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The three reports combine to tell a familiar story: Rae’s government became caught in a bitter confrontation with teachers over efforts to control costs and was replaced by Conservative Mike Harris, who sparked the biggest teacher walkout in history to that point, partly by trying to implement some of the recommendations of the Rae commission, only to be succeeded by the Liberals’ Dalton McGuinty, the self-styled “education premier,” whose relations with teachers soured into further walkouts and court challenges, and Kathleen Wynne, whose desperation to maintain “labour peace” prompted unilateral pay increases and contract extensions, neither of which did her much good.

Any hope of surviving contract talks without some sort of screaming fit from the unions is a fantasy

The reason for these lessons is not solely to familiarize the minister with the dangers of the portfolio she’s been handed or as a heads-up to the fact — if she hasn’t already figured it out — that any hope of surviving soon-to-begin contract talks without some sort of screaming fit from the unions is a fantasy. I can confidently predict that the entire future of education and the hopes of our children will be seen to be in peril at some point in the exercise.

It has already begun, in fact. Premier Doug Ford engaged last week in the time-honoured practice of accusing the other side of starting it all. “Before the ink was even dry on election day they declared war on us,” Ford said during a Toronto appearance. He was careful to note he meant “the unions, not the teachers,” but since he was on the topic of teachers anyway, he continued: