Ontario's Premier Accountability Dashboard · Queen's Park Watch
Karen Brown
Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO)
President of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO), which represents approximately 83,000 elementary public school educators in Ontario. Brown publicly stated that the Ford government 'fails Ontario's students' by refusing to allocate new education funding that keeps pace with the cost of delivering classroom instruction.
Connected Scandals
The Ford government's 2026–27 education funding includes a 1% increase below inflation and a $56.2 million cut to the Classroom Staffing Fund, triggering immediate layoffs of 50+ education workers in eastern Ontario and threatening thousands more province-wide when job-protection agreements expire in September 2026.
As ETFO president, Brown released a public statement stating that the Ford government 'fails Ontario's students once again by refusing to allocate new education funding.' Her statement condemned the 2026–27 Core Education Funding announcement as insufficient to address growing classroom needs, and documented the downstream impact on students and teachers across the province.