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A decent chunk of Ontario's high school students will be walking out of class on April 4 at 1:15 p.m. to protest Doug Ford's changes to education.
The students are attempting to stick up for their educational rights - a worthy goal.
They are saying that the class-size increases and mandatory e-learning, the cellphone ban and the new sex-ed curriculum will all have a negative impact on their education, and therefore on their futures and on the future of Ontario.
Posts giving (not always accurate) information about the changes and rallying youth for the big day are going viral on social media.
These kids are protesting the education changes for the sake of their future.
But there is an equally important piece of information that they should be protesting about if they want to have an economically healthy province to live in.
And that piece of information is the very reason why Mr. Ford is implementing most of these education changes: Ontario's very scary financial situation.
At last count, Ontario had a debt of $348 billion, the largest sub-national debt in the world.
Last year, we had a deficit of $13.5 billion.
We seem to have this notion in government that it's acceptable to spend more than we take in, and we don't seem to have any serious ambition to pay back our debts.
But ask any reasonable person and they'll tell you that this is not sustainable.
The very nature of debt is that the longer you take to pay it off, the worse off you will be when it comes time to pay.
Ontario spent just over $11.9 billion on interest payments for the 2017-18 fiscal year. That's money that could've
been spent on something much more worthwhile, maybe even (much to the excitement of the high school activists) education.
So I encourage high school students to participate in the walkout if they so choose, but I also encourage them to look at another thing in politics that's threatening their futures: our crushing debt.
Think about it.
Hale Mahon
Midhurst
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