King-Vaughan MPP Lecce: ‘I am humbled’ to serve as education minister

Lecce started political career at 23. He is now a minister at 32

Yorkregion.com
June 25, 2019
Dina Al-Shibeeb

King-Vaughan MPP Stephen Lecce who has been promoted Thursday as Ontario’s new education minister for Ontario says he is “humbled” and “energized to serve the over two million students in the province.”

“I will continue to fight for all students -- irrespective of faith, heritage, orientation, gender or ability -- to ensure they benefit from an inclusive, safe, and focused academic experience,” he said in a statement Thursday.

The new minister said he wants to work with “all partners,” including students, parents, and educators to “ensure that as our young people go through the journey of learning, it leads to a good paying job,” echoing some of Premier Doug Ford government’s sentiment on its so called reforms in education.

With post-secondary education, the Ontario government under Ford said in April it would tie 60 per cent of its funding to how universities and colleges perform depending on 10 measures.

These measures include six key metrics, they include: Graduate earnings, number and proportion of graduates in programs with experiential learning, skills and competencies, proportion of graduates employed full-time in a related or partially-related field, proportion of students in identified area of strength and graduation rate.

“I want to thank Minister Thompson for her work and the Premier for his confidence,” he added.

Lecce a Ford and Harper favourite

Lecce, who has long expressed his admiration to both former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ford, saw his political career reach new heights June 20 when he became the province’s new education minister.

Lecce, 32, started in politics with a junior role at Harper’s office when he was 23. He climbed the ladder quickly to sit among 10 of Harper's key advisers as the former prime minister’s deputy director of communications when he was only 25-year-old.

Since June 2018, Lecce was part of Ford's Progressive Conservative caucus, representing King-Vaughan, and one of the province's millennial MPPs. Lecce is a graduate of St. Michael’s College, a private school in Toronto, and attended Western University where he was president of the student government.

With this smooth rise to power, Lecce is going to face one of his biggest career challenges as he is tasked with the Ministry of Education which has been under fire following Tory cuts to reduce the province’s subnational debt highest in the world.

Not only surveys show that Ontarians are against the education cuts but in early April York Region students joined more than 800 Ontario schools in a provincewide protest. They expressed their displeasure with the province's intentions to increase average class sizes from grades 4 to 12, cut funding for teachers and classroom materials and change OSAP funding.

Lecce getting the Education Ministry might be surprising for some as they consider him a “rookie,” however, he has long been a Ford’s favourite.

During the mayor’s Gala in Vaughan on June 13 when the Cortellucci family pledged $40 million to the Mackenzie Vaughan Hospital, Ford attended the event not only to congratulate Liberal Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua whom he dubbed as a “leader,” but he paid his complements to the MPPs who were there including Lecce.

For Ford, he described Lecce as “talented,” maybe an omen for his big promotion.

The two also seem to mimic each other when choosing international alliances. A day prior to the cabinet shuffle Lecce and Ford shared photos with former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley at a gala.

Lecce praised Haley for “standing firm in defence of human rights at the UN.” Haley, however, had a controversial tenure at the UN when the US recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Haley also when she was Governor of South Carolina had signed into law a bill to ban nearly all abortions after 20-weeks of pregnancy.

At an interview with the Huffington Post, Lecce said last year that Ford and Harper share a commitment to surrounding themselves with people of all ages, races and sexual orientations. Last week, Ford joined Lecce and cabinet ministers Caroline Mulroney and Christine Elliott marching in York Region’s Pride parade.