Is the Alberta Teachers' Association strike almost over？
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Summary
In this episode of the Western Standard, reporter Leah Muschett is joined by John Hilton O'Brien, the Executive Director of Parents for Choice, an advocacy organization dedicated to informing parents on Alberta s education system. They discuss the strike, the union-backed slate of school board trustees in the upcoming municipal election, and the impact unions can have on our children's education.
Transcript
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Hello, everyone. My name is Leah Muschett. I am a reporter here at the Western Standard,
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and today I have with me John Hilton O'Brien, the Executive Director of Parents for Choice,
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an Alberta-based advocacy organization dedicated to informing the parents on Alberta's education
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system. Okay, so we're just going to get straight into it. The strike is still in session. There's
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also a lockout going on for teachers that was enforced by the government, public teachers.
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So, John, I know recently, this week, you endorsed candidates for school board trustees
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for the coming municipal election on Monday. So, yeah, why don't you tell us a little bit about
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why you endorse trustees this time, since you guys have never done so before?
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Well, some things have happened that took us a little by surprise over the last couple of elections.
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You see, last time, one third-party advertiser called Calgary's Future spent $1.7 million as a
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third-party advertiser. Other public interest unions, which, like Calgary's Future,
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happened to have money from unions. Calgary's Future was CUPE. They spent $1.7 million. The other unions
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spent $2.7 million, so it's $4.4 million altogether. It's a staggering amount of money for scale.
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UCP spent $4.4 million on a winning provincial election. This is a lot of money, and we're seeing
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endorsements from union-backed groups again. All we want to do is make sure that the playing field is
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level. You see, in the end, parents deserve to be represented at the same level as the people who are
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writing the big checks, and it's really that simple. Had it not been for this spending, we would not have
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been worrying ourselves about this. But the candidates we endorsed, we endorsed off of a survey we do every
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election of candidates, and these candidates were very consistent in their responses. They're absolutely
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all for parental involvement, and they're also in favor of an end to secrecy policies and that sort
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of thing. They like transparency. Okay, well, yeah, so in this case, I remember you saying at the press
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conference earlier this week, which I covered, that you were doing Calgary specifically because of the
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funding that was going on for the trustees there, and so you're focusing on Calgary, but in the future,
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do you guys know for sure after these four years that you'll maybe potentially cover more
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jurisdictions in Alberta? We will consider doing Edmonton Public in the future. Now, in 2021,
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the Edmonton Labour Council also endorsed a slate of candidates for Edmonton Public School Board,
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and five out of nine of those won. Here in Calgary, the union-backed slate got, I think, six or
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eight of the, or sorry, yes, it was six out of the seven in Calgary, five out of nine in Edmonton.
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We didn't worry about Edmonton as much because we didn't see evidence of the money being spent,
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but in both cases, these are huge budgets we're talking about. Between Edmonton and Calgary in,
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well, their budgets combined are north of 2.5 billion dollars with a B. That's a lot of money
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in the hands of these trustees, and so it's important that we not have big money interfering.
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Right, yeah, because I remember looking at like lots of the comments saying, you know, like,
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we want to know more, but yeah, it feels like people just don't know that much, and I definitely
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think it would be good to get more than just like one side of the, yeah, perspective.
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Yeah, perspective. It's a bit worrying, and when, when turnout is low, big dollars for advertising,
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they really make a difference. So, yeah, that's true. So, the lesson for parents is go ask who's
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supported by the unions. If you see someone who's endorsed by a third-party advertiser working for a
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union or someone who's endorsed literally by a union, don't vote for them, right? This is an incestuous
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relationship. You can't have the union occupying both sides of a negotiating table. It doesn't work.
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Right, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so let's move on to a little bit of strike talk.
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Yeah, so realistically, because there is a press conference later today when we're filming this,
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we're filming this on Friday the 17th, but how long do you really think this is going to keep going
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on for the strike? Well, the union, as a union, has an absolute right to strike. Ideally, this would be
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for better working conditions, although they seem to want to expand that to things that have nothing
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to do with working conditions, but aside from the ATA's management being a little on the strange side
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these days, absolutely, they do have a right to strike, and I'm sure the government of Alberta wants
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to, wants to honour that as much as they can. At least, I sure hope they do. So really, the limiting
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factor lies in the fact that the union is not giving out strike pay. Well, that's going to mean that
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eventually teachers are going to say enough of this. Take the first deal that seems reasonable,
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return to the negotiating table and end the strike. So with that in mind, I'm not sure that the provincial
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government will invoke any sort of legislation to end a strike. There's no way to know that.
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But this afternoon, we may learn differently. Yeah, that's true. It also just seems to me,
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though, that like you said, I feel like they might just be waiting them out, like it seems like it.
