Bill 33, Supporting Children and Students Act, 2025

The Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) welcomes the opportunity to provide input on behalf of 45,000 teachers working in publicly funded Catholic schools in Ontario, in response to the government’s proposed legislation, Bill 33, the Supporting Children and Students Act, 2025.

The proposed legislation introduced by Minister of Education Paul Calandra is broad and farreaching, and would make changes to the Education Act; the Child, Youth, and Family Services Act; the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities Act; and the Ombudsman Act. This submission focuses attention on proposed changes to the Education Act, specifically as it relates to Ontario school board governance and operations.

School boards have long played an important role in Ontario’s publicly funded education system. When at their best, school boards serve as an important link between the voices of community members and the provincial government – ensuring that the unique needs of students, parents, teachers, and educators are reflected in local education policies and practices. As well, with an existence that predates Confederation, school board elections represent one of Ontario’s oldest and most localized forms of democratic participation (Ontario Government 2009; OESC 2023).

As with any democratically elected body, there are opportunities for impropriety. In recent months, a very small minority of Ontario school boards have made headlines of this nature (McGrath 2025).

However, the purpose of this submission is not to litigate individual decisions made by some Ontario school boards – or to assign blame. Rather, the objective here is to assess the proportionality of the government’s response in the form of Bill 33, as well as to raise important areas of concern regarding the potential impact the proposed legislation would have on students, schools, and communities, if passed in its current form.

To that end, the remainder of this submission is organized into the following sections:

• Overview of proposed legislation
• Areas of concern and potential impact
• Exercise of democracy and democratic institutions
• Police presence in schools o Collective agreements and the collective bargaining process
• Upholding the constitutional rights of publicly funded Catholic schools
• Summary of recommendations
• Conclusion

We thank the government in advance for receiving this submission and for considering our perspective and recommendations.