Western Standard - Could the Alberta Teachers’ Association pull a TBA trick？

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show

00:00:21.620 of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, October the 9th. On Monday, Alberta teachers walked off

00:00:28.240 the job, having rejected what I consider a handsome strike settlement offer that was actually

00:00:35.100 recommended to them by their union. This, despite the fact that the union has no money to fund a

00:00:42.980 strike pay. What that suggests to me is that the 89% of Alberta teachers who rejected the offer

00:00:50.620 loathe the UCP so much that rather than have 12% over four years, they'd rather have no salary at

00:00:59.200 all for a while. That's how much they hate this government. But I could be wrong. With me today

00:01:07.280 is an old friend and colleague, Professor Ian Brody. For two years, he was Chief of Staff to

00:01:12.940 Prime Minister Stephen Harper. These days, he's teaching political science at the University of

00:01:17.700 Calgary, and he knows a lot more than I do, and he's got a theory of how things go downhill from

00:01:23.000 here. Welcome to the show, Ian. Nigel, great to see you. Great of you to come on this morning and

00:01:29.180 talk about this. Ian, do 89% of Alberta teachers actually hate Smith's government? Well, I think

00:01:35.480 there's always going to be conflict between the provincial government and the teachers because

00:01:39.080 the teachers always want more and the province has to find the money to pay for it. In fact,

00:01:44.260 there's some bigger issues here as well. We've all obviously coped with the impact of inflation

00:01:49.420 over the course of the past four years. And I think the teachers are trying to catch up a little

00:01:53.100 bit on that. Look, I'm part of the professor shooting here at the University of Calgary. We

00:01:58.740 had the same negotiations with the university earlier this year. We settled for less than the

00:02:05.060 teachers rejected in their contract vote the week before last. But looking forward further ahead

00:02:13.160 here. I think the bigger problem is the union is worried about, in a sense, the success of

00:02:19.780 the province. Alberta's been such a success economically and socially. People want to move

00:02:24.380 here. In particular, working age people who've got kids want to move here, and that's got

00:02:28.920 growth of the student population for all the primary and secondary schools in the province.

00:02:36.160 So it's not just a matter of today's issues in the education system that the union's worried

00:02:41.120 about. They're worried about the next three or four years. The province is building new schools

00:02:46.020 at a feverish pace to try to keep pace. That's part of managing the success of the province.

00:02:51.760 And the teachers are worried that teacher numbers will keep up with the enrollment pressures on the

00:02:57.740 public schools. They don't want those class sizes. Well, obviously they'd like the class sizes to be

00:03:02.700 smaller. That means more jobs for teachers and more dues for the teachers union. But I think

00:03:08.400 What they're really worried about is over the course of the next couple of years, you get another 100,000 or more than 100,000 students in the school system.

00:03:15.920 Is the province going to keep pace with hiring teachers in order to keep pace with the growth of enrollment?

00:03:21.720 Well, do you think they are?

00:03:23.840 I mean, the Ministry of Education is not unaware that with more students comes the need for more teachers.

00:03:32.160 Yeah.

00:03:32.420 So the question is, will they all be in the public school system underneath the school boards?

00:03:38.560 Or is the independent school system, homeschooling, all the other types of schooling that we saw

00:03:45.420 grow over the last 10 years, but in particular during the COVID pandemic, is that going to eat

00:03:50.680 away at the influence of the teachers union, you know, over time? In a sense, there's a classic

00:03:56.540 battle here for market share. Alberta has been at the leading edge in Canada of innovating with

00:04:02.160 different types of charter schools, independent schools, private schools. As you know, Nigel,

00:04:06.600 There's, uh, uh, vibrant religious communities in Alberta who all want to

00:04:10.920 set up their own schools, Mennonite schools, uh, uh, uh, Jewish schools,

00:04:15.240 Muslim schools, Christian schools of different sorts.

00:04:17.520 In addition to all the other private schools and, uh, and, uh, and charter

00:04:21.760 schools, there's a competition for those students who can't just assume.

00:04:26.080 And I don't think the union can assume that they're all just going to go

00:04:29.080 into the public school system.

00:04:30.960 And in a sense, the, the, the, um, the Smith government might decide

00:04:36.000 to encourage faster growth of those independent school systems at the expense of the growth of

00:04:41.980 the public school system. I think that's part of the issue behind this strike.

