Placating Ontario’s teachers cost Queen’s Park almost half a billion dollars

$468,000,000

—The cost, to Ontario taxpayers, of placating the province’s teachers’ unions after 2012’s massive unrest, according to a new report from the Ontario auditor general. Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government can still claim an estimated $2.1 billion in savings left over from the austere contracts imposed on teachers under ex-premier Dalton McGuinty. Even so, almost half a billion dollars in foregone cost cuts is a big deal at cash-strapped Queen’s Park.