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Learning & Growing Up

A standalone candidate question bank — every figure sourced and checkable, every question identical for every candidate. Also part of the full twelve-category bank.

How to use this bank

Learning & Growing Up

Jurisdiction honesty, on the record: K-12 curriculum, school funding, and school-board governance are provincial. The same municipal ballot elects school trustees. The city’s own levers are narrow: out-of-school programming, recreation and library services, shared use of school space, and advocacy.

10.1 [CITY] Outside school hours — before 9, after 3, summers — what would you do with the levers the city actually holds (recreation, libraries, youth programs) for children whose families can’t buy private programming?

10.2 [CITY→PROVINCE] School gyms, pools, fields, and rooms sit inside provincially governed boards, but the neighbourhoods around them are the city’s. What would you change about shared community use of school space, and what would you offer school boards to get there?

10.3 [CITY] When a resident raises schools at your door, what do you tell them the office you seek can and cannot do — and what education-related cause, if any, would you spend the office’s public voice advocating for?

10.4 [CITY] For children growing up in apartment towers: what would you change so that a child in a high-rise neighbourhood has the same access to play, programs, and safe routes to school as a child on a residential street?

10.5 [CITY→PROVINCE] Toronto’s own school board, TDSB, has been under a Ministry-appointed supervisor since mid-2025 — elected trustees currently have no vote on anything the board does — after a financial investigation recommended supervision despite finding no evidence of mismanagement. A bill introduced at Queen’s Park in April 2026 to also set a province-wide range of five to twelve elected trustees per board (reported as cutting TDSB’s own complement roughly in half) has since received Royal Assent. What would you personally ask the province to restore or change about this arrangement — and what would you tell a resident who asks why nobody they elected has a vote on it right now?

10.6 [CITY] Toronto’s popular children’s recreation programs commonly sell out within about ten minutes of registration opening. The city’s own director of community recreation has said Toronto needs roughly 1,100 lifeguards but has only 750 confirmed — and about half of newcomer children can’t swim, versus roughly nine in ten Canadian-born children, with nine in ten of those newcomer children not currently taking lessons at all. Using only the hiring and program-pricing decisions the city actually controls, what would you do so a child whose family can’t buy private lessons isn’t the one who loses the ten-minute race?

Universal set — for any candidate, any office

U.1 How will residents know if you succeeded? Name two or three public, checkable measures you are willing to be judged on at the end of the term — and where residents will find them.

U.2 What is one thing you would copy for Toronto from another city — anywhere in the world — and what makes you confident it would work here?

U.3 Name one thing the city currently does or funds that you would stop or shrink — and what you would say, face to face, to the residents who value it.

U.4 When the evidence in front of you and the residents you represent disagree, how do you decide? Give a real example of a position you changed, and why.

U.5 Name one problem residents raise constantly that the office you seek cannot fix directly. What do you tell them honestly — and what would you still do about it?

Sources & receipts

  1. Toronto District School Board placed under a Ministry-appointed supervisor since June 2025, with elected trustees currently having no vote on board decisions, after a financial investigation recommended supervision without finding evidence of mismanagement — Ontario Ministry of Education, “Toronto District School Board Financial Investigation” (10.5).
  2. Bill 101, Putting Student Achievement First Act, 2026: received Royal Assent, enacted as Statutes of Ontario 2026, chapter 4; sets a province-wide range of five to twelve elected trustees per school board by regulation, reported elsewhere as cutting TDSB’s own trustee count roughly in half — Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Bill 101 official status and Schedule 2 explanatory note (10.5).
  3. Toronto’s parks, forestry, and recreation state-of-good-repair backlog stood at approximately $986.0 million as of the 2025 beginning balance — City of Toronto 2025 Capital Budget, state-of-good-repair briefing note (10.6).
  4. Toronto’s children’s recreation programs commonly sell out shortly after registration opens; the city’s director of community recreation has stated Toronto needs roughly 1,100 lifeguards against 750 confirmed — City of Toronto recreation staffing reporting (10.6).
  5. Approximately 9 in 10 Canadian-born children can swim, compared with about half of newcomer children, with the large majority of those newcomer children not currently taking swim lessons — PHE Canada, “Swim X: Bridging the Water Safety Gap for Newcomer Youth in Canada” (10.6).

This page went through an independent verification pass before publication (fact-check against primary sources, claim by claim, including a live re-fetch of the newer figures against their original sources). The internal verification record has been removed from this public page; the sourced facts and figures above are unchanged by that removal.