Western Standard - HANNAFORD： 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

00:00:21.640 of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, October the 9th. On Monday, Alberta teachers walked off

00:00:28.260 the job, having rejected what I consider a handsome strike settlement offer that was actually

00:00:35.120 recommended to them by their union. This, despite the fact that the union has no money to fund a

00:00:43.000 strike pay. What that suggests to me is that the 89% of Alberta teachers who rejected the offer

00:00:50.640 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 Prime

00:01:13.220 Minister Stephen Harper. These days he's teaching political science at the University of Calgary,

00:01:18.180 and he knows a lot more than I do, and he's got a theory of how things go downhill from here.

00:01:23.760 Welcome to the show, Ian.

00:01:25.380 Nigel, great to see you.

00:01:27.360 Look, great of you to come on this morning and talk about this. Ian, do 89% of Alberta teachers

00:01:32.640 actually hate Smith's government?

00:01:35.020 Well, I think there's always going to be conflict between the provincial government and the teachers

00:01:38.880 because the teachers always want more and the province has to find the money to pay for it.

00:01:43.760 I think there's some bigger issues here as well. We've all obviously coped with the impact of

00:01:49.040 inflation over the course of the past four years, and I think the teachers are trying to catch up a

00:01:52.980 little bit on that. Look, I am part of the professor shooting here at the University of Calgary. We had

00:01:58.920 the same negotiations with the university earlier this year. We settled for less than the teachers

00:02:05.440 rejected in their contract vote the week before last. But looking forward further ahead here, I think

00:02:13.880 the bigger problem is the union is worried about, in a sense, the success of the province. Alberta's

00:02:20.860 been such a success economically and socially. People want to move here, in particular working-age 0.99

00:02:26.460 people who've done kids want to move here, and that's got growth of the student population for all

00:02:32.620 the primary and secondary schools in the province. So it's not just a matter of today's issues in the

00:02:39.260 education system that the union's worried about. They're worried about the next three or four years.

00:02:44.140 The province is building new schools at a feverish pace to try to keep pace. That's part of managing the

00:02:49.980 success of the province. And the teachers are worried that teacher numbers will keep up with

00:02:56.380 the enrollment pressures on the public schools. They don't want those class sizes. Well, obviously,

00:03:01.340 they'd like the class sizes to be smaller. That means more jobs for teachers and more

00:03:06.140 dues for the teachers' union. But what they're really worried about is, over the course of the

00:03:10.380 next couple of years, you get another 100,000 or more than 100,000 students in the school system.

00:03:16.060 Is the province going to keep pace with hiring teachers in order to keep pace with the

00:03:19.820 growth of enrollment? Well, do you think they are? I mean, the Ministry of Education is not

00:03:26.860 unaware that with more students comes the need for more teachers. Yeah, so the question is, will they

00:03:33.660 all be in the public school system, underneath the school boards? Or is the independent school system,

00:03:42.380 homeschooling, all the other types of schooling that we saw grow over the last 10 years, but in

00:03:47.740 particular during the COVID pandemic, is that going to eat away at the influence of the teachers' union

00:03:53.820 you know, over time? In a sense, there's a classic battle here for market share. Alberta has been at

00:03:59.740 the leading edge in Canada of innovating with different types of charter schools, independent

00:04:04.060 schools, private schools. As you know, Nigel, there's vibrant religious communities in Alberta who all want

00:04:10.780 to set up their own schools, Mennonite schools, Jewish schools, Muslim schools, Christian schools

00:04:16.700 of different sorts, in addition to all the other private schools and charter schools. There's a

00:04:22.860 competition for those students. We can't just assume, and I don't think the union can assume, that they're

00:04:28.220 all just going to go into the public school system. And in a sense, the Smith government might decide to

00:04:36.140 encourage faster growth of those independent school systems at the expense of the growth of the public

00:04:42.220 school system. I think that's part of the issue behind this strike. Well, of course, from my perspective,

00:04:47.820 I would hope that they would. But let's just say that, let's leave me out of that debate for a moment.

00:04:56.220 There is a good reason to actually promote private education, or at least education outside the public

00:05:04.620 system. If you believe the Fraser Institute, which I do and I suspect you may have some sympathy for,

00:05:12.380 the results from the non-public sector are very good, and they cost about 70 percent of what the

00:05:23.820 public sector does. There are all sorts of reasons for that, but basically it's a cheap way to get a good

00:05:28.620 education. Now then, is that what's behind the union's problem, that they actually can't compete?

