Here’s a challenge: Let’s have a conversation about K-12 public education in B.C. without using the exceptionally tired and empty phrase “the system is broken” (“Paying parents not a good idea,” editorial, Aug. 2).
The “system” is collective bargaining and it is not broken. One of the parties continually refuses to play by the rules of engagement, as ideologically, that party — that would be the current government of British Columbia — has zero interest in recognizing unionized workers or collective bargaining, and is doing everything it can do ensure a workers’ race to the bottom when unions are dismantled and workers are forced to undersell themselves to get even precarious employment.
The Ministry of Education is hanging on to an “opt-out clause” that says that either party can opt out of the coming court judgment on the government’s appeal of Supreme Court Justice Susan Griffin’s decision. That decision restored class size and composition language illegally stripped from the teachers’ contracts in 2001 by then-education minister Christy Clark.
This opt-out clause looks like equality for both parties, but it’s clear who is going to lose in the appeal. Since 2001, B.C. courts have found this government to have broken the law in regard to teachers’ contracts three times, with the government ignoring those judgments. The government can afford to wait out long court fights and file appeal after appeal, while in the interim unilaterally imposing expedient legislation.
In 2002, Clark brought in Bill 28 (only one example of such legislation), the Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act, which the B.C. Teachers’ Federation fought in court for years, with several sections finally struck down in 2011 by the B.C. Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
Who else could get away with carrying on with no consequence after being found in contravention of the law three times by B.C. high courts?
It is on public record that the strategy of this government has been to provoke the BCTF into striking, not to come to collective bargaining in good faith.
It’s clear now, if it wasn’t before, that this government has applied essential-services legislation to K-12 public education in British Columbia, but not because it thinks it is essential. Obviously, education isn’t essential for the coming September, as the objective is to turn the populace against the BCTF, so privatized education will step into the void. If handing over $40 per child per day of public tax dollars marked for education is so easy, wait for the per-pupil grant of $6,900 to be handed over, and kiss public education in B.C. goodbye.
Clark’s dream of user-pay stealth taxes for everything and a society devoid of social goods after the B.C. Liberals cut taxes drastically through the early 2000s is on the cusp of realization. Taking down the BCTF has always been critical to achieve this, as a fully funded public education has always been a centrepiece of a democratic society that values principles of social justice.
We have a fundamentally broken provincial government, not a “broken system.”
Diane McNally is a member of the Greater Victoria school district board of education. She retired from teaching in 2011 after 35 years in classrooms as a member of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the BCTF.
