HuffPost Canada closed in 2021 and this site is maintained as an online
archive. If you have questions or concerns, please check our
FAQ or contact
support@huffpost.com.
BC teachers federation
The year is almost a wrap and - safe to say - 2016 was one for the books. In keeping with the spirit of the season, it's time again for a few New Year's resolutions for B.C.'s political parties and politicians to consider in their on-going quest for self-improvement.
If winning cases before the Supreme Court of Canada could be likened to the National Hockey League, the B.C. government would be the Toronto Maple Leafs of litigants. Perhaps the government is getting bad legal advice? Perhaps it's not listening to good legal advice?
In the battle between big government and big unions over big tax dollars, the country's highest court has decided there's just no need for the little people -- the taxpayers -- to be heard. This might have made sense if the Court limited its judgments to protecting truly fundamental freedoms. However, its recent judgments expanding freedom of association to protect the economic and contractual rights of unions can have serious impacts on government's budgetary spending priorities.
Our government would love nothing more then for all of us to turn a blind eye to yet anther bill that will strip rights from students, teachers, and parents and help give our education minister more power and control over a system he knows little about.
The 13-year legal battle over class sizes in British Columbia should teach us that relying on the courts is not a winning strategy. After a decade of court battles, classes are as large as ever, funding on the decrease, and the teachers' strike fund depleted from legal costs.
Personalized learning will mean that more often than not your child will be interacting with his/her personal computer while completing courses online. It makes so much sense to try to sell this doublespeak version of "personalized" to parents. It's so much cheaper to buy a new computer than to pay a teacher's salary year after year.
Let's focus on an arbitrated contract that will get us through the next two to three years, but keep the mediator around for that period and require all three parties continue meeting until they can reconcile their differences and drastically improve the quality of their negotiations.
As a parent, I am just. So. Tired. When my daughter began school in 2011, we spent a year of uncertainty as job action took place and the threat of strikes loomed. Both sides dug in and, it seemed, no end was in sight. Three years later and, frustratingly, not much has changed.
