The following is an op-ed column from Dwight Duncan, a senior strategic adviser at McMillan LLP, one of Canada's biggest law firms, and a former Ontario finance minister. In this column, Duncan examines the looming bargaining sessions between the ruling Liberal government and the province's teachers' unions.

Every summer, Ontario’s teachers’ federations hold their annual meetings. This summer, those meetings took on heightened significance given the expiration of collective agreements this weekend.

Over the past 30 years, seven premiers, of three political stripes, had what can best be described as complex relationships with the federations. Each premier, in turn, brought a different approach to those relationships.

Premiers Bill Davis, David Peterson, Bob Rae and Dalton McGuinty, to varying degrees, tried to work with the federations. In spite of this, each wound up vilified and accused of being anti-education, anti-teacher and anti-labour by the teachers’ unions.

Mike Harris was very different. He saw the federations, their tactics, policies and politics as an impediment to quality public education. For their part, the federations saw Harris as the uber-villain, the bad standard against which all future governments would be judged. Sadly, I imagine Harris still wears this as a badge of honour.

What Harris could not foresee was that his policies and approach, over time, would unite parents, taxpayers, teachers and their unions. This, in no small way, contributed to the downfall of neo-conservative politics in the province and helped usher in a new era of Liberal dominance at Queen's Park.

Most important, the failure of Harris’s approach ultimately led to a renaissance in public education when measured by student achievement. The renaissance was fuelled by parents who demanded better for their kids, teachers who were determined to undo the Harris government's reforms, and a budget-stretching 56 per cent increase in per pupil funding by a government elected to bring change to education.

Kathleen Wynne’s relationship with the federations is more complicated than that of any of her predecessors. A former Toronto school trustee, she was a key player in the movement that strongly opposed Harris’s revolution and then the government that undid it.

My earliest recollections of the woman who would become our premier go back to the late ’90s, when I was an opposition backbencher. She, along with people like Annie Kidder and the leaders of the various teachers’ federations were regular fixtures in the Opposition lobby at Queen’s Park. They shared common values and had a common enemy.

It is this history that makes her current challenge so daunting. Any deviance from the federations’ views will be seen, by them, as more than just tough bargaining, it will be called a betrayal. They will unfairly attack her just as they did McGuinty.

Wynne’s appearance earlier this month at the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) annual meeting was extraordinary.

She chose to put herself in front of an audience she knew would be less than welcoming. She did it, I suspect, out of a genuine and accurate belief that teachers are crucial to achieving meaningful improvements in the quality of our public education system and that people of good will can overcome differences of opinion. Moreover, she had to begin to lower expectations.

Based on the reception that she was accorded, and the tenor of the questions that came her way, there appears to be a predictable lack of good will on the part of ETFO.

Wynne demonstrated the patience of Job as she fielded the questions. That patience will be sorely tested in the days and weeks ahead. The great irony of the ETFO harangue is that Wynne is passionate about education, has a genuine respect for educators and a track record to back it up.

Education Minister Liz Sandals, who like Wynne came to provincial politics to build a better public education system, has said that wages can increase provided savings come from elsewhere in the education spending envelope.

Given that more than 60 per cent of the education budget goes to wages and benefits, this leaves the government with precious few choices. Those choices would involve undoing some of the very reforms Wynne and her government should be most proud of: class-size reductions, full-day kindergarten and improved student achievement.

Sadly, these choices would also result in job losses for younger teachers, educational support workers and other non-classroom educational workers. Most important, kids would suffer. Kids with special needs and poor kids will take the brunt of it.

The most promising area for savings, without compromising quality and avoiding job losses, lies somewhere in changes to the salary grid, work rules and the duration of the next collective agreement. Based on the last round of bargaining, those areas are even more sacrosanct for the federations than wage increases.

The reality is this: The government projects education spending this fiscal year to grow by 4.2 per cent, which is substantially more than their own projections for growth in the economy and in government revenues. Interestingly, interest on debt is projected to grow by 4.6 per cent.

While Ontario now has a competitive tax regime, no objective observer would characterize it as a low-tax jurisdiction. This fact matrix compels tough bargaining across the public and broader public sectors.

To achieve the results Ontario needs, while protecting the gains made in public education, the premier will have to persuade longtime friends, and allies, that she still stands with them.

She will need the wisdom of Solomon to bring this all about.

Dwight Duncan has been a senior strategic adviser to McMillan LLP, the Toronto-based business law firm, since March 2013. He advises the firm's clients on investing and operating in Canada and abroad. A longtime MPP from Windsor, Duncan first became Ontario finance minister in 2005 and held the Cabinet post until he left politics last year. Duncan was also minister of energy, revenue minister, deputy premier and held other posts in the government of Dalton McGuinty.

Duncan: Wynne’s history in education makes for daunting challenge in teacher talks

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