Ontario spent $2.5 million on Marxist, critical race theory de-streaming program

Exclusive documents obtained by True North show that Ontario’s Ministry of Education spent roughly $2.5 million over four years on de-streaming projects in Ontario.

Source: Pexels

Exclusive documents obtained by True North show that Ontario’s Ministry of Education spent roughly $2.5 million over four years on de-streaming projects in Ontario based on a radical approach to education based in Marxism and critical race theory.

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The culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy framework is drawn from the ideas of Brazilian Marxist educator Paulo Freire and the American legal scholarship known as critical race theory. Together, these theories view education not as a tool for building skills and knowledge but as a vehicle for challenging social systems and redistributing power in society.

According to ministry documents, the combined approach calls on teachers to reshape lessons, discipline, and grading to reflect each student’s social identity, meaning their race, background, or culture.

The records obtained by True North show that these theories were used to implement Ontario’s recent de-streaming policy, which eliminated separate academic and applied tracks for Grade 9 students. The model was presented to help teachers implement de-streamed classrooms, especially in math.

According to the documents, nearly 50 school boards received funding through the ministry’s Education Equity Secretariat, the branch responsible for overseeing equity-based programs.

Between 2017 and 2022, 13 to 29 boards received funding each year. In 2017–18, the total was $487,325. By 2018–19, the amount rose to $797,490. Another $778,120 was distributed in 2020–21, and $432,630 in 2021–22, when the de-streamed math rollout began.

Some boards received well over $90,000 across multiple years. Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board topped the list at $102,145, followed by Toronto at $99,330, Durham at $97,500, and Thames Valley at $97,500. English public boards received the largest share overall, though Catholic and French boards were also included.

Under the program rules, 60% of the money was released once a board submitted its CRRP action plan, with the remaining 40% delivered after a final report demonstrating how the training and teaching changes were applied.

The program was developed and distributed under Patrick Case, who served as Assistant Deputy Minister of the Education Equity Secretariat from 2017. Case, a long-time equity advocate and former co-chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, left the role in 2024.

While the ministry’s 2021–22 materials describe CRRP as a de-streaming support, other government documents show that it forms part of a broader plan to reshape classroom instruction around identity and race.

Ontario’s School Effectiveness Framework from 2013 described CRRP as a way to treat students’ “background, language, family structure,” and “various social identities” as strengths to be emphasized in teaching, omitting the political roots of the scholarship.

By 2017, it was written directly into the province’s Education Equity Action Plan, which directed all boards to embed equity and inclusion into every level of instruction, once again omitting the political ideology and underpinned the push.

Since Ontario introduced de-streamed Grade 9 math in 2021, test scores have not improved. EQAO data show that only 52% of students met the provincial standard in the first year of de-streaming, compared to about 75% who met it under the old academic stream before 2020.

Results vary by board, but no overall gains have appeared despite programs like culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy that were meant to support the change. In short, student performance in Grade 9 math has declined or stayed flat since de-streaming began.

True North asked the ministry whether it endorses the political theories behind culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, including its ties to revolutionary and race scholarship, and whether the province plans to continue funding the Education Equity Secretariat. The Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.