Category: Education

Questions asked

Available evidence demonstrates that, despite the province’s financial affairs being in good order, the NDP Government is satisfied to keep school teacher salaries close to the lowest paid of any Canadian province.

A BC family’s 15-year struggle for justice

Despite the Moore case, which began in the nineties and was finally resolved after 15 years, in 2017, another family was forced to move their their son to a private school offering specialized instruction and supervision. The family is financially crippled by the $2,400 monthly tuition but they know it’s a necessity if their boy is to have a chance at future success.

The misinformation strategy

However, this is a province where government routinely spends billions annually to subsidize multinational resource and power companies and spent 14 years in the courts fighting delivery of educational services to children in need. This government, found by the land’s highest court to be contemptuous of constitutional rights, cannot be counted on to change its priorities.

“Meaningful collective bargaining”

A prominent BC Government supporter wrote last week that, by vote of 6-2, Canada’s high court effectively handed “the Liberals ass on a plate.” Indeed, Justice Beverley McLachlin and colleagues concluded a legal process that should trouble every citizen. Not just that, in setting public education policy, an elected provincial government government behaved like a tin pot dictatorship but that four British Columbia Appeal Court judges believed they could ignore clear precedents established by the nation’s Supreme Court.

Delay, legislate, litigate, repeat

On November 10, Canada’s highest court reinstated Madam Justice Griffin’s 2014 judgement that found BC had bargained with teachers in bad faith and breached the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. She awarded BCTF $2 million in damages. This high court action should conclude a dispute that has gone on since 2002 but, as long as British Columbia’s government follows the circular pattern described by this article’s title, it will not. Contempt for teachers is only one aspect of BC Liberal antipathy for public education.

Enough said…

This comic conveys my disgust at people who diss teachers and try to shortchange education. What is wrong with you? pic.twitter.com/P5lQDTuCgP — Doug Coupland (@DougCoupland) June 18, 2014 Please, take time to […]