00:04:46.200 Well, of course, from my perspective, I would hope that they would. But let's just say that,

00:04:51.980 let's leave me out of that debate for a moment. There is a good reason to actually promote

00:04:59.260 private education, or at least education outside the public system. If you believe the Fraser

00:05:06.980 Institute, which I do and I suspect you may have some sympathy for, the results from the non-public

00:05:18.760 sector are very good, and they cost about 70% of what the public sector does. There are all sorts

00:05:25.580 reasons for that but basically it's a cheap way to get a good education now then uh is that what's

00:05:32.940 behind the the union's problem that they actually don't they can't compete well look i i think you

00:05:40.780 put your finger on exactly what the the bigger context here is uh the the the daniel smith

00:05:47.740 government and jason kenny government before uh the smith government uh understood it's not just

00:05:53.580 a cost and benefit analysis here nigel everything about uh alberta education improves when parents

00:06:00.140 and families have more options for the education of their children uh nobody wants to live in a 1.00

00:06:05.420 in a jurisdiction or in a province where you only have one choice to send you you have to say you

00:06:09.820 have to send your kid to the local elementary school may or may not suit uh your children's

00:06:15.180 needs your family's needs uh and so you know everybody wants the choice and this is the problem

00:06:20.540 that the teachers union and the school boards are running into is that as more and more people come

00:06:25.700 here with a greater and greater diversity of the province, people with all sorts of backgrounds,

00:06:31.140 they get here and find out that there's more than one choice for their kids. We've got public and

00:06:36.800 separate school. We've got inside the public school system, many different streams. We've

00:06:42.100 got the charter school system, independent schools. You can educate your kid at home and

00:06:45.820 these sort of different forms of homeschooling. I think that's one of the advantages of the

00:06:50.180 Alberta education system. But all of those are eating away at the market share for school boards

00:06:56.740 and for the ATA's main teachers union segments. And that's, you know, if the province leans into

00:07:03.740 that, which I think the province should, not just that there might be a cost advantage to the

00:07:09.160 profits, but, you know, the more choice parents have, the happier they are with the provincial

00:07:13.920 school system. That's going to be a challenge for the teachers union or for the public schools

00:07:18.360 going forward. I see. We had a story in the Western Standard yesterday talking about a

00:07:24.760 referendum question that has been pitched by somebody. I mean, who knows whether it'll make

00:07:30.180 it through the sausage machine and actually be a ballot question when the time comes, but

00:07:34.340 actually suggesting that the province should not fund private education or education outside the

00:07:42.440 public system. So I think that what you're talking about is a very real thing. They're very anxious

00:07:48.340 about their jobs, their future, the union use. Now, some people might say, don't think I'm one

00:07:57.180 of them, and I don't think you are. But look, there is an argument that if you want a united

00:08:04.280 society, you don't want too many alternatives in education. You push everybody through the same

00:08:12.980 system of instruction, and they all come out thinking more or less the same thing.

00:08:17.900 What we're looking at now is we're going to have Christians, we're going to have Muslims,

00:08:23.680 we're going to have people who don't believe anything, and we're going to have the people

00:08:27.760 who come out of the public system with possibly not such a good education, and we have a fragmented

00:08:33.320 society. And we can't have a fragmented society, can we? Or maybe we can. What do you think?

00:08:39.880 Well, look, democratic societies are always messy and complicated that way. We have more than one

00:08:46.900 political party in this province, as you know, Nigel. Anybody can form a political party that

00:08:51.740 they want. Anybody can go to whatever church they want or no church at all, different types of

00:08:57.060 religious organizations. Yeah, this is part of the messiness of big, modern, democratic 1.00

00:09:02.560 countries. I think it's one of the strengths of our system, but there are people who see that

00:09:07.380 that's a weakness. And certainly, you want to make sure that the educational standards of these

00:09:12.460 schools are keeping up. But the way to guarantee that, it seems to me, is to let the parents

00:09:17.160 choose or families choose where their kids go. I mean, the way to lose control of standards

00:09:24.360 altogether the way to lose control of the quality of the education and the inclusiveness of the

00:09:28.920 education is for every neighbor to have only one choice and everybody has to send their kid to the

00:09:33.520 same school then the school has no particular incentive to worry about the type of education

00:09:38.740 they're offering because they have a monopoly in the local area but monopoly providers never have

00:09:43.040 to worry about the quality of the service that they're providing that works for for schools as

00:09:48.240 well as it provides anything else if we only had one grocery store for the city of Calgary you know

00:09:54.240 it could be very indifferent as to the type of vegetables or the type of produce or the type of

00:09:58.880 groceries that it provides to its consumers because there's only one choice basically the

00:10:03.040 same thing for education um and uh i you know whereas i think there's going to be this as you

00:10:09.600 said it's a referendum effort to try to eliminate uh funding or some of the supports for independent

