Doug Ford Feigns Outrage over Students being Recruited as Activists

But he’s turned a blind eye to politicization of schools for years

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By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher; commentator)

According to media reports, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has described the field trip on which Toronto District School Board students, from elementary up to high school grade level, were taken last Wednesday (September 18th, 2024) as “disgraceful and disgusting”. The students apparently took part in a rally which was supposed to be raising awareness about environmental pollution on Indigenous-occupied lands, but evidently this political protest was hijacked by pro-Palestinian activists. Students were chanting “from Turtle Island to Palestine, occupation is a crime”. Parents were explicitly told the students were not going to be participating in the rally but rather observing it. Note to parents: If you attend a rally, you ARE participating in it.   

Ford’s comment is pretty rich, though, since, as he well knows, activists have been running the schools for years and he has done virtually nothing about it. His strategy has been to play “whack a mole” whenever any of the indoctrination into causes popular with activists, which is taking place in our schools daily, bubbles over into public discourse. The rest of the time he figures “out of sight, out of mind”. But he can only get away with that for so long. The caldron is starting to boil over.

For years, schools have been making students stand at attention daily while Indigenous land acknowledgements are read- usually just before the playing of our national anthem, an irony that still jolts me daily after several years. 

In the Land Acknowledgement (these vary from school to school) the kids typically must affirm that Canada is stolen land, and does not deserve to exist. That is why North America is referred to as “Turtle Island” and Indigenous people are described as “the rightful title holders of the land”. Students often pledge that they will pay reparations to Indigenous people as compensation for all the suffering caused by “settlers” (all non-Indigenous people who ever lived in Canada).

Ford knows about this. No doubt, many of the meetings he attends include land acknowledgements, although they are likely less acerbic than those read in schools. Like most politicians, he figures these are just empty, virtue-signaling words that will never amount to anything, but he is dead wrong about that.

At this very moment, billions of dollars are being transferred from Canadian taxpayers to Indigenous groups. This transfer will reach 7.7% of Canada’s GDP in 2026 which is a staggering amount- more than we spend on national defense. It comes out to over $40000 per Indigenous man woman, and child. The true tragedy of this is that in spite of this massive wealth transfer, most Indigenous people are poor, and their communities are rife with social ills such as unemployment, substance abuse, domestic abuse, and child abuse and neglect. Before we hand over another penny, we need a detailed accounting of where this money is going.

But back to the rally in question: That chant the students were induced to repeat over and over is a logical extension of the anti-Canadian indoctrination taking place in the schools. The kids have been brainwashed into believing that Canada belongs to Indigenous people and has been illegally occupied by the rest of us “settlers”, so it is not too hard to convince them that “Palestine” has been similarly “occupied” by Jews. Thus, the state of Israel, like Canada, is illegitimate and does not deserve to exist. 

Under Ford’s watch, the school system has become a cesspool of indoctrination into simplistic, misleading, and even blatantly false (see the original reporting of the now debunked murdered Indigenous kids hoax) narratives about Canadian history which have infiltrated learning. The pursuit of the truth has taken a back seat to propping up these narratives, which present people of European descent as white supremacists who oppress all others, especially Indigenous people. This alleged oppression is presented as underlying the entire fabric of Canadian society. 

Considering all this, what happened last Wednesday is absolutely aligned with the climate that exists in the schools, and should not have surprised anyone. Ontario school boards, teachers’ unions, and its College of Teachers all share this view of Canada as a land of oppressors Vs. victims, and they view the conflict in the Middle East with the same paradigm. Jews are colonizers and Palestinians are the Indigenous people and are thus the “rightful title holders of the land”. 

Of course, anyone who knows the actual history of the conflict knows that in the same way the Canadian paradigm above is simplistic, misleading, and false, so is this Middle Eastern version. Students should be getting an education about the historic events that led up to the current situation in both cases, but they are not. They are getting a one-sided political take intended to promote a specific narrative.

Ford has let this situation in the schools go so far out of whack for so long, it will require a massive effort to fix it. I just don’t see him doing that. He will continue to cluck his tongue and wag his finger from time to time, meanwhile kids’ knowledge of the truth and their ability to engage in reasoned civil discourse and debate, so essential to maintaining our way of life and standard of living, will continue to degrade.

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Thanks for reading. For more on this author, read Police Return to Schools Plagued by Drugs and Violence

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