AODA Alliance
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
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Bill 101 is a Disaster for Students and Parents, But a Boon for Red Tape and Bureaucracy, Disability Advocates Told Queen’s Park Today
April 27, 2026 Toronto: Premier Ford’s Bill 101 is a disaster for students with disabilities and their parents, and should be renamed the “Putting Red Tape and Bloated New Bureaucracy First Act,” according to disability advocates speaking at Queen’s Park today. Speaking from the perspective of parents of students with disabilities, the AODA Alliance, the Ontario Autism Coalition and Ontario Parents for Education Support held a Queen’s Park news conference before the Legislature’s Standing Committee on Social Policy held a paltry one day of public hearings on a bill which Education Minister Calandra aims to transform Ontario’s school system. Watch the news conference online.
The Ontario Autism Coalition addressed the Standing Committee at 3 PM. The AODA Alliance gave evidence at 4 PM. The Ontario Parents for Education Support was shut out of the hearings. The Government allowed the hearings to be dominated by anyone except parents, who were only allotted a small percentage of speaking time. Yet parents and students aren’t some marginalized side show. Theirs is the most important voice.
“Bill 101 provides no new rights, no new educational programs, and no new services or supports for students. It barely even uses the word “student,” And it weakens parents’ voice,” said AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, a parent of a child with disabilities and also Chair of TDSB’s Special Education Advisory Committee. “This bill does nothing to address the chronic disadvantage that over one third of a million vulnerable students with disabilities face at school. It will make “student achievement” worse for these students, just as things for them have gotten worse at school boards like TDSB which the Ford Government has been running for months.”
Doug Ford promised to cut red tape and bureaucracy. Yet Bill 101 makes the greatest injection of red tape and bloated bureaucracy that our school system has ever experienced. Money for this will be siphoned out of classroom education.
This bill authorizes a dizzying maze of new Ontario Government regulations, guidelines, orders and policies. The Education minister will need an army of bureaucrats to draft and enforce them, to explain them to 72 school boards, and then to read, review and make the endless decisions that this bill assigns to the Minister for board after board. None of that bureaucracy and the delays it creates helps a single student.
“The Minister wants an avalanche of new powers, but hasn’t shown that his many existing powers, supplemented by Bill 98 in 2023 and by Bill 33 last year, aren’t enough, said Lepofsky. “For example, where’s the proof he first exhausted all those many powers trying to solve the student absenteeism problem that he’s now talking about?”
The AODA Alliance submitted a brief that calls for the Auditor General to publicly cost this bill. Will Ontario get value for money? It calls for the bill to be amended to list the powers of elected trustees. The Minister said he wants to reduce them, but neither he nor his bill have made clear what powers the trustees will have.
The Minister complaints about local school board budgets. Yet this bill will drive the budgeting process behind closed doors, with a shocking lack of public accountability. It appears that the Government thinks that the problem with school board budgeting is that there’s just not enough secrecy.
Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
Read the AODA Alliance’s April 23, 2026 brief on Bill 101 to the Legislature’s Standing Committee on Social Policy.
For a troubling glimpse of what education will be like for students with disabilities across Ontario if Bill 101 is passed, watch the April 13, 2026 Town Hall for parents of special education students held by the TDSB’s Special Education Advisory Committee.