TDSB Investigation Part 7 — The Fast Track
When public voice becomes a procedural inconvenience.
By The Old Guardian
October 2025
Three bills. One motion. Zero input.
The Ford government has introduced a new kind of silence — not through censorship, but through speed.
In late October, the province tabled a motion to fast-track three major bills — Bills 33, 56, and 60 — cutting off committee review and public consultation entirely.
“No public input,” said TDSB Trustee Michelle Aarts. “Ford talked to his donors and already decided the outcome.”
It’s a tactic designed to look like efficiency, but it functions as evasion.
The public microphone — committee hearings — has been turned off. What’s left is legislation made in private, justified as “streamlining,” and defended under the familiar slogan of “accountability.”
The Pattern: Three Bills, One Agenda
At first glance, the three bills seem unrelated.
But together, they mark a coordinated centralization of control that cuts across education, safety, and housing.
Bill 33 expands ministerial power over school boards, removes cabinet oversight, and makes it easier to silence local trustees or replace them with appointed supervisors.
Bill 56 proposes banning speed cameras in school zones, one of the most effective safety tools protecting children.
Bill 60 ends rent control on new builds, driving up costs and displacing families already struggling to stay in their homes.
Each bill dismantles a different layer of public protection — classrooms, communities, and homes.
Together, they reveal a pattern: governance without participation, control without conversation.
The Erasure of Oversight
Committee review is not a formality. It is democracy’s pressure test.
It’s where advocates, experts, and citizens weigh in before laws are written in stone.
Eliminating that process removes the final line of accountability.
When Bill 33 was first introduced, critics warned it would erase parent and community voices. Fast-tracking has made that warning reality.
There will be no hearings, no transcripts, no public record of dissent — only the government’s version of events.
The Financial Squeeze: Crisis by Design
Two-thirds of Ontario’s school boards are now in deficit or barely solvent.
That isn’t mismanagement. It’s a manufactured crisis.
Starve the system, then cite the shortfall as justification to seize control.
“This fall, the TDSB supervisor cut $14.5 million from classrooms by making class sizes larger,” Aarts noted. “Did parents get an update? No.”
Under the North Star Accord, this is Crisis Manufacturing — the deliberate underfunding of public institutions to make self-justifying takeovers look necessary.
Speed as the New Silence
Ontario’s education system has already been stripped of transparency.
School board meetings have been suspended. Trustees have been dismissed. Advisory committees are now labeled “unwanted politics.”
With Bill 33’s fast-tracking, that silence has been codified into process.
It is not just centralization — it’s preemption.
“The Minister no longer has to get approval from cabinet to silence a local voice,” Aarts warned.
Speed is the new form of suppression.
By the time the public reacts, the bill has already passed.
When Democracy Is Fast-Tracked
The government insists this is about efficiency.
But speed in governance is like speed in surgery — it may save time, but it usually leaves scars.
Fast-tracking isn’t about moving forward faster. It’s about keeping the public from catching up.
The same government that dismissed elected trustees now eliminates public hearings — and calls it transparency.
Under Article 8 of the North Star Accord, this is a textbook case of amplification inversion: when those in power claim to “listen,” but the channels through which people speak have been quietly dismantled.
“When democracy is fast-tracked, it isn’t efficiency — it’s eviction.”
Next: Part 8 — The Pushback
Parents, educators, and trustees are beginning to push back.
From town halls to petitions to organized coalitions, a new movement is forming — one that refuses to stay quiet while the public voice is written out of the script.
Part 8 will trace that growing civic resistance — the people challenging power and the government’s reaction when silence stops working.