Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[Locke]

Originally Posted by flamingreen

Of the 32 kids in my Grade 5 class last year, 28 were considered English language learners (now that had varying degrees too, several spoke no/minimal English). Ironically, math is probably the one subject where that is less of an issue (unless we are talking word problems), as they all can understand the numbers.

But where do those kids go? Several kids came to Canada, and two weeks later were in my classroom. Unless the answer is - no school for you - into the classroom they go.

Good question. When my daughter was doing her Practicum down in Lethbridge she worked at a school specifically catering to new Immigrants and Refugees teaching English, do those resources not exist in Calgary?

I see what you're saying and I also see what Sliver is saying, you cant monopolize a teacher's time on a handful of students at the expense of the rest but nor can the kids simply be ignored.

Its less of a 'teaching' issue as much as it is a mis-allocation of resources.

Those 'English Language Learners' are essentially being shoved into the deep end and told to learn to swim. How? Figure it out. Thats a systemic issue that needs to be addressed because those students are essentially being setup to fail and simultaneously, so are the educators. Thats a seemingly impossible task.

But I dont see that the solution to that and/or disruptive kids is smaller class sizes or paying teachers more, lets put those issues aside momentarily, there has to be a systemic mechanism in place to help those students get to where they need to be educationally before just plunking them into Gen Pop.

[you&me]

Originally Posted by Sliver

...

I've never been against proper resources for kids, teachers and the school system.

I'll give you the Cole's notes on my position as I'm not sure you're clear on where I come from on this. With respect to teachers' gripes, this is where I disagree:

- Their shocked Pikachu faces whenever they bitch and moan about class sizes. I was in CBE from 1980 to 1994. Teachers complained about class sizes that whole time. I was in classes in Churchill with over 30 kids on a regular basis. One class had 34, I recall. Thirty-two was common. To get uppity about class sizes like that when these teachers grew up in my era knowing full well that's the size of a class drives me up the wall. You don't get to pretend you didn't know this was the deal. *
* I distinguish between class sizes that they claim are too large from classrooms with remedial students that cannot keep up and distract from the education for students who are keeping up with the material. That's an issue whether your class has 20 kids or 30 kids. We cannot allow a super small number of students to negatively impact the quality of education of the majority. We do need to invest in classes where these students have a program(s) more tailored to their needs so we can help them maximize their education and future potential. I'm all for funding that.

...

I don't trust the UCP to handle this well, though. I'm obviously concerned like every other non-idiot out there that Smith's government will not negotiate in good faith or with students' and teachers' and society's best interests at heart. They are a-holes, voted in by a-holes, and this fight with teachers and the education system as a whole has the potential to be messy because of this crappy government and they're yappy sycophant numbskull knuckle-dragging supporters.

Really good post.

Further to your bolded, it seems insane to me that parents today also sport the shocked Pikachu face when it comes to class sizes and complexities... Like, if you went to school here and have seen what has (or more accurately, hasn't) happened over the last 10-20 years - what were you expecting? What would possibly give you the idea that things wouldn't be worse, nevermind better than it wasm, say, 30 years ago?

"Oh, little Timmy sure is struggling at school... Can you believe he was 32 kids in his class? How are they ever going to learn anything?"

Well yeah, I can believe that... because it's been like that forever... Why are you surprised?

Now that's not to say that it's right or that things aren't more complicated than they were 30 years ago... But to act like it's a surprise that the state of education is shockingly bad when looking at who's been driving this bus (pun intended) since we (the broader 'we') graduated is hard to swallow.

[MissTeeks]

Alberta to use notwithstanding clause on three transgender laws

https://calgary.citynews.ca/2025/09/...nsgender-laws/

An internal government memo sent last week from the justice department, obtained by The Canadian Press, details the plan.

It says Smith’s office has directed the notwithstanding clause be added to the legislation in the fall sitting.

[Fuzz]

Tells you how much she values Canadian's charter rights. I'm ,we already knew "not at all" but even if you want separation, is that really who you want governing you?


