Premier Clark, I watched your video interview with Cornelia Naylor intently and, as a former Burnaby public school grad, a Burnaby teacher, and the current President of the Burnaby Teachers’ Association, I could hardly believe my ears at times.
You began by acknowledging that directing funds to the education system is wise and that this allows the province to hire more specialist teachers and to lower class sizes for students.
It is a shame, however, that it took you 15 years and a protracted court battle to recognize that funding for education is one of the most important investments we can make.
In fact, the Select Standing Committee on Finance (a bi-partisan group of MLAs) has advocated for additional funding in education for several years – you have simply ignored them.
In multiple years, the committee has recommended that the province “Provide predictable, sustainable and adequate yearly funding to enable school districts to fulfil their responsibility to continue to provide access to quality public education, with recognition of the increased costs that school districts have incurred”.
No such luck for school districts over the past several years as they faced clawbacks for administrative savings, unfunded wage increases, increased MSP and hydro rates, cost pressures due to inflation, and other financial liabilities that have been the norm (See Why B.C. Schools Are Always Short of Money by Crawford Kilian at The Tyee).
Even the right-wing Fraser Institute begrudgingly reported that, over the past decade, BC’s school districts have been receiving about $1,000 less than the Canadian average on a per pupil basis (See Tracy Sherlock's article in the Vancouver Sun on Sept 1, 2016).
By another measure, B.C.’s share of education spending as a percentage of GDP is well below the Canadian average (Stats Canada, 2016) – a shameful record for your government.
If the economy has been as great as you claim, and your jobs plan has been a huge success, then why haven’t you invested adequately in public education?
You suggest that you gutted teachers’ collective agreements in 2002 because you inherited a financial mess.
I am afraid I will need to correct you again Ms. Clark – the B.C. Liberals inherited a healthy $1.5 billion dollar surplus from the outgoing NDP government in 2001 (See Campbell Misled Public on NDP Finances by Will McMartin at The Tyee).
The only financial pressure created was when your incoming B.C. Liberal government gave a massive tax break to the wealthiest citizens of B.C.
Your government had to decide whether to adequately fund public education or whether to cut the taxes of the wealthiest citizens by over $40,000 each – it chose the latter (See CCPA’s 2011 brief BC’s Regressive Tax Shift).
I am unsure of what courts you are referring to when you claim that there was no case to be made for your actions being unconstitutional until the most recent decision in November 2016.
The Health Employees Union, who also had their collective agreements gutted in the same manner as B.C. teachers, won a court battle with the B.C. Liberal government at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2007. The B.C. Liberals decided, however, to continue fighting the teachers well past this date.
Your government underwent a sham process of repealing and bringing back essentially identical legislation to the one that removed class size and composition language from our collective agreements, while also continuing to prohibit the BCTF from bargaining class size and composition for several more years.
Last November, it took the Supreme Court of Canada only 15 minutes to decide that what you did as education minister in 2002 was unconstitutional.
Our collective agreement language has now been restored but, unfortunately, we will never be able to restore the opportunity that a generation of students would have had for smaller classes and more time with specialist teachers.
I believe that this group of students does deserve an apology from you, Ms. Clark.
Cornelia was also on point when she alerted you to the fact that teachers forgave salary increases in order to lower class sizes and to provide for additional specialist teachers through previous bargaining rounds.
You seem to suggest that this was done for the sole benefit of the union as an organization – I respectfully disagree.
The fact that teachers (through their union) bargained a collective fund to hire additional teachers in order to improve learning conditions for students, at the expense of negotiating salary for themselves, tells you something about the altruistic nature of our teachers. We were also negotiating for the benefit of our students’ learning conditions.
Finally, you reference the fact that students in B.C. have been doing well. I will agree that they have been doing relatively well, but that has been in spite of your government’s actions, Ms. Clark, and not as a consequence of them.
We have a quality public education system in B.C. and I am excited about how much better it could be if it becomes a higher priority for government.
Burnaby teachers will be supporting the NDP this election because we have seen where your priorities are, Ms. Clark, and public education has not been one of them.
Frank Bonvino, Burnaby Teachers Association president
