Ian Doktor

When was the last time someone crossed the floor in federal politics? I can't even remember.

Just saying I'm on page 149/279 of the FINAL EDITS of my dissertation!

Clarity by making things less clear.

What couldn't be clear about that type of clarity.

This is such a gong show. There are actual problems the government could try and address instead of made up performative actions that have no chance of having meaningful affects.

I don't understand how limited people on the ballot affects voter fraud 🤨

What problem is this trying to solve? I mean aside from the obvious tilting of the field towards the UCP.

I made a similar argument with respect to the teachers strike. Respect and collaboration would have built goodwill that probably would resulted in the current deal.being accepted.

Instead, as time goes on, more and more teachers refused.

Great news!

@lukaszukab.bsky.social when your done the Forever Canada referendum can I convince you to start another one?

When Disrespect Becomes Policy: How Government Neglect Sparked Labour Unrest As Albertans brace for the first teacher strike in nearly 25 years, a new opinion piece on Parkland’s blog gives a frontline perspective on the government’s long war against public education.

@iandoktor.bsky.social an Alberta teacher's open letter on the eve of their first strike in over 20 years.

While the Smith govt claim this is about wages, compensation is just the tip of the iceberg after a decade of disrespect & political weaponization.

www.parklandinstitute.ca/disrespect

Maybe he watched the Matt Damon movie Elysium and confused it for reality.

That would actually explain a whole lot about his presidency.

I fear that the advantages our education system had when I was in school will continue to eroded and destroyed by the same government mismanagement we've seen during the last 8 years.

While I'm still hopeful a last minute deal can be reached I find that increasing unlikely and it makes me sad.
Alberta once had what I considered the best education system in the world (again, having taught all over the world for more than 20 years I have a somewhat unique perspective).

Like many teachers I'm a father and I'm dismayed that my two children will have their school year interrupted. This has been a long time coming and is the result of the government constantly and consistently displaying disrespect, ignorance, and a lack of caring towards the entire education system.

I'm offended not only for the way teachers have been treated, but as a fiscally responsible Albertan, I'm dismayed by the waste that's being demonstrated. Building respect with Alberta teachers would have cost less than the new carpet in Danielle Smith's office.

Instead, teachers were essentially accused of purveying pornography to students.

Change the way the UCP engaged with teachers wouldn't have cost the government a single dollar but I'm sure it would have moved enough teachers to vote for the contract they offered.

I've already written about this elsewhere so I won't go into tons of detail here but to say the UCP could have talked with the ATA, school boards, or the individual schools where the FOUR books were. Any of those approaches would have engaged teachers and demonstrated respect for the work we do.

Again, that wouldn't have cost the government a dime and it would have built good will that would be very useful right now.

And of course there is the ham-fisted UCP book ban.

There has never been any evidence of that; not to mention the new system has been completely ineffective. Properly managing that transition should have involved consulting and working with teachers instead of insulting them.

in investigating complaints against teachers so I knew how and why that system worked. However, I quickly changed my mind as the government suggested and stated that the move was necessary because teachers and the ATA were in some way hiding teacher misconduct.

But wait, there is more. A few years ago the government decided the ATA should not be in charge of teacher discipline. This upset a great many teachers, but honestly, I wasn't one of them. At first. I worked in BC where the BCTF is not directly involved

As I said, having taught in both private and charter schools, I'm not against them on principle. But like most teachers, it is impossible for me to support increasing funding there when we aren't funding our public system properly.

If they did it would be significantly more expensive for everyone. Yet while the public money to education has increased by about 4% per year, charter schools have see increases of closer to 16%.

I believe there is a place for charter schools in Alberta but they are a very (very) niche set of options that will never make up the bulk of the educational landscape here. They simply don't have the ability to educate the masses of students we have.

This doesn't just upset teachers and school boards, it makes the entire system worse off. I've worked all over the world (I've taught in four different countries, several provinces in Canada, worked in public, private and charter schools).

meaningfully including teachers and recognizing their expertise would have built goodwill that would have led to some of that 15% who voted no having a different opinion.

What else? The overt redistribution of funds from public schools to private and charter schools.

but on the whole the entire development process has resulted in a worse curriculum that will lead to challenges for our kids. There was no monetary benefit to excluding teacher input from this process. However,

(Those concerns proved correct as the government had to pause, walk back, and change numerous aspects after the fact). I've never been clear on what the haste to do this was; there are some aspects of the K-6 science curriculum I like,

Then there was the curriculum that both the Kenney and Smith government bulldozed through. Despite concerns repeatedly raised by teachers and other educational experts we were ignored and sidelined.

And there was no cost to the Alberta Government to leave the money where it was (I would actually argue the move put the government in a more risky position).

Let's go back and talk about forcing teachers to transfer their pensions to AIMCo. We didn't want that. Toews and Kenney lied about the benefits and never admitted the risks. And teachers knew that. We weren't consulted with what was being done with OUR money.