Editor: By now, you will have become aware of the B.C. Supreme Court of Appeal’s decision regarding the B.C. Teachers’ Federation and its five-year-long litigious process to determine if the B.C. government has the authority, the legal right and the moral right to invoke legislation to alter the working conditions of the province’s 40,000 plus teachers.
It does, despite the difference of opinion of only one B.C. Supreme Court justice.
And yet, the BCTF’s president, Jim Iker, has sworn to take the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada over alleged infringements of the Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and on ‘appropriate’ consultation, ‘good faith’ in bargaining, associated regulations and issues pertaining to Bill 22 and Bill 28.
As the only candidate for school trustee in the November 2014 Abbotsford civic election, who has read all the court cases relating to the BCTF during the past 14 years, and who wrote an extensive letter to the editor in February, 2015, I have been pilloried by more than a dozen teachers — who may be masters of their own teaching subjects — and by benignly ignorant former teachers and parents, but I have been proven right in my lengthy submission of the futility of the BCTF to have ever undertaken this litigious endeavour.
Despite all the thoughts and expressions we all have had regarding funding for the education system here in B.C., what it all comes down to is the legitimacy of the provincial government to oversee all aspects of the governance of the public sector, which includes the province’s teachers.
Yes, we need better funding for our school system in B.C., but taking the provincial government to court at each and every turn has only seriously impacted the BCTF’s finances, its reputation and the general public attitude towards it and its members.
B.C.’s teachers need to have better leadership, not only by the elected officials of their union but by their paid senior management. And they need to hire new lawyers.
It is time to start to improve the relationship between the government, the province’s school trustees, the general public and the BCTF and its members — teachers who work hard, carry out a challenging task on a daily basis and who need to work together for the betterment of our children’s education.
G.E. MacDonell,
Abbotsford