Stuck in the Middle

Stuck in the Middle

It's become normal in our polarized world to embed oneself firmly in one side of an issue and to lambaste all who adhere to a different position. So it is with the current teacher strike in Alberta.

Teachers, who were once loved and respected, are now perceived as a cohort of left-leaning, indoctrinating, money-loving pansies, who exaggerate the adverse conditions faced in today's classrooms.

Not to be out-hated, the MLAs and Premier who form the current government of Alberta, are said to be irresponsible, anti-scholastic, homophobic cheapskates who lie about the numbers and play politics with our children's education.

In this environment, misinformation and disinformation appear to be more prevalent than solid facts and fair analysis. Here I am, stuck in the middle. I am a member of both the ATA and the United Conservative Party, and I am often embarrassed at both.

Relationships

Teachers have long contended that the strong foundation for learning is relationships. All of the relationships that bind students, teachers, support staff, parents, administration, and trustees are foundational to the learning that takes place everyday in the classroom. It is impossible not to notice that there is a bad relationship at the centre of our current labour strife. The ATA and the Government of Alberta are at odds with each other. This is not a new thing. The rhetoric between the two has been adversarial and acrimonious for a very long time.

I like Danielle Smith. That statement alone is enough to get me in trouble with ATA leadership and many among the rank and file. My favourite version of Premier Smith is the radio show host who listens. When she was beginning her campaign to be the leader of the United Conservative Party she met with a small group of people in my home town of Rocky Mountain House. She was uniquely attuned to the various voices and views that were expressed by the smallish crowd that had gathered. It was clear to me that her positions on most issues could be impacted by the good ideas she would hear in small coffee shops around the province. Sometimes I wonder what happened to that version of Danielle Smith.

Politics happened. She soon discovered that she would need the support of David Parker's Take Back Alberta movement in order to acquire the votes needed to defeat Travis Toews for the leadership of the party. It made political sense to tilt her positions towards the wants of the powerful Take Back Alberta throng. What would be required for Alberta teachers to gain similar access to the ear of the premier? I will contend that a relationship is our best option.

When Jason Kenney was still the premier, I had an inkling that he felt it would be politically expedient to maintain a bad relationship with the ATA. He was probably right. The ATA was and is perceived as a left-leaning organization that does not wish to work with the government, but rather, assume control of every aspect of Kindergarten to Grade 12 education in the province. I wrote a letter to Mr. Kenney, with whom I was on a first name basis, offering to work towards bridging the gap between his government and the ATA. He never responded. My conclusion, admittedly based on skimpy evidence, is that the Minister of Education at the time was following his orders to ensure the ATA remained in a perpetual state of discontent. This, I believe, was an entirely political decision.

United Conservative Party Member Policy Declaration includes this policy: “Divide the two main arms of the Alberta Teachers Association, union and professional body, into two separate and independent organizations.” There was outrage expressed by the ATA leadership when this policy was declared. However, when considered more closely, perhaps it is the ATA which should advocate for this policy.

It is normal everywhere that collective bargaining organizations maintain adversarial relationships with the employers on the other side of the table. Rather than viewing this UCP policy as an affront to teachers, it can be viewed as an expression that the government wants teachers to partner with it through a professional organization unencumbered by collective bargaining concerns. In matters of curriculum design, teacher discipline, class size policy, etc. the Government will benefit from having a partner which is not first and foremost a collective bargaining unit. Rather, there might exist a professional organization where teachers are eagerly invited into the decision-making where political direction needs their voices in the mix. The relationship between the ministry of education and a new professional organization will have the freedom to maintain friendly and productive relations with each other and leave the fighting to those engaged in the bargaining process.

Sadly, the government has never proposed any legislation which honours this policy passed by the Party membership years ago. Rather, it has passed legislation which does the opposite to the implied goal of this policy in 2022 when passed Bill 15 to remove disciplinary powers from the Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA) and established an independent Alberta Teaching Profession Commission to handle all complaints for educators. In doing so the Government doubled down on its “stick it to the teachers” model.