00:05:39.580 Well, look, I think you put your finger on exactly what the bigger context here is. The Daniel Smith

00:05:47.740 government and Jason Kenney government, before the Smith government, understood it's not just a cost and

00:05:54.140 benefit analysis here, Nigel. Everything about Alberta education improves when parents and families

00:06:00.700 have more options for the education of their children. Nobody wants to live in a jurisdiction

00:06:06.700 or in a province where you only have one choice. You have to send your kid to the local

00:06:11.660 elementary school. It may or may not suit your children's needs, your family's needs.

00:06:18.140 Everybody wants the choice, and this is the problem that the teachers union and the school boards are

00:06:22.620 running into is that as more and more people come here with a greater and greater diversity

00:06:28.380 of the province, people with all sorts of backgrounds, they get here and find out that

00:06:32.540 there's more than one choice for their kids. We've got public and separate school. We've got

00:06:39.020 inside the public school system many different streams. We've got the charter school system,

00:06:43.100 independent schools. You can educate your kid at home in these sort of different forms of

00:06:47.820 homeschooling. I think that's one of the advantages of the Alberta education system,

00:06:51.900 but all of those are eating away at the market share for school boards and for the ATA's main

00:06:58.700 teachers union segments. If the province leans into that, which I think the province should,

00:07:06.940 not just that there might be a cost advantage to the profits, but the more choice parents have,

00:07:11.900 the happier they are with the provincial school system. That's going to be a challenge for the

00:07:16.700 teachers union or for the public schools going forward. I see that. We had a story in the

00:07:21.660 Western Standard yesterday talking about a referendum question that has been pitched by somebody. I mean,

00:07:29.020 who knows whether it'll make it through the sausage machine and actually be a ballot question when the

00:07:33.500 time comes, but actually suggesting that the province should not fund private education or education outside

00:07:42.220 the public system. So I think that what you're talking about is a very real thing. They're very anxious

00:07:48.300 about their jobs, the future, the union use. Now, some people might say, I don't think I'm one of them,

00:07:57.340 and I don't think you are. But look, there is an argument that if you want a united society, you don't want

00:08:08.460 too many alternatives in education. You push everybody through the same system of instruction,

00:08:14.700 and they all come out thinking more or less the same thing. What we're looking at now is we're going to

00:08:19.660 have, you know, we're going to have Christians, we're going to have Muslims, we're going to have people

00:08:24.300 who don't believe anything, and we're going to have the people who come out of the public system with

00:08:29.900 possibly not such a good education, and we have a fragmented society. And we can't have a fragmented

00:08:35.580 society. Can we? Or maybe we can? What do you think? Well, look, democratic societies are always

00:08:43.180 messy and complicated that way. We have more than one political party in this province. As you know,

00:08:48.940 Nigel, anybody can form a political party that they want. Anybody can go to whatever church they want,

00:08:54.700 or no church at all, different types of religious organizations. Yeah, this is part of the messiness of

00:09:01.260 big modern democratic countries. I think it's one of the strengths of our system, but there are people

00:09:06.700 who see that that's a weakness, and certainly you want to make sure the educational standards of these

00:09:12.380 schools are keeping up. But the way to guarantee that, it seems to me, is to let the parents choose,

00:09:17.500 or families choose where their kids go. I mean, the way to lose control of standards altogether, the way to

00:09:25.580 lose control of the quality of the education and the inclusiveness of the education is for every

00:09:30.300 neighbor to have only one choice, and everybody has to send their kid to the same school. Then the

00:09:34.940 school has no particular incentive to worry about the type of education they're offering because they

00:09:39.740 have a monopoly in the local area. But monopoly providers never have to worry about the quality of

00:09:45.260 the service that they're providing. That works for schools as well as it provides anything else. If we

00:09:49.660 only had one grocery store for the city of Calgary, it could be very indifferent as to the type of

00:09:56.460 vegetables or the type of produce or the type of groceries that it provides to its consumers,

00:10:00.780 because there's only one choice. Basically the same thing for education. Whereas I think there's

00:10:08.700 going to be this, as you said, it's a referendum effort to try to eliminate funding or some of the

00:10:14.540 supports for independent schools. In fact, we're now very far down this road here in Alberta. There's

00:10:20.300 whole neighborhoods in Calgary and Edmonton and towns outside of the two big cities, whole neighborhoods