Oh, right. They win, so #### everyone else.

[Point Blank]

Originally Posted by Locke

Good question. When my daughter was doing her Practicum down in Lethbridge she worked at a school specifically catering to new Immigrants and Refugees teaching English, do those resources not exist in Calgary?

I see what you're saying and I also see what Sliver is saying, you cant monopolize a teacher's time on a handful of students at the expense of the rest but nor can the kids simply be ignored.

Its less of a 'teaching' issue as much as it is a mis-allocation of resources.

Those 'English Language Learners' are essentially being shoved into the deep end and told to learn to swim. How? Figure it out. Thats a systemic issue that needs to be addressed because those students are essentially being setup to fail and simultaneously, so are the educators. Thats a seemingly impossible task.

But I dont see that the solution to that and/or disruptive kids is smaller class sizes or paying teachers more, lets put those issues aside momentarily, there has to be a systemic mechanism in place to help those students get to where they need to be educationally before just plunking them into Gen Pop.

Excellent question and I am grateful that you want to shed light on supports for the most vulnerable groups.

I can speak for the CBE- we have a program called LEAD specifically for refugees. Newcomers to Calgary enrolling into the CBE must be screened for English Language Proficiency. Students who show signs that they may require more support than in an inclusive setting are flagged to a specialist who is in house, who will do additional screeners. The criteria for LEAD is that they have disrupted schooling, come from a location where trauma is likely (such as Syria), and show huge gaps in literacy, numeracy, and socioemotional skills. The LEAD program is not offered until Grade 4 however.

I know all this because I was an English assessor for CBE and I taught High School LEAD. It’s a beautiful program that’s very close to my heart, but it’s also bursting at the seams. We are talking about high school kids with kindergarten brains- like many of them literally will need to learn how to tell time and do other life skills such as not punching the kids next to them when they’re disregulated. So class sizes need to be really small…but right now, even those classes are getting larger.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Point Blank

Excellent question and I am grateful that you want to shed light on supports for the most vulnerable groups.

I can speak for the CBE- we have a program called LEAD specifically for refugees. Newcomers to Calgary enrolling into the CBE must be screened for English Language Proficiency. Students who show signs that they may require more support than in an inclusive setting are flagged to a specialist who is in house, who will do additional screeners. The criteria for LEAD is that they have disrupted schooling, come from a location where trauma is likely (such as Syria), and show huge gaps in literacy, numeracy, and socioemotional skills. The LEAD program is not offered until Grade 4 however.

I know all this because I was an English assessor for CBE and I taught High School LEAD. It’s a beautiful program that’s very close to my heart, but it’s also bursting at the seams. We are talking about high school kids with kindergarten brains- like many of them literally will need to learn how to tell time and do other life skills such as not punching the kids next to them when they’re disregulated. So class sized need to be really small…but right now, even those classes are getting larger.

Which opens a whole other can of worms in light of the decision to ramp up immigration.

I want to be 110% clear, I am in full support of immigration, but its got to be within reason. Our infrastructure, housing, education and health care does not have the capacity for this kind of influx, we can barely handle what we've got.

If we want to do this then we have to have a seriously good plan to which we as a society are committed. I understand thats going to come with some pain and problems of it's own but it is serious folly to just throw kids into this pot and then tell the ground troops to 'figure it out.'

This is not to say that Teachers dont deserve a raise, thats an issue with a lot of moving pieces, it is also not to say that we dont need more schools, I'm just saying that a more thoughtful, nuanced plan is also in order to fix many of the actual day-to-day problems.

[Point Blank]

Originally Posted by Locke

Which opens a whole other can of worms in light of the decision to ramp up immigration.

I want to be 110% clear, I am in full support of immigration, but its got to be within reason. Our infrastructure, housing, education and health care does not have the capacity for this kind of influx, we can barely handle what we've got.