00:10:15.760 schools in fact we're now very far down this road here in alberta there's whole neighborhoods um in

00:10:22.320 calgary and edmonton and towns outside of the two big cities whole neighborhoods being set up where

00:10:30.640 we have a underbuilt public school system because there are so many other alternatives

00:10:37.600 the bigger the independent school system becomes the more people out for charter schools or for

00:10:43.120 homeschooling and all the other choices that we have here the harder it would be to flick a switch

00:10:47.600 and just say all those kids now have to move to the public system? I guess what would happen if

00:10:52.380 some of the financial supports for independent schools disappeared overnight? In my part of

00:10:56.460 Calgary, I live on the west side of Calgary, there's so many choices for education that the Calgary

00:11:01.720 public school board and the separate school board just don't have the capacity if all of those kids

00:11:05.880 moved from the independent schools and the charter schools overnight into the public school system.

00:11:11.320 The longer this sort of plethora of choice goes on, the harder it is to imagine that you could say

00:11:17.440 next September, all those supports are disappearing and thousands of more kids are going to move into

00:11:22.920 the public school system. That compounds the problem. Obviously, the ATA is aware of this,

00:11:27.080 the school boards are aware of this, and the province is aware of this, that the success

00:11:30.740 of education choice in Alberta almost guarantees that it's going to continue on into the future.

00:11:36.540 The public school boards just don't have the capacity to manage all those kids if they

00:11:40.180 suddenly switch back into the public system. Well, how many are there? I mean, what percentage

00:11:45.440 of students in Alberta or outside the public system?

00:11:50.740 Well, I think that's a difficult thing to measure

00:11:52.540 because the choices are so complicated

00:11:57.800 and there are so many choices that we don't really have,

00:12:01.960 I don't think, especially good ideas

00:12:04.500 in the regulated homeschooling market.

00:12:07.800 I think we have a pretty good idea of that.

00:12:09.760 But beyond that, not everybody in the homeschooling

00:12:14.620 our independent school system runs the Alberta curriculum.

00:12:17.720 And so I think we, you know, we're talking about in, on the west side of Calgary, probably

00:12:22.160 a quarter or a third of the students aren't in the public school system.

00:12:26.780 There'd be thousands of kids if we suddenly had to snap them all back.

00:12:30.240 And there's neighborhoods where the schools are underbuilt as it is.

00:12:34.740 So it's part of the challenge of the growth of the province is that if you moved all those

00:12:38.800 kids out of the very vibrant other choices that we have here uh in alberta that only compounds

00:12:45.200 the province's challenge of managing the growth of the public school system right ian i want to

00:12:49.880 take you in two directions uh one has to do with the curriculum selection and the other is the

00:12:56.900 political side of how things go from here but just on the matter of curriculum i'm sure i that one of

00:13:05.760 the reasons why people say, I'm getting my kid out of this, and I'm putting them in a separate

00:13:11.200 school of some description, is that they're very anxious about the kind of intellectual

00:13:18.340 education that the kids are getting. I mean, what I'm talking about, of course, is the

00:13:24.400 dirty books in the school library and the overall woke tenor of public education.

00:13:35.760 It probably isn't as bad as what people think it is, but it's still bad enough, and the books are real, and the kids do come home from school and say to their dad, who works in the oil patch, that we're living on dirty money and things like that.

00:13:54.300 So the school system has definitely got a point of view, and it definitely teaches that, and a lot of people don't like that.

00:14:02.140 Now, as a factor in the decision to walk out, go on strike,

00:14:07.620 how important do you think that is?

00:14:10.280 Are they fighting for the right to teach kids what they want to teach?

00:14:15.420 Yeah, I mean, look, everybody in every walk of life wants to get paid

00:14:19.660 for what they want to do and not have to report to the boss.

00:14:22.380 It's part of why I work here at the university,

00:14:23.960 because I have some freedom to teach what I want to do,

00:14:26.320 my own research, obviously.

00:14:28.080 That's what Harper used to say about you. 0.98

00:14:29.720 Anyway, carry on.

00:14:30.340 Yeah, of course. Yes. I thought it made me a better chief of staff, but he might've had a different view. So, you know, fair enough. But look, we have the Calgary Classics Academy here in Calgary, big, long waiting list for a classics, liberal arts education. You can call it more conservative. I'm not sure that's the right political description, but more traditional topics being taught in those classrooms, STEM academy, math academy, different language academies.

