The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Time to look beyond the gloss

Editor’s note: The following article is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Alberta Teachers’ Association or its members.

One important goal of education is to develop critically thinking, engaged citizens who look below the surface of an issue to determine its true meaning.

Critical thinking will be important over the next few months as the Alberta government prepares to move on major legislative initiatives in education and healthcare. In both cases, there is significantly more to the discussion than appears on the surface of the pleasant and appealing packages in which these initiatives are presented.

In the case of education, the issue to watch is the government’s desire to rewrite Alberta’s School Act based on the results of Inspiring Education and other consultation processes that have taken place over the last few years. Education Minister David Hancock’s response to the consultation processes and his vision of how they connect to legislation can be found in his discussion paper, Inspiring Action (June 2010).

Inspiring Action contains broad and vague big-picture statements. Although words and phrases such as a learner-centred system, shared responsibility, wraparound services and flexibility sound wonderful, they don’t mean anything without details about the regulations and funding that will back them up. This is where the danger lies, as it is only the broad statements making up the School Act that will receive a public airing and debate in the legislature.

The type of transformation that Minister Hancock wants will require a significant commitment of money and political will, and in the past, the PC caucus generally and Finance Minister Ted Morton in particular have shown that they are unwilling to invest either. Given this, the need for involvement of teachers, parents and community will become greater after the government shows us what the new School Act looks like.

Increased interest in Alberta’s school board elections shows that Albertans are up for the task and will do the work necessary to ensure that this process moves in a positive direction.

In healthcare, the government is proceeding with plans to introduce an Alberta Health Act based on recommendations of the Members’ Advisory Committee on Health, chaired by MLA Fred Horne. As with education, the ideas expressed in the report are broad and vague and can be used to justify almost anything. Words like choice and individual responsibility are of concern, as is the fact that the recommendations speak only of public funding without once mentioning delivery. Especially worrisome is the fact that part of the government’s long-term goals are the eventual elimination of current legislation limiting private delivery of health services and setting out guidelines for the delivery of long-term care and other services.

Horne’s report details the degree to which Albertans want concrete changes to the health system instead of a legislative overhaul, yet the government’s plan is to start by rewriting the legislation. This indicates clearly that what the government wants to do with the system can’t be done under existing legislation. This alone should give Albertans reason to worry and question what the government has in store.

In both education and healthcare, the government is following the undemocratic practices enshrined by Ralph Klein, who perfected the art of bypassing the legislature and public debate on potentially controversial and unpopular policy initiatives. Part of the Parkland Institute’s mandate is to ensure that Albertans have the information they need to become engaged and mobilized. And that’s why the critical thinking skills that teachers foster in the classroom are important in Alberta today, for those skills will keep us from unwittingly endorsing dangerous legislation that look good on the surface but are rotten underneath.

Ricardo Acuña is the executive director of the Parkland Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research institute at the University of Alberta that has been researching and publishing alternatives to public policy in Alberta since 1996. For more information about the institute or its work, contact the office at 780-492-8558 or visit www.ualberta.ca/parkland.