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They very well might. The province is using the money they're saving on teachers to give out
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supports for parents who have children under 12. So they're trying to mitigate the effects of the
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strike on the public. Good on them for doing so. That's probably going to matter for public perception
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in the long term for them. But underlying that, there are real issues. And we should be grateful
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to the ATA because they're bringing up some of these issues. Some of our classrooms really are too large.
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That's not the only problem. Classroom complexity is a problem, as I've explained in the Western
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Standard before. They aren't all problems that the province can easily be solved or that are necessarily
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things that can be solved by this strike. But they're real problems that we have to face up to.
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And even if they aren't really appropriate for labor action, these things need to be addressed.
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I'm glad to see that in many cases, the province is addressing them, including some that aren't stated.
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Right. Something we had under the old agreement was that some of the newer, younger teachers may not have
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been paid enough to make them stable. When you're coming out of a four-year university degree, hip deep
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in debt, it's kind of hard to have a stable life, especially if you wind up subbing or something.
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But those initial contracts need to be stable. So I was glad to see that the government's offer
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worked on that sort of problem. I was also very glad to see the government talk about spending a lot
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of money on infrastructure. Infrastructure is just going to be a problem for us. It takes years to build a
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new public school and we're growing too fast to build them fast enough. The quickest thing that
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the government can probably do is slide a little money for independent schools and see if they can
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get independent schools and charter schools built because those build faster and eventually see if the
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public system can absorb the ones that are better run by the public system.
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Right. But at first those schools can be in rentals, right? They could simply rent an office space,
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that sort of thing. These are not easy solutions, but it's something that
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Okay. Yeah. Well, also, yeah. So I don't know if you were necessarily insinuating that, but I remember,
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I think it was a few days ago, Danielle Smith had a press conference about like license plates, but
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there's a question asked about obviously the strike stuff. And she was talking about how it might be an
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administration issue. Like people are giving the money to like the bureaucrats in the, I think you
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touched on this in a few of your articles as well. The bureaucrats instead of the actual teachers. So I
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don't, in my perspective, I probably just don't know enough, but it seems like how is the government
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supposed to be able, this seems more like maybe a trustee issue or yeah.
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So underlying it is a bureaucratic problem. We're spending money that is coming close to $350,000 a
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classroom for the public system. The average teacher's getting paid 85,000 of that, and that's less than a
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quarter. So we've been suggesting to the government in the past, before the strike came up, that an
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increase in pay for teachers doesn't seem unreasonable, at least for classroom teachers.
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But the fact is that we're simply seeing the fact that not enough money is making it into the classroom.
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Teachers are not feeling supported for good reason.
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But the government's spending the money all right. Why is it not reaching the teachers?
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And right there, the problem is going to come down to the trustees and the administration of the school
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districts. We've seen arguments from places like the Public School Boards Association that we should
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abolish, say, Catholic schools. The PSBAA went on a real tear about this a while ago, and their argument
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was that it would be more economically efficient. Some provinces have bought that line and they simply
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abolished their local school boards because that would clearly be more administratively efficient.
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So there's three provinces that have done that. Ontario has abolished some of their larger public
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school boards. And again, there's a concern there that's well-founded about how those boards are
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Yeah, well, also talking more about, I don't know, abolishing certain school systems, like the
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independent school system is being funded 70% by the government right now. And obviously, there's been a
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citizen initiative petition that has been brought by Alicia Taylor, who turns out to be working for the ATA,
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which I didn't know until recently. Well, I'm not sure if she has a paycheck from the ATA, but she's on
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their executive council, which means that like every member of that council, before she can make a public
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statement, she has to answer to Dennis Theobalt, who's their executive secretary. He's been there for seven
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years. He's very, very powerful. And you don't make a move on that board without getting Theobalt's okay.
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Hmm. That's, that's the way it works on a board.
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So she would have had to get his permission to?
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Before doing something so publicly exposed. Yes.
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So that is just the norm for any board that has a public facing component like this.
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So she has to have gotten the ATAs okay for this.
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Now we can say that the ATA would benefit because there's 48,000 students in independent schools,
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and that's about 2000 teachers given the classroom sizes. And so the ATA would gain somewhere between
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two and a half and three million dollars in additional union dues per year. So the ATA does
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have a financial incentive to push this narrative. The problem is that the narrative they're pushing
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is so wrongheaded. They start off by saying that these independent schools are siphoning off money
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meant for the public schools. Well, a few years ago, we had a very careful report on the economics of this
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done. And what we found, you can find this report on PCE's website, is that over an eight year period,
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those charter schools, public or private schools and home education between them, save close to two
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billion dollars. And you know, over the course of time, 250 million dollars a year really kind of adds up.
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But we're not spending less as the province of Alberta because of it. That money, which was 250
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million dollars a year then, and is probably closer to 400 million now, subsidizes the public school
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system. Every penny we're not spending on those independent schools goes to the public school system.