00:14:58.620 And then of course, um, the religious schools, uh, that are cropping up all over the place

00:15:03.800 to teach a more, uh, faith oriented or, uh, faith aligned, uh, uh, uh, form of, uh, the

00:15:10.920 Alberta curriculum or other curriculums, you know, there's, you know, there's longstanding

00:15:14.400 Catholic and other Christian traditions of, uh, of education that sometimes you find aren't

00:15:20.980 reflected in the public school classrooms.

00:15:23.080 So if you send your kids, if you want to, uh, have that kind of education for your kids,

00:15:27.160 you have that choice in in in most parts of Alberta that's great and that's going to continue

00:15:32.220 to be the case I think the political side of this I don't think that every public school teacher is

00:15:38.000 motivated by this sort of thing I think some of the the woke education accusations are overdone

00:15:44.560 in some of the public schools that I've encountered here in Calgary but I think that's part and parcel

00:15:49.640 of, you know, you lose 5,000 students across Alberta

00:15:53.320 to Classics Academy or to STEM Academy.

00:15:58.140 That's a threat to the public school system.

00:16:00.420 That's a challenge for the Teachers Association as well,

00:16:03.500 and I think that's part of the background to the strike for sure.

00:16:06.800 Well, you know, one thing, if you sign your kit up

00:16:09.940 for Kalen Ford's Enterprise, you probably will not be worrying

00:16:15.560 about what's in the school library.

00:16:17.560 Probably not.

00:16:18.000 But no, I think the library there is probably pretty dependable, yeah.

00:16:20.860 So, you know, what's the matter with the people in the system

00:16:25.840 who think that they need to take a stand on that issue

00:16:29.420 and condemn the provincial government when it says,

00:16:32.500 well, actually, maybe we shouldn't have these books.

00:16:35.640 I mean, there's something. 0.97

00:16:37.180 The competition is eating your lunch and you're sticking to your silly standard. 0.97

00:16:43.800 What's going on in their heads there?

00:16:45.520 No, like everybody who works in the system, whether they're going to admit it on a television show or out in the public realm or not, can see what's going on here.

00:16:54.560 And the more choices that parents have, the more motivated the parent is to deliver the kind of education for their kids that they want, the tougher it is for the public school board to compete.

00:17:06.280 Look, but here in Calgary, the Calgary Board of Education is reacting.

00:17:09.700 there's all sorts of internal streams inside the calgary board system to offer different types of

00:17:14.980 education to different communities inside the uh inside the city and yeah i i don't regret that

00:17:21.460 that's the way the competition is supposed to work the more competition there is from other

00:17:25.060 types of education uh alters other types of school systems other types of uh uh private schools and

00:17:31.940 homeschooling the more the public school board has to set up that kind of internal system inside its

00:17:36.900 own you know uh traditional learning systems and so forth uh that's good for everybody uh it's good

00:17:42.900 if the public school systems react to that i don't mind that but they can all see the writing on the

00:17:48.580 wall here so there's more and more choices for parents there's more and more pressure in the

00:17:52.020 public school system to innovate as well yeah well maybe so look um you you put something out in the

00:17:59.140 public square a few days ago where this goes from here and i'd like to ask you about that um basically

00:18:05.780 the gist of what you were saying, and I'm going to let you explain it further, but just what you

00:18:11.380 were saying is, look, the teachers are going to have to go back pretty soon because they don't

00:18:16.440 have any money, and then the legislature will resume, and they'll be even legislated back to

00:18:23.080 work, so this isn't going to last that long. What then, I think you were arguing, stops the teachers

00:18:29.240 from buying memberships in the UCP

00:18:33.500 so they can crash the convention

00:18:35.800 and cause trouble in that area.

00:18:40.080 Now, what were you thinking about there?

00:18:43.640 Yes, I've been worried about this

00:18:44.920 for quite some time, Nigel.

00:18:46.700 The internal governance of the UCP here

00:18:49.520 is part of the strategy for all of these unions

00:18:53.440 or will be eventually.

00:18:55.780 The legislature comes back,

00:18:57.580 I think it's on the 23rd of October,

00:18:59.880 I assume that at least somewhere in the provincial government, the province is planning

00:19:03.740 if the strike is still going on for back-to-work legislation, and that would involve the settlement

00:19:09.140 of the strike by something other than the strike that's going on in some kind of arbitration system.

00:19:15.400 If the legislation passes the first week that the legislature is back, sometime on the 23rd,

00:19:20.540 24th, 25th of October, the early bird registration deadline for the UCB convention is October 31st,

00:19:27.680 So you can join up the UCP and get a ticket to go to their convention, which is later on in November for $160 by $170.

00:19:37.120 It wouldn't take the UCP convention is in Edmonton, where the UCP is a bit weaker on the ground and where the teachers union is therefore a bit stronger on the ground relative to the UCP.

