The kids are back to school this week amid much furore over claims that schools lack the money needed for classrooms, staffing and special education. While the Ford government says it is providing a record $30 billion in core education funding, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario says funding has failed to keep pace with inflation.
It might come as a shock to some that Ontario’s school boards paid out at least $2.89 million to third-party consultants for equity, anti-racism, and human rights, as well as identity-based and related initiatives.
The total figure is an aggregate of 393 invoices collected from 12 public and Catholic school boards through freedom of information requests, issued between 2017 and 2026. The information was revealed following a year-long investigation by Juno News.
Approximately $2.45 million, or 85 per cent of the total, was paid between 2021 and 2025. That said, Juno News did not obtain records for every year from every board, making a reliable province-wide growth calculation impossible. The total $2,890,962 figure identified is therefore a documented minimum, not a province-wide total.
Some of the information that Juno requested was not disclosed. Several boards demanded thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, to search for records. Others withheld consultants’ names or provided descriptions too vague to show what taxpayers purchased.
