TORONTO – Ontario leaders have placed the blame on the province’s math curriculum claiming it was inadequate to prepare them for proposing political platforms that involve numbers and basic math.
Premier Kathleen Wynne slammed the PC governments of John Robarts and Bill Davis for the few resources provided to her and the governing Liberals when it came to budgeting and finite mathematics.
“I never had the right teachers to do this,” admitted Wynne whose government miscalculated the budget deficit by $5 billion according to the Auditor General. “I was still using an abacus in grade 13 and our Finance Minister had a terrible calculus teacher. How can you be blaming us for years of fiscal mismanagement when the system was broken when we were trying to learn? That’s blaming the victims of poor PC curriculum.”
The New Democrats were quick to pin their lack of numbers on the traumatizing experience of math class during the Harris years.
“Mike Harris slash and burn tactics failed my younger staff in preparing the NDP’s plan for Ontario,” explained Andrea Horwath who has yet to adequately calculate the cost of $12 daycare or revenue from a speculators tax on empty properties. “The 1997 Ontario Teachers Strike really put our party’s economist back by two weeks and he did terribly in algebra as a result.”
Meanwhile, at a campaign stop in Nippissing, PC Leader Doug Ford was quick to fault the grade 3 math curriculums of David Peterson, Bob Rae, and Dalton McGuinty.
“Folks, Bob Rae’s education policy screwed everything up for me in night class,” said Ford. “I tried and tried, but I just couldn’t grasp the concept of whether tax breaks are a subtraction or a plus when it comes to budgeting. I still don’t know!”
Ford says that, until the Wynne government’s discovery-based math curriculum is eliminated, there is little hope for him to outline a proper projection for his promises or passing his remedial math course.