00:10:28.380 being set up where we have an underbuilt public school system because there are so many other

00:10:35.980 alternatives. The bigger the independent school system becomes, the more people opt for charter schools

00:10:42.860 or for homeschooling and all the other choices that we have here, the harder it would be to flick a

00:10:47.260 switch and just say all those kids now have to move to the public system. I guess what would happen

00:10:52.140 if some of the financial supports for independent schools disappeared overnight? In my part of Calgary,

00:10:56.700 I live on the west side of Calgary. There's so many choices for education that the Calgary public

00:11:01.980 school board and the separate school board just don't have the capacity if all of those kids moved

00:11:06.620 from the independent schools and the charter schools overnight into the public school system.

00:11:11.420 The longer this sort of plethora of choice goes on, the harder it is to imagine that you could say

00:11:17.500 next September, all those supports are disappearing and thousands of more kids are going to move into

00:11:22.860 the public school system that compounds the problem. Obviously the ATA is aware of this, the school

00:11:27.260 boards are aware of this and the province is aware of this, that the success of education choice in

00:11:32.860 Alberta almost guarantees that it's going to continue on into the future. The public school boards just don't

00:11:37.900 have the capacity to manage all those kids if they suddenly switch back into the public system.

00:11:42.620 Well, how many are there? I mean, what percentage of students in Alberta are outside the public system?

00:11:50.620 Well, I think that's a difficult thing to measure because the choices are so complicated and there's so

00:11:58.540 many choices that we don't really have, I don't think, especially good ideas of in the regulated

00:12:06.620 homeschooling market. I think we have a pretty good idea of that. But beyond that, not everybody in the

00:12:13.900 homeschooling or independent school system runs the Alberta curriculum. And so I think we're talking about

00:12:20.380 on the west side of Calgary, probably a quarter or a third of the students aren't in the public school

00:12:25.900 system. There'd be thousands of kids if we suddenly had to snap them all back. And there's

00:12:31.500 neighborhoods where the schools are underbuilt as it is. So it's part of the challenge of the growth

00:12:36.380 of the province is that if you moved all those kids out of the very vibrant other choices that we have

00:12:41.900 here in Alberta, that only compounds the province's challenge of managing the growth of the public school

00:12:47.980 system. Right. Ian, I want to take you in two directions. One has to do with the curriculum

00:12:54.780 selection and the other is the political side of how things go from here. But just on the matter of

00:13:01.580 curriculum, I'm sure that one of the reasons why people say, I'm getting my kid out of this and I'm

00:13:09.980 putting them in a separate school of some description, is that they're very anxious about the kind of

00:13:17.500 intellectual education that the kids are getting. What I'm talking about, of course, is the dirty books

00:13:27.100 in the school library and the overall woke tenor of public education. It probably isn't as bad as what

00:13:39.260 people think it is, but it's still bad enough. And, you know, the books are real and the kids do come

00:13:46.780 home from school and say to their dad who works in the oil patch, you know, that we're living on dirty

00:13:53.020 money and things like that. So the school system has definitely got a point of view and it definitely

00:13:59.340 teaches that. And a lot of people don't like that. Now, as a factor in the decision to walk out,

00:14:06.460 go on strike, how important do you think that is? Are they fighting for the right to teach kids what

00:14:13.340 they want to teach?

00:14:15.580 Yeah, I mean, look, everybody in every walk of life wants to get paid for what they want to do and

00:14:20.540 not have to report to the boss. It's part of why I work here at the university, because I have some

00:14:24.700 freedom to teach what I wanted to do, my own research, obviously.

00:14:27.660 That's what Harper used to say about you. Anyway, carry on.

00:14:30.300 Yeah, of course, yes. I thought it made me a better chief of staff, but he might have had a different view.

00:14:35.660 So, you know, fair enough. But look, we have the Calgary Classics Academy here in Calgary,

00:14:41.260 a big long waiting list for a classics liberal arts education. You could call it more conservative.

