Premier Christy Clark broke her silence Thursday and fought back against NDP accusations that her government tried to provoke a full teachers strike two years ago.
After refusing to answer Opposition questions in the legislature Wednesday, Clark told reporters that the public should judge her government based on its record.
“At a time when the teachers’ union across the province was already in strike action — refusing to perform or ordering members not to perform basic administrative duties including report cards — we set out a cooling-off period that would allow all the parties to come together.”
The government also appointed a mediator who eventually achieved a negotiated settlement with the B.C. Teachers’ Federation in the summer of 2012, she said. “That sounds like the opposite of what we’re being accused of.”
Her comments came after the NDP obtained documents showing that the province’s chief negotiator testified in court that the government had a strategy to provoke a full-scale strike by teachers in the 2011-12 school year. At the time, teachers were engaged in a low-level strike by refusing to perform some duties, such as preparing report cards.
The NDP said court records show the government planned to dock teachers’ pay and cancel development days as a way to escalate their job action. In so doing, the government hoped to win public support for imposing strike-ending legislation on the teachers, the Opposition said.
NDP Leader Adrian Dix demanded that Clark release cabinet documents that lay out the strategy. But the government refused, saying the matter is before the courts.
The government is appealing a B.C. Supreme Court judgment that found the government interfered with teachers’ rights, failed to negotiate in good faith and was preoccupied by a strategy to provoke a strike.
Clark accused the NDP of releasing “snippets of information” from the court case that were taken “out of context.”
“I would ask instead that people judge us, judge me, based on our record, based on what we actually did,” she said.
Dix countered by accusing Clark of refusing to answer questions in the legislature and presenting “an alternate view of history” outside of it. “They’re doing it everywhere in British Columbia, using public funds to disseminate information that is contrary to the ruling of the court and contrary to the evidence presented before the court by their own witnesses,” he said. “This, I think it’s fair to say, shows a government in contempt of the people of British Columbia.”
