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In addition, the average teacher in Ontario retires after 26 years with a pension of $44,000 a year, author Bill Tufts writes. That is increased by the “bridge benefit,” to offset for CPP up to $12,500. At age 65, a teacher then gets OAS in the amount of $6,500. The total is more than the average wage in Ontario, which is $46,000.

2. They claim a teachers’ workday is understated because “marking and planning are done at home.” In fact, preparation time is built into the school day by the union’s collective agreements. Furthermore, in my experience teaching Arbitration Law at the University of Toronto, after spending considerable time preparing my course initially, it took little to update lessons in subsequent years. This does not mean there are not a large percentage of dedicated teachers who work more than they are required to. But many do not. And there is no consequence for not doing so. I might add that preparing my course was a far less complex exercise than preparing for trial, which I do many times a year.

3. Teachers need three months off a year because of the stress of teaching 30-plus children each day. If that is the case, why do most countries have much longer school years than in Canada? Why do children in those countries succeed academically with so much less time off? Moreover, this is contraindicated by the fact that Canada’s Chief Actuary reports teachers in Ontario and British Columbia live longer than the average member of the population, noting this is likely true for all Canadian teachers but the statistics are only available for those two provinces. I suspect they live longer because of their early retirement, great pension and the relatively low stress overall because of the position’s high wages, short school days and long vacations.

I maintain that if so much of our society’s money is being used to pay teachers but we are not receiving concomitant quality in return, it is time for a revamp. If the process of collective bargaining is causing teachers to earn disproportionately more than their skills and work hours should command, it is also time to use a different method of collective bargaining: Interest arbitration, with the arbitrators statutorily mandated to consider government’s ability to pay and comparing the skills and hours to positions in the private sector is surely the model that should be imposed.