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Put it another way, 50,000 students collect operational funding for 35,000 students. If we abolish the
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independent schools, we suck funding for 15,000 students out of the public school system.
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Also, the independent schools get virtually nothing for capital funding. So the public system would have to
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pay for new schools for those people, for those 50,000 students.
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It gets worse. Now, that's 50,000 students who are almost entirely from working class families.
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They would all be forced to go to the public system if we got rid of the funding for the independent
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schools. Okay. So we've got about 30,000 classrooms. That would be about 31,500, 32,000 classrooms, right,
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in total in public education in Alberta. So about 32,000 if we added the populations of the independent
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schools. There's 48,000 students in those independent schools. So we would be adding one and a half students
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per classroom to the public system. Let me be a little more specific. Very few of those independent
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schools are in rural regions. So this would be Edmonton and Calgary. And in Edmonton and Calgary,
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we would be adding two students to every classroom. And every one of those students would come from
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families that are angry that their students are forced to be in your classroom. Do you want to
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teach that as a teacher? I don't think I'd want to be in that position. This is not a reasonable
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proposition. This is crazy talk. Yeah. And also the way you put it as well, I don't understand why
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teachers would be in support of that if they, you know, know how it's going to work. Like if they're
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going to, like the kids are going to come to their classrooms, that's more work for them. And it's
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probably like you said, a dissatisfied parent. So do you think like teachers are in support of this or
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yeah? Well, it's very easy, especially if you've got a lot of money as the ATA does to push a simple
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slogan, public money for public schools. And so everyone goes, well, of course, public money
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should go for public schools. It shouldn't go for private schools. And so everyone's full of the
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slogan, but we don't see the ramifications. And we also don't see that the slogan is completely false.
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You see, there's nothing private about private schools in Alberta, nothing.
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Private schools, unlike public schools, get inspectors. They adhere to the Alberta program
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of studies. They're fully accountable to the provincial government, to the extent that as
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Minister David Aiken displayed some years ago, the province can not just dictate what clubs they can
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have and have not. They can dictate what wording can be used in their founding documents. Mr. Aiken
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sent out a series of letters about those founding documents, in which he highlighted all of the ways
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in which he thought they erred and which he wanted them to change. They were commonly referred to as the
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rainbow reprimands because of all the colors of pens he used. My favorite part of that was that he
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always highlighted the word truth in religious schools documents, which caused me to think of
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it as his pilot project. So anyhow, there's nothing private about Alberta's private schools.
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Well, yeah. Let's see. What else do I have here?
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Okay. Yeah. Well, it kind of actually did touch on this already, so I think I'll skip it. But okay. Yeah.
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So this week, Minister of Finance Horner, Jason Horner, yes, that's his name, did an interview on
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Cori's radio talking about the ATA would require almost $2 billion more in spending than the government
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had set aside for a deal. So like we were talking about before, where I said they might be waiting,
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the government might be waiting the ATA out. And you said, yeah, but it depends on what's going to be
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announced. But so the clear question is, do you think that they're going to add more money or do you not?
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Okay. The problem that we're facing is that the government of Alberta is largely dependent on
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resource revenue. Resource revenue is very volatile and it partly depends, of course, on future prospects.
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And right now, projections having us running a pretty massive deficit, $6.5 billion.
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We're already in a situation where we have a pretty big debt. And needless to say, someone like
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Nate Horner is not keen to add to that debt. So when he's talking about another $2.6 billion already,
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he's looking and saying, we're adding this to the debt, because that's the position we're in. Does
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he want to almost double that? No, he doesn't. He's probably thinking we're better off to just wait
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on them to make a deal. Because the calculus for him doesn't work. And he really is the whip hand in this.
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We don't have more money than we have. The minister of education can't spend money that
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Horner won't give him. Right. Right. And so that's the wall that we run up against. And
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looking at the numbers, I can't say I disagree with Horner. We would all like to solve all of the
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problems we're seeing at once. But the ATA isn't being realistic. They need to narrow their goals.
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Solve this problem now. Other problems tomorrow. So basically look more long term.
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Yes, that's correct. If they weren't trying to solve everything right now through strike action
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that they never prepared for, well, they didn't. They already pirated half their strike fund to make
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a political slush fund. Right. They weren't prepared for this strike. So this is not the time to push for
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that. This is the time to limit objectives and come back to the other things later. It would also help
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if they tried to not emulate a rival political party. It's a lot easier to negotiate when you're not
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quite so confrontational with the people you're trying to negotiate with. Yeah. I think that should
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be a rule. So anyways. Okay. Well, thank you, John. I appreciate very much that you came in today. I
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think it was very informative and I think lots of parents will appreciate this as well. So. Okay.
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Thanks very much. Yeah. No problem. So if you guys enjoyed this video whatsoever, you should
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