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Given this, the health of Ontario’s teachers organizations, it may be puzzling to people who live out of sight of the Gardiner Expressway that when Ontario’s teachers unions enter negotiations with the Ontario government, it is the government which (up till recently, and in secret) pays the union’s expenses during contract negotiations, rather than — as should plainly be the case if these numbers mean anything — the union subsidizing the cash-crushed, debt-buried, Standard and Poor-mocked Ontario government.

But in Ontario, as is common wisdom, manifestations of common sense only occur after it has been battered into insensibility, told to shut up and stood on its head. The whole country has learned, conveniently after the federal election, through a quite wonderful harmony of government and unions, the Ontario government subsidized anywhere from $2.5 to $7.1 million (depending on the period under review) the unions which come to the government seeking salary increases. And, also, up to now, it has made these payments for the union’s putative negotiating expenses without requiring receipts of any kind.

Liz Sandals, Ontario’s Minister of Education, with curt candour commented on this very point recently, when the revelations of her government’s endearing relationship with the teachers unions became something of a point, following the triumph of her Liberal cousins in Ottawa. Her words are golden: “You’re asking me if I have receipts and invoices. No, I don’t. We know what hotel rooms cost, we know what 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 costs. I don’t ask.”