Education Minister Paul Calandra was in Ottawa on Friday morning to announce that the Ford government is investing $162 million to build two new schools in the region.
“Today’s announcement is the first stage of announcements,” Calandra said at an event in the city's Barrhaven neighbourhood, claiming the Ford government won’t just be announcing funding one time a year like usual.
“What we’ve decided to do instead, is have an ongoing process of announcing schools and approvals, bringing those approvals forward.”
The money will go to one new school for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and one in the Ottawa Catholic School Board.
The Half Moon Bay Secondary School will cost $77.7 million and hold 1,474 spaces for students grade 7 to 12 in Barrhaven. The Mer Bleue high school, in the Catholic system, will cost $74.7 million and support 1,439 students in Orléans. There will also be $9.7 million for an addition of 104 student spaces at l’École élémentaire publique Mamawi in Nepean. The government says construction could start at the earliest in the spring of 2026.
Ontario has pledged to provide $23 billion over 10 years to build or improve provincial schools.
“This fall, we asked school boards to bring forward priority capital proposals,” Calandra said. “Today, I am pleased to confirm the first approvals starting right here in this community.”
Calandra said these new schools will help respond to the fast-growing population in the Ottawa region.
“Since our creation, our board has more than doubled in terms of both students and schools,” said Christian-Charle Bouchard, the Director of Education at the Conseil des écoles publiques de l’Est de l’Ontario, the local French school board.
Overpopulation and large class sizes is something education groups and opposition parties have criticized the Progressive Conservative Party for. The Ontario Liberal Party held a press conference Thursday demanding $1 billion in additional funds for the school system to help hire 10,000 more support workers and reduce the workload for current school staff.
This press event took place within the jurisdiction of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), the board has been under provincial supervision since June. The Ministry of Education said at the time that it was taking control due to financial mismanagement, claiming that OCDSB completely depleted its capital reserves. Critics have said that many school boards run deficits due to a lack of sufficient funding.
The Ford government passed Bill 33 last month, which makes several changes to Ontario education, including giving the ministry more power to take over and change school boards.
Asked by reporters what changes students and families in the French system should expect following the recent passage of Bill 33, Calandra insisted any changes he makes under the new law will abide by the constitution and respect the denominations of French and Catholic systems.
“We are not closing boards,” he said, adding that Bill 33 is important so the ministry can make quicker changes to governance structure in boards.
Asked if local families should expect to vote in scheduled elections for school board trustees, Calandra said he couldn’t give a timeline for when there’d be an announcement of changes to the governance of OCDSB, as the ministry hasn’t finished developing a new governance model yet.
“To be clear, there is nothing so far that has changed my mind that a $43 billion Ministry of Education budget should be delivered by trustees across the province in Ontario,” he said.
“I don’t foresee a world… where the trustees are returned to the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board anytime soon.”