The government did not ask for receipts before giving three teacher unions $2.5 million to help with the cost of negotiating new contracts, Education Minister Liz Sandals acknowledged Thursday.

Sandals, under increasing fire over the controversial payouts, said they were to offset “reasonable costs” such as hotel and meeting room rentals under a time-consuming new collective bargaining system.

“You’re asking me if I have receipts and invoices. No, I don’t,” Sandals admitted after the legislature’s daily question period.

“But what I do have knowledge of is the cost of rooms, the cost of travel, so that we’re looking at estimates around the cost of room rentals, the cost of food, not as somebody is suggesting, a night in the bar.”

“I make no apologies.”

The payments were $1 million each to the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association plus $500,000 to AEFO, the union for francophone teachers.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, which does not yet have a new contract and is banning its members from extracurricular activities with pupils next week, says it will pay its own bargaining expenses.

Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown, who opposes the payments on principle, said giving money to the unions without receipts being submitted is “disrespectful to taxpayers.”

“There should be transparency. We should know where it was spent. How do we know it even cost $1 million? The fact that they’re just guessing, that’s not the way to handle taxpayer dollars.”

Sandals said she’s not worried about receipts because the unions have contingents of members travelling by air and car from across the province to participate in talks that began in July and continued into the fall.

“We know how long we’ve been at the hotel. We know what hotel rooms cost, we know what the meeting rooms cost, we know what the food costs, we know what 100 pizzas cost . . . you don’t need to see every bill when you’re doing an estimate of cost.”

The situation would be different if the government was paying the full freight for the union bargaining teams, Sandals added.

“If I’m paying the full cost, yes, but I actually don’t think I’m paying the full cost. They have costs far in excess of what we are supporting. What we’re saying is this is a reasonable estimate given what we know.”

The OSSTF declined to comment on the payout and its expenses while the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association has said suggestions that the provincial money is bribery are “offensive” given that it had 47 days of bargaining expenses, a “portion” of which was covered by the $1 million.

Sandals has refused to reveal how much has been paid to unions, school boards and school board associations since provincial contract discussions first began in 2004.

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She said earlier this week this is the last year for the bargaining subsidies provided under the new two-tier bargaining system that mandates separate negotiations at the local level with school boards and with the province on broader issues, such as wages.

All contracts had to be restructured clause-by-clause to reflect the two-tier system and that required a lot of work and time, Sandals told reporters.