Who knew the public would end up supporting 51,000 striking Alberta schoolteachers in spite of the United Conservative Party (UCP)’s blithe gaslighting about the reasons for the labour dispute now entering its eleventh day?
The answer to that question may not be clear, but we can be confident about who didn’t expect it to happen.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her UCP, that’s who.
Yesterday, faint hopes for a quick end to the strike sparked late last week by plans to resume bargaining between the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA), as the teachers’ union is known, and the Teachers Employer Bargaining Association (TEBA), the stalking horse for the government in these negotiations, were dashed when negotiations appeared to fall apart.
In response, Finance Minister Nate Horner vowed on a radio program that the government won’t budge on its salary offer to the teachers, which the union’s membership has rejected twice in in votes on a mediator’s recommendations and a tentative agreement.
And the ATA published a news release saying it had presented a “serious, balanced and realistic proposal” to TEBA containing “a phased-in approach to achieving manageable student-teacher ratios, a fair counter to the government’s three percent annual salary increase offer, and new language designed to finally begin addressing the increasing complexity in today’s classrooms.”
Said ATA President Jason Schilling: “Now, we expect the government to respond reasonably, in good faith, and not through the media but at the bargaining table where these discussions belong.”
Well, good luck with that. Horner, naturally, is now dropping hints about eventual back-to-work legislation and no doubt making more draconian threats behind the scenes.
Despite the government holding most of the cards when it comes to propaganda, the Alberta public appears to be in a skeptical mood. Leastways, a poll last week by the Angus Reid Institute suggested that 58 per cent of Albertans sympathize with the teachers. Only 21 per cent of the respondents to the three-day online poll said they supported the government.
The pollster also said its results indicate that 84 per cent of respondents thought there were “too many kids” in Alberta classrooms, and 56 per cent thought the province’s teachers aren’t paid enough. Even 28 per cent of the UCP voters identified by the pollster were sympathetic to the teachers.
The UCP is doubtless in possession of its own polling data, which, judging from their silence about the ARI poll, may well say much the same thing. They also have to know that there were more than teachers in the crowd of 18,000 to 22,000 people who turned up at the Alberta Legislature on October 5 to support the strikers. That may have been the largest protest demonstration in Alberta history.
Together, this strongly suggests the ATA’s messaging and advertising has been hitting the mark and even that Albertans are growing tired of the UCP’s reflexive use of MAGA-style attacks on teachers that sound like as if were cooked up in Republican boiler room on K Street in Washington. (Who knows? Perhaps they were.)
What was the UCP’s reaction to this situation? Well, also yesterday, they trotted out an announcement that Alberta would soon be issuing new automobile license plates on which Wild Rose Country has been replaced by an English translation of Alberta’s lame but venerable official motto, Fortis et Liber.
What’s more, Albertans will get to vote in a survey about which colour scheme they like the best. The slogan, however, is the same in all.
Strong and Free, of course, has also been adopted as a slogan by the Alberta separatist movement Ms. Smith has been nurturing, and is used as branding by the United Conservative Party.
Predictably – exactly as was no doubt intended – this riled up opponents of the UCP, helping to create another teapot tempest to distract from the growing list of disasters and scandals on the Smith Government’s watch.
Now, to be fair, Smith insisted this is not so. “There’s no distraction,” she said at a news conference about the new plates, looking delighted at the turn reporters’ questions had taken. “This is neutral language.”
“A license plate is more than just tin and paint,” she gushed. “It’s a business card for Alberta!” Presumably that means we can look forward to seeing a lot of Alberta business cards with duct tape over the UCP branding on them.
“There is no political ideology that owns the corner on Strong and Free,” helpfully insisted Service Alberta Minister Dale Nally, who seemed to think he is the only person in Alberta who can read Latin. (It’s sort of too bad Ontario got “Ut incepit fidelis sic permanet,” which a lot of us Albertans think as well.)
Talking fast, Smith fielded a reporter’s question about the strike at the newser with a stream of bafflegab on why her government is not prepared to put caps on the number of students in a classroom. She thinks there should be a cap on complexity instead, she explained, or perhaps exclaimed.
Reporter: “When you say a cap on complexity, what do you mean by that?”
Premier: “I dunno! I mean, that’s something that I hope we can talk to the teachers about, because that’s just a concept that my education minister has put forward, is, do we have to be a lot more hands-on in monitoring the complexity in a classroom? And there’s kids who have English language learning, there’s kids who are, um, on the spectrum, there’s kids who have behavioural issues, there are kids who are in wheelchairs, so complexity has a whole diversity of manifestations, and so that’s what I think, that’s what we’re hearing from teachers, is that, if, if every kid was in a particular range of ability, then they might be able to accommodate larger class sizes, but with inclusion and more complexity, they need more hands on deck, either smaller class sizes or more educational assistants, and we just think we need to maintain that flexibility to be able to assign, that’s why we don’t want the hard caps.”
Have you got that, people?
Well, if the premier is serious about wanting to talk to teachers about complexity in the classroom, there will be a golden opportunity the next time the ATA and TEBA sit down and try to have another go at bargaining.
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