Ontario’s teacher unions sure seem intent on spending millions to make sure they get their billions in new pay raises and benefits increases.

Have you been able to drive anywhere lately without hearing ads warning you that the Ford government is gutting education, firing all the teachers and forcing students to have hundreds of students per class?

OK, that might be an exaggeration, but the claims the teacher unions are making in those ads are much more than an exaggeration. At times, I’d call some of the claims I’ve heard outright lies.

The real thing to ponder, though, is what those ads cost.

Running ads on radio around the clock on multiple stations across isn’t cheap. Yet, the three main unions representing teachers in Ontario English school boards have been on a full-court media push, bombarding you at every turn with tales of woe.

In the last six months, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association have spent $905,902 on Facebook ads alone. Most of that is in the last 90 days where OSSTF and ETFO are the first and third top Canadian advertisers on Facebook for social, political or election ads.

Think about that: Just two unions are outspending every government in the country, every political party and every advocacy group vying for your attention. If the unions are spending almost $1 million on Facebook ads, then they are likely spending more on radio, TV and print ads to back them up.

How much have they spent in total on ads? I’d estimate several million between them across all their platforms. One ad executive I spoke with estimated the total spend to be approaching what political parties would spend in an election campaign on advertising.

Why?

To convince you that they, the poor teachers, are under attack by the mean Ford government intent on destroying public education in Ontario.

It’s actually laughable.

The Ford government is not gutting education, they aren’t even cutting education spending. In the Ford government’s first budget, the total education spend, including payments to the teachers’ very generous pension plan, went up from $28.2 billion in the last year of the Liberals to $31.5 billion under the Tories.

It will likely rise again in this spring’s budget.

The teachers say they’re concerned that education spending is not going up by enough, it isn’t keeping pace with what the Liberals spent and it isn’t keeping pace with inflation. To them, that is a cut.

No, it’s simply not spending as much as the teachers would like.

It’s funny, Liz Stuart, the head of OECTA, recently said at a news conference that the amount of money we spend shouldn’t be a line item on the budget.

That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how government works and that no amount of money is enough for Stuart and her fellow union heads.

Of course, education spending has to be a line item on the budget; in fact, it’s the second biggest area of provincial government spending after health care.

But after 15 years where the Liberals spent and spent and spent — more than doubling the education budget after adjusting for inflation — we need to control costs.

That means saying no to the demands the teachers have.

OSSTF wants a pay hike of 2% and an increase in benefits spending of 6%, ETFO wants a 2% wage hike and a 7% increase in benefits and OECTA is asking for similar raises.

Yet, if any of the unions gets these kind of raises, then “me too” clauses kick in and all the education unions will get those increases.

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That would amount to an extra $7 billion in education spending over the term of the contract with all of it going directly into teachers’ pockets. None of it would change a thing in schools or improve the classroom.

The unions aren’t spending millions in this fight for altruistic reasons. They are spending the millions to make sure their members get even more money, more benefits in this contract. Remember that.