extended out to all unions.

Asked if his ministry was presupposing the outcome of negotiations in arriving at their data points, Lecce replied by claiming that it was “likely or plausible” that what was given to one education union would later be extended out to all the others. Lecce has recently been “naming and shaming” secondary teachers’ requests for a two per cent increase in salary and six per cent increase in benefits — billed by the union as an adjustment to keep pace with the rate of inflation. Lecce has called the ask an “unacceptable request” on the government.

Those comments have been criticized by Bischof, the president of the secondary educators’ union. “I don’t understand why he thinks inflaming the situation by attempting to shame my members is going to be productive,” Bischof told iPolitics in an interview last week. His union is posed to hold its second full strike day tomorrow, impacting specific school boards across the province.

On Tuesday, Bischof alleged that Lecce was “trying to inflame the rhetoric,” saying they had requested a costing of their proposals at the bargaining table, but only received the government’s figures around the same time they were distributed to reporters. (Lecce said he announced the data publicly because it would be posted.)

“I don’t know where they came up with that ($7 billion) number, but it was apparent to me that the minister didn’t have an answer either, and he’s the one who supposedly came up with it,” Bischof told reporters at Queen’s Park, following Lecce’s press conference.

In response to the government’s new figures, provincial NDP leader Andrea Horwath accused Lecce of presenting differing data when discussing the financial impacts of the secondary educators’ union asks. “This whole issue of Mr. Lecce’s moving numbers is meant to confuse and to worry people,” Horwath claimed.

Last week, Lecce claimed that the secondary teachers’ union ask around salary and benefits increases would cost $1.5 billion by the third year. The data distributed on Tuesday displayed a cost for the salary and benefit adjustment in 2021-22 of $293.9 million — which included both teachers and education workers represented by Bischof’s union. If that increase was expanded out to all educators by that year, the cost was listed at $1.5 billion.

The government’s new data was released on the same day that Lecce announced that a tentative agreement had been reached between the province and the Education Workers’ Alliance of Ontario — representing some 4,200 full-time equivalents.