If we want to do this then we have to have a seriously good plan to which we as a society are committed. I understand thats going to come with some pain and problems of it's own but it is serious folly to just throw kids into this pot and then tell the ground troops to 'figure it out.'

This is not to say that Teachers dont deserve a raise, thats an issue with a lot of moving pieces, it is also not to say that we dont need more schools, I'm just saying that a more thoughtful, nuanced plan is also in order to fix many of the actual day-to-day problems.

Absolutely. CBE partners up with several programs to help immigrants get settled, but I don’t really know what other systems of support are set up for them by the government. It’s very difficult to settle refugees, especially when they’re big families of teenagers who’ve had 10+ years of trauma. A lot of the students we teach would end up in gangs, and my colleagues would often end up being their go to people to contact outside of school because they can’t speak English and literally have no one else they can go to.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Locke

This is not to say that Teachers dont deserve a raise, thats an issue with a lot of moving pieces, it is also not to say that we dont need more schools, I'm just saying that a more thoughtful, nuanced plan is also in order to fix many of the actual day-to-day problems.

You sound like me talking about rezoning. "We need a more thoughtful, nuanced plan". Ha.

What would you do? My plan would look like this:

Step 1 - release the funding to build schools. The UCP made a big pledge to build schools but there are no indications of the money being released (it wasn't included in the last budget). The school boards have shovel-ready projects that just need money and the UCP is withholding the money that they pledged (probably waiting for MHCare to start building schools).

Step 2 - Bring funding up to the Canadian average, or higher, to enable a whole list of fixes:

• Hire as many teachers as required to support the optimal class sizes.
• Teachers deserve raises that can at least keep up with inflation and are market appropriate (living in the big cities is more expensive)
• Buy all required supplies for teachers to do their jobs - no one should have to use their personal funds at work

Step 3 - Throw out the UCP curriculum and go back to the previous curriculum and enable some education experts to quickly update it to close the gap.

Step 4 - Defund the Catholic schools, any that do not want to become private can convert to standard public schools.

Step 5 - Deal with the private/charter schools. You can choose your own adventure here:
Option A - Defund all private and charter schools and allow them to operate on purely private funding, in privately funded buildings
Option B - Copy the Finnish approach and fully absorb all private and charter schools into the public school system and utilize them as more specialized learning system for students that need it (one way or the other)

Step 6 - Once the funding is focused in the primary public school system expand offerings and innovate learning to ensure all kids are properly supported and educated to the highest standard.

I think a lot of people would be upset with the amount of change in a plan like this but I feel that the UCP has taken things too far the other way (without telling everyone plainly that this was the plan). A future NDP government is going to need to make big moves to fix the years of erosion that the UCP have put into destroying the public education system and bleeding off money to so many different "choices" that the primary system is massively underfunded for the work it has left to do.

[malcolmk14]

Peter Mackay, Chair of the Central Teachers' Bargaining Committee, resigned this evening.

Feel like teachers (and students) are about to eat a #### sandwich served up by this government.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by malcolmk14

Peter Mackay, Chair of the Central Teachers' Bargaining Committee, resigned this evening.

Feel like teachers (and students) are about to eat a #### sandwich served up by this government.

Hopefully he resigned because he wanted to fold and take the government deal and everyone else said 'no'.

More likely, he is falling on his sword because of this whole "mandate" thing where the ATA called out TEBA for showing up without a mandate to talk about class sizes or complexity. Although, the UCP is using this whole thing as an excuse to attack the teachers, which they were going to do no matter what.. so no one should blink over a bad faith negotiation tactic.

Or maybe it is entirely unrelated and he had to resign for personal reasons...

Hopefully whoever replaces him as Chair will have a strong backbone and will hold the line.

[GGG]

https://livewirecalgary.com/2025/09/...th-government/

Can someone smarter than me dumb down what this means?

I’m just writing to let you know that I am resigning as CTBC chair effective immediately. Thank you for the opportunity to serve in this role. I was hoping to see things through to the end of this round of bargaining, but I don’t see a path to doing so at this point.

