Scapegoat

It's not that often that I find myself applauding the BCTF leadership, but they appear to have nailed it this time.

I'm grateful. We should probably all be.

Thing is, there's really no question teachers have a persuasive case for better salaries and benefits. There's also no real question, in a Canadian context, that the K-12 education system deserves more resources and more reasonable class sizes. But these issues are not going to be solved any time soon given our government, its obligations, the economic mess it has managed to create, and, probably most importantly, its priorities.

So if class size, class composition, salaries, and benefits are off the table, at least not doing all the annoying administrative things that chew into teaching, or preparation and marking time, is something. I suspect teachers could go on not doing those chores forever if necessary, especially as not doing most Ministry-mandated paperwork has no appreciable effect on their students.

Unfortunately, I can't see this standoff lasting.

I think the Christy Clark gang is just itching to provoke an election issue. They have two by-elections coming up, both in safe BCLiberal seats, both of which they could easily lose. A couple more defections from their caucus, a bit more negative economic news, a bump in the rate of unemployment, and Christy is likely to be even lower in the polls than her predecessor was when he quit.

This does not even mention the series of intractable public-sector contracts coming up, including both nurses and doctors, before the next provincial election scheduled for May of 2013.

So I think they'll try to go this spring, even though Christy promised they wouldn't.

Which means they're going to need a scapegoat.

And look! There's the BCTF, the chosen target for that fall election which went off the rails with the HST defeat, already lined up!

Anyway, I'm expecting to hear our Minister of Education, the affable George Abbott, who has the happy facility of making even a defence of the indefensible seem somewhat reasoned, tell us, early in the new year, that the BCTF has to be brought to heel for the sake of the children. He'll then introduce legislation to both affirm the present regime of class size and composition regulations and to impose a wage-freeze contract on teachers.

It would be a pleasant surprise if the BCTF leadership would, at this provocation, counsel patience, let the NDP caucus carry the political load, encourage teachers to just carry on as before, and wait for the inevitable election call.

Then motivate the membership to put some real, partisan effort into fighting the BCLiberals.

Well, I can dream. Right?