00:19:47.500 the UCP has left open the possibility that you don't need many teachers you know 2,000 teachers

00:19:54.680 3,000 teachers sign up as members of the UCP as a way of getting back at the province for back to

00:20:00.720 work legislation and send their members to this convention they can then take half the provincial

00:20:06.940 board of directors of the UCP in this convention the other half at the next convention a year from

00:20:12.600 now they could agitate for a leadership review for daniel smith's leadership of the ucp

00:20:18.840 um we know that that's not that complicated this is how jason kenney's leadership of the ucp came

00:20:24.200 apart um it doesn't matter where they're from in the province they can be all from one riding they

00:20:28.920 can all be from a couple of ridings just in edmonton and they could be a real force for

00:20:33.960 trouble inside the ucp convention uh the third week of november uh up in edmonton and this if

00:20:41.000 If they don't do it at this convention, they can do it at the next convention.

00:20:44.600 It looks like, you know, the provincial treasurer and the provincial government's given every indication that the province's finances are turning a little bit tighter.

00:20:52.700 So the year over year, big spending growth to solve every growth problem in the province that we've had over the last four or five years is coming to an end.

00:21:02.480 The province's spending is mostly on salaries, you know, teacher salaries, professor salaries, I have to say mine, doctor salaries from the AHS.

00:21:10.740 system and so forth. The big growth in payrolls over the course of the last few years in the

00:21:15.900 provincial government is eventually going to have to come to an end as the province's revenue starts

00:21:20.060 to turn over with decline of oil prices and so forth, slowing up the Canadian economy, tariffs

00:21:24.940 from the United States and so forth. All the public sector unions are going to be thinking about

00:21:29.700 how can they exert maximum influence to stop that from hurting them and hurting their members.

00:21:34.920 And the big open opportunity here is, I think, not very well thought through design of the UCP.

00:21:40.740 Those conventions coming up this year in November and then a year from November are wide open

00:21:46.920 opportunities for, you know, to be an especially well-organized or especially big union to send

00:21:52.260 5,000 people to that convention, seize control of the UCP board, and then have a direct pipeline

00:21:59.300 over who the UCP nominates as candidates for the upcoming provincial election. I got to believe

00:22:04.900 that every public sector union in the province is thinking about that, and I think it's incumbent on

00:22:09.680 the UCP, there's pressure at the upcoming convention to turn over more of the influence

00:22:16.740 over who runs for the UCP in the next election to the membership of the UCP as opposed to the

00:22:22.080 leadership of the UCP. That's an opportunity for the teachers union, for all the other public

00:22:26.520 sector unions to flood into the UCP and to pick the candidates for the next election. I think that

00:22:31.340 the UCP has to take this possibility seriously and there now needs to be a reform effort to change

00:22:36.500 the internal governance of the UCP before that becomes a really serious problem,

00:22:40.620 not just for the UCP, but for the governance of the province.

00:22:44.600 Are people in the UCP thinking about this?

00:22:46.720 There are people thinking about this, but I think the time for action,

00:22:50.740 if the strike is still going, if the teacher strike is still going on on the 23rd when the

00:22:54.000 legislature comes back, if the provincial government is planning back to work legislation,

00:22:58.300 I trust that the imperative for reform of the UCP's process, look, it may be that this

00:23:04.580 UCP convention at the end of November

00:23:07.160 will have to be postponed if the

00:23:09.040 UCP can't figure out a way to make sure

00:23:11.060 that the teachers unions and other public sector

00:23:13.060 unions don't take advantage of their 0.54

00:23:15.020 wide open membership rules

00:23:16.640 to effectively hijack

00:23:18.800 to turn the UCP into another provincial

00:23:21.020 NDP.

00:23:23.540 Well,

00:23:24.240 I have a feeling that lots of people will be

00:23:26.900 standing on guard for that, but

00:23:28.700 it's going to be an interesting

00:23:30.980 time between now and Christmas, Ian.

00:23:32.740 No end of business for journalists and political scientists, Nigel.

00:23:36.880 You may be back on the show before too long and say, look what happened.

00:23:41.240 Oh, my goodness.

00:23:42.400 Anyway.

00:23:43.080 Always happy to join.

00:23:44.380 Great to see you.

00:23:45.780 And thank you for your insights on this.

00:23:47.520 That's been really great.

00:23:48.980 Always happy to talk, Nigel.

00:23:50.280 Okay.

00:23:51.060 On behalf of the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

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Western Standard - October 10, 2025

Could the Alberta Teachers’ Association pull a TBA trick？

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