“Best regards,” Mackay wrote.

The resignation comes after Finance Minister Nate Horner said he was pleased the Teacher’s Employer Bargaining Association (TEBA) and ATA met in an Alberta Labour Relations Board (LRB) resolution conference to discuss the unfair labour practice complaint launched against the ATA, by TEBA.

The LRB issued a consent order as a result of the conference, effectively an agreement by both parties to resolve the complaint.

“This consent order makes clear that none of the outstanding items under negotiation are about classroom complexity, class size or support for students,” Horner’s statement read.

“Alberta’s government has already addressed these concerns through our current offer which would add 3,000 more teachers to classrooms. In addition, Budget 2025 invested $1.6 billion to support diverse learning needs and complexity in classrooms. This includes $53 million for classroom complexity grants.”

Outstanding items include timing for implementation of the unified grid. the ATA’s proposal for an annual one-point-five per cent long service allowance for teachers at the maximum step of the grid and coverage of the COVID-19 vaccination.

“I trust that this order will assist Alberta’s families and teachers in understanding the true nature of the ongoing negotiations.”

In a FaceBook post, Mackay said that government is about to” unleash” an ad campaign against teachers and their demands in bargaining.

“It will be paid for with public dollars, including the taxes paid by teachers and parents,” the post reads.

“Prepare yourselves, folks. You’ve been loud. You’ll need to be much, much louder. The message: this is a government that would rather spend public dollars on ads than on addressing what’s happening in Alberta’s public schools.”

So questions about what does a consent decree mean

Does this mean that both parties agree that the proposed extra staff is sufficient or his Horner misleading this?

It sounds like the province is trying to use this process to ensure the only outstanding issue is salary and then go full on lazy greedy teachers are the problem

I’m also disappointed if teachers are accepting of only 3000 new teachers which would be like a 10% class size reduction or about 3 student per class. We need at least double that. Now teachers themselves certainly do t need to advocate for smaller classes beyond working conditions for themselves but I was wanting more here from the government.

Is that a correct interpretation of what this means?

I hope they stage an illegal strike after being legislated back. Given the state of substitute lists there probably aren’t teachers available to fill the roles.

[Point Blank]

I’m not entirely sure, but it seems like the ATA and TEBA agreed that these are the outstanding items left for negotiation. However, teachers will still need to vote on this.

To say I’m am absolutely gutted is an understatement. This makes the ATA looks weak and outplayed and Nate Horner saying how this reveals the true nature of what teachers want is just so on brand for a government that wants to demonize public school educators. I can’t believe I have to fight both the government and my own Union to support our students.

I sure hope my colleagues will vote no if the agreement doesn’t have any changes to classroom size and complexity. But let’s be real here, I’m pretty used to being disappointed in voting results.

[indes]

Originally Posted by Point Blank

I’m not entirely sure, but it seems like the ATA and TEBA agreed that these are the outstanding items left for negotiation. However, teachers will still need to vote on this.

To say I’m am absolutely gutted is an understatement. This makes the ATA looks weak and outplayed and Nate Horner saying how this reveals the true nature of what teachers want is just so on brand for a government that wants to demonize public school educators. I can’t believe I have to fight both the government and my own Union to support our students.

I sure hope my colleagues will vote no if the agreement doesn’t have any changes to classroom size and complexity. But let’s be real here, I’m pretty used to being disappointed in voting results.

I'm confused as well, if the negotiations are actually progressing - why do we have a resignation along with a negative ad campaign?

[RandyHolt]

Originally Posted by Point Blank

Absolutely. CBE partners up with several programs to help immigrants get settled, but I don’t really know what other systems of support are set up for them by the government. It’s very difficult to settle refugees, especially when they’re big families of teenagers who’ve had 10+ years of trauma. A lot of the students we teach would end up in gangs, and my colleagues would often end up being their go to people to contact outside of school because they can’t speak English and literally have no one else they can go to.

