Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[GGG]

Originally Posted by GullFoss

Right...and an engineering degree is probably the most difficult professional degrees to obtain, so a first year engineer getting 10%-15% more renumeration than a first year teacher doesn't seem unreasonable.

I'm not bemoaning teacher pay here or the profession. I'm saying the current pay for teaching looks entirely reasonable to me. So pay increases the evolve at inflation + 1% also look entirely reasonable when you consider how pay generally evolves in an economy.

The offer to hire 3,000 more teachers also looks reasonable. If someone said the right number for teacher hires was 5,000 instead of 3,000 and the teachers would accept that deal. I'd say "okay that seems reasonable too and its reasonably achievable."

I'm sitting here wondering what exactly the teachers would agree to that makes striking worth while. Because the province seems to have put forward a reasonable deal on the table and I haven't seen anything from the other side of what they're looking for beyond "student caps" which isn't seemingly achievable within a four year timeframe.

Why aren’t student caps feasible. Let’s do it like an escrow fund. Essentially you increase per student funding to support the required student caps and offer that windfall to teachers if the province and boards fail. It ensures the money is spent because the province is untrustworthy and it incentivizes the province and boards. You also add minimum capital spend requirements to support the new classrooms.

For the province to say it’s not feasible because they failed to build enough classes or schools is rewarding failure.

Especially when the reason we can’t evaluate if class sizes are getting worse is because the UCP has chosen not to measure.

How can you say the UCP offer of hiring teachers is reasonable when the people making the offer have done everything they can to ensure you can’t evaluate the number.

[GullFoss]

Originally Posted by GGG

This isn’t accurate companies attempted 5 - Line 3, TMX, Gateway, and Keystone. 1 got built, 3 got killed in regulatory due to PC and US issues, 1 canceled for economic reasons.

So I don’t think it’s accurate to say that no company would do it. It’s accurate to say no company would take on the regulatory risk given previous failures. If the goal of Carney is truly to fast track projects of national interest through the regulatory environment then a Pipeline project is actually a good one.

If you can get regulatory certainty these are viable projects.

Though I think that Smith should be trying to partner with Kinew looking at Churchill feasibility as part of this project.

Churchill probably isn't viable. The government of Alberta does have the cards to get a pipeline built, and get the industry to largely pay for it and they probably need a piplein to tidewater in order to improve pricing power (and therefore royalty dollars paid to the government), especially with what's going on in the US.

It's shocking to me that more albertans aren't on board with this given how important maximizing those royalty dollars are to our public finances. If you do the math of how important these oil sands royalties become to Alberta over the next 10 years...it's really something.

[GullFoss]

Originally Posted by GGG

Why aren’t student caps feasible. Let’s do it like an escrow fund. Essentially you increase per student funding to support the required student caps and offer that windfall to teachers if the province and boards fail. It ensures the money is spent because the province is untrustworthy and it incentivizes the province and boards. You also add minimum capital spend requirements to support the new classrooms.

For the province to say it’s not feasible because they failed to build enough classes or schools is rewarding failure.

Especially when the reason we can’t evaluate if class sizes are getting worse is because the UCP has chosen not to measure.

How can you say the UCP offer of hiring teachers is reasonable when the people making the offer have done everything they can to ensure you can’t evaluate the number.

I think it's realistically achievable if the province and teachers wanted a longer term deal. But I don't think the province would budge from the basic formula of inflation + 1% annually. And AB teachers wouldn't want a longer term deal, because it removes the option to re-benchmark pay over a very long time, which hurts AB teachers if other provinces increase teacher pay or private sector benchmarks exercises point to the need for higher teacher pay.

But maybe there's an option for an achievable interim cap over a four year term, with the understanding that final caps would be achieved over 8 years or something. But is there enough trust for teachers to agree to that?