Stay in Your Lane

With respect to the current job action, Premier Smith has said this (Postmedia News, Oct 04, 2025):

“I think there’s a real disconnect between what the union leadership is putting on the table, saying what their members want, then when they take it to their members, it gets voted down. So we’ve encouraged the ATA leadership to go back and find out what the real issues are, then come to the table with a reasonable offer so that we can negotiate.”

She then went on to say that there is no money.

The gathering of tens of thousands of teachers and supporters on the 5th of October confirms that teachers are angry, and most of that anger is targeted at the government. The Premier should not pretend that the teachers are angry about nothing. The problem appears to be that teachers are angry about everything. She should not pretend that she understands what teachers want. The ATA leadership should also not pretend that it knows what teachers want. It doesn’t.

Sadly, the assertion about the disconnect between the ATA leadership and the membership is not entirely unfounded. Comments from ATA president, Jason Schilling, about funding for private schools are a case in point. At no point has the ATA membership been surveyed about its views on this issue. The same is true about many other issues about which the president speaks for the membership. Even though every public school in the province has a staff member which represents it at ATA locals throughout the province, these representatives are not asked to bring the views of rank and file members back to the local, which in turn does not report the views of rank and file teachers back to the provincial executive. Rather it is assumed that the personal views of the executive are the views of the membership.

The ATA lacks focus. Or put another way, it focuses on everything, and that is untenable in a negotiation. It must be focussed on employee compensation and working conditions. However, since it is also a professional organization it freely ventures into every possible area of government policy. If you were to ask the ATA leadership, “What is the rightful place of the elected officials and the ministry of education in determining education policy?” I’m not sure what the answer would be. There are no obvious lines to delineate the responsibilities of the ATA and the Government of Alberta. There do not appear to be separate domains in which each operates and about which their counterpart respects their jurisdiction. Will someone please draw some lines between the lanes?

With the ATA weighing in on every aspect of education which it finds in some way objectionable one might ask, “Are there any limits to the ATAs sphere of influence?” Over the years the ATA has gone so far as to advocate for a sales tax in order to generate the revenues necessary to fund education. Now, when they ought to be negotiating a contract settlement, they instead venture off on a campaign against educational choice.

Stuck in the Middle

Again I am stuck in the middle. The school where I work is a Christian Alternative program within a public school jurisdiction. Previous to 2012 our school was an accredited independent school. We switched to a public school model because, even with the funding made available by the Alberta Government, our parents could not afford to pay the difference in order to fund the school properly. In fact, our teachers received a well-deserved 60% raise in pay upon becoming public school teachers and members of the ATA. Portrayals of independent schools as ‘wealthy’ or ‘for-profit’ are misleading and uninformed. If we are going to promote referenda on school choice, we ought to at least behave like educators and educate the public about the variety of perspectives one might take on this issue.

One of the advantages of separating the ATA into two organizations is the inclusion of teachers from public, independent, and charter schools into one professional organization. This is yet another relationship that we need. We need a variety of perspectives represented at the professional teacher table where vitriol is not permitted, but rather, respect and friendship rule the day. And we need this organization to work in harmony with the ministry of education, finding ways to implement the direction that the electorate requested at the ballot box in a way that preserves the esteem of the profession and offers the children of this province the best education on the planet.

Our current seemingly impossible situation is the product of years of both the union and the government strategically nurturing adversarial relationships and now finding that this approach did not work.  I contend that it is time for both the ATA and the Government of Alberta to build a good and productive relationship with one another.  The strong foundation for learning can also be the strong foundation for labour peace.  I do not realistically anticipate that any participants in the ongoing fracas will be overcome with the humility necessary to disavow the direction of many years of finger-pointing, but I can extend an invitation to all who would like to see change on the education landscape to meet me in the middle.

Perhaps if many of us are in the middle together, I will not feel so stuck.