I understand the issues that come with refugees, but this is such a small number of our overall immigration that it should not have a huge impact. Regular immigration though is also leading to huge problems with the kids not knowing the language and disrupting classes. At what point do the parents have to take responsibility or does the CBE have to hold the kids back a year and send them to English or French lessons specifically before they can join the regular school system again?

As a parent, I would never immigrate to Japan for instance without either teaching my kids the language first, or finding a school that is taught in a language they know.


On another note, as the labour dispute seems to be heading for a collision course, anything that parents can do to help support the teachers side? Anyone specifically to write to regarding support for reducing class sizes or adding more support?

[Ironhorse]

Originally Posted by RandyHolt

I understand the issues that come with refugees, but this is such a small number of our overall immigration that it should not have a huge impact. Regular immigration though is also leading to huge problems with the kids not knowing the language and disrupting classes. At what point do the parents have to take responsibility or does the CBE have to hold the kids back a year and send them to English or French lessons specifically before they can join the regular school system again?

As a parent, I would never immigrate to Japan for instance without either teaching my kids the language first, or finding a school that is taught in a language they know.

Parents take responsibility? Hah! That rarely happens anymore.

When my family moved to Canada, I had extra remedial English lessons at school before we even got on the plane and when we got here I got my ass put into a 5 week immersive ESL program.

[woob]

I'm so bummed for my kids. They're both loving school right now. Youngest is in grade 1 and is practicing his reading/writing. Last night, we went out for a quick light dinner after soccer try-outs, and he spent the whole dinner writing up his own ad-libs for us. They were pretty short but so cute. And my oldest is really enjoying social studies right now.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by MissTeeks

Alberta to use notwithstanding clause on three transgender laws

I find it genuinely distressing how easily Premiers are electing to use the notwithstanding clause these days. For decades it was was almost taboo to use it (outside of Quebec and even then mostly just for language laws) but now it seems like Premiers will use it on just 'whatever'.

Equally distressing is how much of a free pass they get from the press when using it is tantamount to an admission that they are knowingly violating the rights of citizens.

[Ashartus]

Originally Posted by Parallex

I find it genuinely distressing how easily Premiers are electing to use the notwithstanding clause these days. For decades it was was almost taboo to use it (outside of Quebec and even then mostly just for language laws) but now it seems like Premiers will use it on just 'whatever'.

Equally distressing is how much of a free pass they get from the press when using it is tantamount to an admission that they are knowingly violating the rights of citizens.

A lot of UCP supporters were outraged about their freedoms being taken away during Covid but seem quite happy to take other people's freedoms away.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by woob

I'm so bummed for my kids. They're both loving school right now. Youngest is in grade 1 and is practicing his reading/writing. Last night, we went out for a quick light dinner after soccer try-outs, and he spent the whole dinner writing up his own ad-libs for us. They were pretty short but so cute. And my oldest is really enjoying social studies right now.

School should suck! Every second of it should a be soul-draining experience to make kids miserable so they enjoy other parts of life!

One shouldnt just 'enjoy' school! Thats how you know its being done wrong!

[Point Blank]

Originally Posted by RandyHolt

I understand the issues that come with refugees, but this is such a small number of our overall immigration that it should not have a huge impact. Regular immigration though is also leading to huge problems with the kids not knowing the language and disrupting classes. At what point do the parents have to take responsibility or does the CBE have to hold the kids back a year and send them to English or French lessons specifically before they can join the regular school system again?

As a parent, I would never immigrate to Japan for instance without either teaching my kids the language first, or finding a school that is taught in a language they know.


On another note, as the labour dispute seems to be heading for a collision course, anything that parents can do to help support the teachers side? Anyone specifically to write to regarding support for reducing class sizes or adding more support?

Well we aren’t talking about immigrants. We’re talking about refugees who didn’t have to choice in being displaced. Immigrants who come are generally quite proficient in English and have much more supportive networks than a family of child soldiers from Northern Iraq.