00:14:47.900 I'm not sure that's the right political description, but more traditional topics being taught in those

00:14:53.180 classrooms, STEM Academy, Math Academy, different language academies. And then, of course,

00:14:59.180 the religious schools that are cropping up all over the place to teach a more faith oriented or

00:15:07.100 faith aligned form of the Alberta curriculum or other curriculums. You know, there's longstanding

00:15:14.860 Catholic and other Christian traditions of education that sometimes you find aren't reflected in the public

00:15:21.900 school classrooms. So if you send your kids, if you want to have that kind of education for your

00:15:26.860 kids, you have that choice in most parts of Alberta. That's great. And that's going to continue to be the

00:15:32.620 case. I think the political side of this, I don't think that every public school teacher is motivated

00:15:38.700 by this sort of thing. I think some of the woke education accusations are overdone in some of the

00:15:45.580 public schools that I've encountered here in Calgary. But I think that's part and parcel of,

00:15:49.900 you know, you lose 5,000 students across Alberta to Classics Academy or to STEM Academy. That's a threat

00:15:59.180 to the public school system. That's a challenge for the Teachers Association as well. And I think that's

00:16:03.900 part of the background to the strike for sure. Well, you know, one thing, if you sign your kid

00:16:09.740 up for Cailin Ford's Enterprise, you probably will not be worrying about what's in the school library.

00:16:17.420 Probably not. 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 who think that they need to take a stand

00:16:28.540 on that issue and condemn the provincial government when it says, well, actually, maybe we, maybe we

00:16:34.060 shouldn't have these books. I mean, there's something, the competition is eating your lunch

00:16:39.420 and you're sticking to the, sticking to your silly standard. What's going on in their heads there, Ian? 0.95

00:16:45.900 No, like everybody who works in the system, whether they're going to admit it on a television show or

00:16:50.940 out in the public realm or not, can see what's going on here. And the more choices that parents have,

00:16:56.140 uh, the more motivated the parent is to, uh, uh, to deliver the kind of education for their kids

00:17:01.900 that they, that they want, the tougher it is for the public school board to compete. Look, but here

00:17:06.860 in Calgary, the Calgary board of education is reacting. There's all sorts of internal streams

00:17:11.580 inside the Calgary board system, uh, to offer different types of education to different communities

00:17:16.620 inside the, uh, inside the city. And yeah, I don't regret that. That's the way the competition's

00:17:22.620 supposed to work. The more competition there is from other types of education, uh, alters,

00:17:27.340 other types of school systems, other types of, uh, uh, uh, private schools and homeschooling,

00:17:33.020 the more the public school board has to set up that kind of internal system inside its own,

00:17:37.100 you know, uh, uh, traditional learning systems and so forth. Uh, that's good for everybody. Uh,

00:17:42.540 it's good if the public school systems react to that. Uh, I don't mind that, uh, but they can all see

00:17:47.900 the writing on the wall here. So there's more and more choices for parents. There's more and more

00:17:51.580 pressure on the public school system to innovate as well. Yeah. Well, it may be so. Look, um, you,

00:17:57.900 you put something out in the public square a few days ago about where this goes from here. And I'd

00:18:02.700 like to ask you about that. Um, basically the gist of what you were saying, and I'm going to let you

00:18:08.700 explain it further, but the gist of what you were saying is look, the, the, the teachers are going to

00:18:13.980 have to go back pretty soon because they don't have any money, but they'll, and then the legislature

00:18:19.500 will resume and they'll be even legislated back to work. So this isn't going to last that long.

00:18:25.900 What then I think you were arguing stops the teachers from buying memberships in the UCP so they

00:18:33.900 can crash the convention and, and, uh, cause trouble in that area. Now you had some, what,

00:18:41.740 what were you thinking about there? Yes. Like I've been worried about this for quite some time,

00:18:45.740 Nigel. Uh, the internal governance of the UCP here is part of the, the strategy for all of these

00:18:53.020 unions or will be eventually. Um, the legislature comes back, I think it's on the 23rd of October.

00:18:59.660 Uh, I assume that at least somewhere in the provincial government, the province is planning

00:19:04.140 if the strike is still going on for back to work legislation and that would, uh, involve the

00:19:08.780 settlement of the strike by something other than, uh, the strike that's going on some kind of

00:19:13.340 arbitration system. Um, if the legislation passes the first week that the legislature is back sometime

00:19:19.820 on the 23rd, 24th, 25th of October, uh, the early bird registration deadline for the UCP convention is

00:19:26.380 October 31st. Uh, so you can join up, uh, the UCP and get a, a ticket to go to their convention,

00:19:32.780 which is later on in November for 160 by $170. It wouldn't take the, the, the UCP convention is

00:19:39.980 in Edmonton where the UCP is a bit weaker on the ground and where the teachers union is therefore a

00:19:44.860 bit stronger on the ground relative to the UCP. The UCP has left open the possibility that you don't

00:19:51.900 need many teachers, you know, uh, 2000 teachers, 3000 teachers, uh, sign up as members of the UCP

00:19:58.540 as a way of getting back at the province for back to work legislation and send their members to this

00:20:03.420 convention. They can then take half the provincial board of directors of the UCP in this convention,

00:20:10.300 the other half at the next convention a year from now, they could agitate for a leadership

00:20:15.580 review for a Daniel Smith's leadership of the UCP. Um, we know that that's not that complicated.

