Editor:
A canvasser for the Liberal party has just left my doorstep to work his way through the rest of our neighborhood. I began by telling him it was quite brave to suggest that a retired teacher who stood on a picket line for two weeks in October 2005 in hideous weather and was threatened by the Liberal government with legal action that would have taken away her house might consider voting Liberal. At first he said he’d never heard of such a thing. I said, “You haven’t heard about the Supreme Court judgment?” He allowed that he had heard of it, but he couldn’t see why that would make any difference to me. He also said “lots of teachers” seemed to be mad about something. When I reminded him that a whole generation of students went without proper service through their entire time in school due to Liberal underfunding of education, he told me teachers are too rich. When I tried again to point out that our strike was not for wages, but for services for students, he continued to tell me I was too rich.
Please remind your readers that it is only now that money is being returned to the school system, not to individual teachers. (That strike cost me pay and lowered my pension for the rest of my life. I got no monetary advantage for that.) Students have suffered. The most vulnerable suffered the most. We have had no apology or acceptance of responsibility from the government. Consequences ensue.
Audrey Owen, Gibsons
