Education Minister Lisa Thompson is defending the $140,000-a-year patronage appointment of a defeated former Progressive Conservative candidate to chair the agency administering Ontario’s standardized testing.The Tories rewarded Cameron Montgomery, who lost in Ottawa-Orleans last June, with the plum post to chair the board of the Education Quality and Accountability Office, previously a part-time job that paid less than $4,000 annually.“After 15 years of mismanagement and plummeting math scores under (former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne’s) watch — and, quite frankly, her ideology — we have seen students failing,” Thompson said Wednesday.“So we need to address this. We’re taking a very serious approach and we are fixing it by way of working with EQAO and having them find within an opportunity to hire an expert,” she said.“Dr. Cameron Montgomery is an absolute perfect fit to be a permanent chair and help us get standardization right in Ontario.”Thompson said Montgomery, a former assistant professor of education at the University of Ottawa, “has an amazing pedigree.”Read more:$140K-a-year EQAO job for failed PC candidate sparks criticismNDP Leader Andrea Horwath blasts Premier Doug Ford for cronyism in appointmentsLiberal MPP urges Ford to ‘slow down’ on appointments after McCallion and Taverner debaclesBut NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Premier Doug Ford is just rewarding a political ally.“He’s just been given a ticket to the Ford gravy train. Let’s face it, Mr. Ford keeps giving these tickets,” said Horwath.“If the government had its priorities right, any extra dollars wouldn’t be going to Ford’s friends and insiders, so that he can manipulate the decisions that they make in the future, but rather should be going to children who have autism, whose parents need the support,” she said.Indeed, the $140,000 to be paid annually to ...
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