00:20:21.740 This is how Jason Kenney's leadership of the UCP came apart. Um, it doesn't matter where they're

00:20:26.540 from in the province. They can be all from one riding. They can all be from a couple of ridings

00:20:30.380 just in Edmonton and they could be a real force for trouble inside the UCP convention, uh, the third

00:20:37.340 week of November, uh, up in Edmonton. And this, if they don't do it at this convention, they can do it

00:20:42.860 at the next convention. It looks like, you know, the provincial treasurer and the provincial

00:20:47.580 government's given every indication that the province's finances are turning a little bit tighter.

00:20:52.780 So the year over year big spending growth to solve every growth problem in the province that we've

00:20:59.260 had over the last four or five years is coming to an end. The province's spending is mostly on

00:21:05.020 salaries, you know, teachers' salaries, professors' salaries, I have to say mine, doctors' salaries

00:21:10.060 from the AHS system and so forth. The big growth in payrolls over the course of the last few years

00:21:15.580 in the provincial government is eventually going to have to come to an end as the province's revenue

00:21:19.740 starts to turn over with decline of oil prices and so forth, slowing up the Canadian economy,

00:21:24.540 tariffs from the United States and so forth. All the public sector unions are going to be thinking

00:21:29.260 about how can they exert maximum influence to stop that from hurting them and hurting their members.

00:21:34.780 And the big open opportunity here is I think not very well thought through design of the UCP.

00:21:40.540 Uh, those conventions coming up, uh, this year in November, and then a year from, uh,

00:21:45.180 November are wide open opportunities for, you know, to be an especially well-organized or especially big union

00:21:51.580 to send, uh, 5,000 people to that convention, seize control of the UCP board, and then have

00:21:58.300 a direct pipeline over who the UCP nominates as candidates for the upcoming provincial election.

00:22:03.980 Uh, I got to believe that every public sector union in the province is thinking about that,

00:22:08.460 and I think it's incumbent on the UCP, uh, there's pressure at the upcoming convention to, uh, uh,

00:22:14.860 turn over more of the influence over who runs for the UCP in the next election to

00:22:19.740 the membership of the UCP as opposed to the leadership of the UCP.

00:22:23.660 That's an opportunity for the teachers union, for all the other public sector unions to flood

00:22:27.580 into the UCP and to pick the candidates for the next election. I think that the UCP has to take this

00:22:32.620 possibility seriously. And there now needs to be a reform effort to change the internal governance of

00:22:37.820 the UCP before that becomes a really serious problem, not just for the UCP, but for the

00:22:42.620 governance of the province. Are people in the UCP thinking about this?

00:22:46.860 There are people thinking about this, but I think the time for action, if the strike is still going,

00:22:51.740 if the teacher strike is still going on on the 23rd, when the legislature comes back,

00:22:55.500 if the provincial government is planning back to work legislation, I trust that the imperative for

00:23:01.820 reform of the UCP's process, look, it may be that this, uh, UCP convention at the end of

00:23:06.780 November will have to be postponed. If the UCP can't figure out a way to make sure that the

00:23:11.340 teachers unions and other public sector unions don't take advantage of their wide open membership

00:23:16.220 rules to, uh, effectively hijack, to turn the UCP into another provincial NDP.

00:23:21.500 Right. Well, I have a feeling that lots of people will be standing on guard for that,

00:23:28.380 but it's going to be an interesting time between now and Christmas.

00:23:32.460 No end of business for journalists and political scientists, Nigel.

00:23:37.100 You may be back on the show before, before too long and say, look what happened. Oh my goodness.

00:23:42.220 Anyway, great to see you and thank you for your insights on this. It's been really great.

00:23:48.860 Always happy to talk, Nigel.

00:23:50.300 Okay.

00:23:51.020 On behalf of the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

Western Standard - October 16, 2025

HANNAFORD： Could the Alberta Teachers’ Association pull a TBA trick？

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