Ontario’s education minister is facing scrutiny over his expenses as he calls out wasteful spending by school board trustees, after his office declined to release details of the money he has spent on restaurant meals.
Expense disclosures for Education Minister Paul Calandra show, over the course of three months, he spent almost $1,800 at the Legislative Dining Room, a restaurant in the basement of Queen’s Park where staff and politicians commonly eat.
While publicly-available information shows how much the minister billed taxpayers in the dining room per month, itemized receipts are not included in the disclosures.
Here’s how the expenses break down:
- March: $1,089.32
- April: $147.47
- May: $539.01
The expenses were highlighted by unions as the sector pushes back against the Ford government’s plans to overhaul school boards and eliminate some trustees.
Global News approached Calandra’s office for details about the expenses and who he was hosting for meals, but did not receive a formal response.
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The ministry noted that they did not believe the expenses were comparable to the examples Calandra has published of trustee spending on a song, TV wall mounts or an Apple TV subscription.
In recent weeks, Calandra has released the expenses of trustees with the Toronto Catholic District School Board, criticizing the purchase of a $15 milkshake and a late-night burger delivery.
He also wrote to the chair of the board telling him to return more than $6,000 worth of supplies he had purchased with his public credit card, including phone cases, charging cables and earphones.
“Calandra is chasing after milkshake expenses while taking billions out of our classrooms and wasting thousands of taxpayer dollars on fancy meals for himself,” Ontario NDP MPP Chandra Pasma said.
The minister’s office previously told Global News it was “laughable” to compare the expenses of part-time school board trustees to those of a minister.
Matias De Dovitiis, a Toronto District School Board trustee who has previously run for the NDP, said it was hypocritical of Calandra to publish trustee expenses and not make his own available to scrutiny.
“I would like us to move on, but for the sake of transparency, it would be great (if he released his expenses),” he said.
“If he wants to set a moral standard, that’s amazing. But all of our expenses have to be publicly shared on our websites. If anyone ever wanted to look at my expenses, they could. They should be able to do the same for the minister.”
Over the past several months, Calandra has focused on the issue of questionable financial decisions as the driver of his plans to reform school boards.
A trip to Italy and another to the Blue Jays Hotel were among the catalysts for a slew of school board takeovers.
The back-and-forth over expenses is part of a broader existential moment for trustees in Ontario, as Calandra weighs scrapping the role altogether.
He has said he expects to have a decision on the future of school board governance by the end of the year.
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