AODA Alliance
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update
United for a Barrier-Free Ontario for All People with Disabilities
Website: www.aodaalliance.org
Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com
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Send Us Feedback by April 23on the Draft AODA Alliance Brief on Bill 101, which Guts Local Democracy at School Boards
April 20, 2026
SUMMARY
There’s just one week before the Ford Government’s rushed deadline for submitting any written brief or submission on Bill 101. That is the bill that lets the Ontario Minister of Education essentially take over managing the smallest details in all schools across Ontario. It injects massive new red tape and bureaucracy into our school system, which will not help students.
Under extreme time pressure, we have prepared a draft brief. We want your feedback on it. Send your feedback to us at aodafeedback@gmail.com
Below we set out a summary of the brief’s critique of the bill. It incorporates and builds on the AODA Alliance’s preliminary analysis of the bill that we made public in the April 17, 2026 AODA Alliance Update.
Our brief calls for the bill to be withdrawn and for the Ford Government to start all over. If the Government insists on pressing ahead with the bill, our brief offers a list of amendments, provided in the summary below.
We need your feedback by this Thursday, April 23, 2026. We will use your feedback to finalize this brief and submit it to the Legislature’s Standing Committee on Social Policy, hopefully by the end of this week. We’d love to give you more time, but we are ourselves struggling with the outrageous rushed deadline that the Ford Government has imposed.
How You Can Help
- Send us any ideas about this bill you have. How do you like our brief, or the summary of it we set out below? Write us at aodafeedback@gmail.com
Don’t wait for our final brief before you send the Government your feedback on Bill 101. Feel free to use any passages you like from our brief. You can just write to the Standing Committee and say if you endorse the recommendations in the AODA Alliance’s April 20, 2026 draft brief on Bill 101. To send the Standing Committee your feedback on Bill 101, go to the Legislature’s public feedback web page and fill out the online form.
MORE DETAILS
Summary of the April 20, 2026 AODA Alliance Draft Brief to the Ontario Legislature’s Standing Committee on Social Policy on Bill 101
- Despite its name, this bill has nothing to do with student achievement
- Bill 101 doesn’t help vulnerable students with disabilities but instead makes things worse for them
- Bill 101 is a massive unnecessary and counterproductive provincial power grab creating costly red tape but with no plan of action
- Bill 101 creates enormous burdensome new red tape and bureaucracy, draining money from classrooms
- The Ford government announced no public and comprehensive plan of action for all these new provincial powers
- Bill 101 doesn’t spell out what powers are left for elected trustees to exercise
- Bill 101 reduces much-needed local democratic oversight of unelected senior school board officials
- Bill 101 lacks proper safeguards to limit sweeping powers it gives the education minister and cabinet
- Bill 101 seriously reduces assistance to parents of students having unresolved problems with school officials
- Bill 101 makes it less likely that people would want to run for the position of trustee
- Bill 101 creates harmful secrecy around school budgets
- The minister’s plan for student absenteeism under the bill ignores needs of students with disabilities
- Bill 101 improperly targets the Ontario public school boards association, seemingly attempting to silence criticism of some provincial policies
- Bill 101 and the government’s failure to properly consult the public on it is a slap in the face for parents, including parents of students with disabilities
We propose amendments to the bill that would:
- Specify that the bill does not go into effect (except regarding the duty to enact the promised education accessibility standard under the accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) at least until 2030, after the auditor general has released a public costing of the bill and after the government has released draft regulations, guidelines, directions and orders needed to enable school boards to prepare for it.
- List in clear and detailed terms the powers of school board trustees.
- Require all new school construction to be accessible to people with disabilities
- Require the education minister to consult the public and key education stakeholders when developing any regulations guidelines, orders or directions provided for in the bill.
- Require that before the government makes or amends any regulation, policy, guideline, direction or orders under the bill, it must publicly post a draft of it for public input.
- Require that no regulation, guideline, order, policy or other direction under this bill may create or perpetuate disability barriers against students with disabilities.
- Set clear benchmarks for deciding when any of the eight school boards now under provincial supervision is restored to local democratic self-government.
- Require the restoration of those eight school boards to local democratic self-government by November 15, 2026 unless the minister orders no later than September 1, 2026 that a school board is to remain under provincial supervision.
- Prescribe clear grounds for ordering that a school board remain under provincial supervision after November 15, 2026.
- Not limit the power of any person to apply to the divisional court of Ontario for judicial review of a minister’s order stopping the restoration of local democratic governance of a school board now under provincial supervision.
- Require that the government enact an education accessibility standard under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act by November 1, 2026 taking into account the recommendations it received in 2022 from the government-appointed K-12 education standards development committee.