Editor:
What kind of society do you want to live in?
I grew up in a just society, a social democracy that cared for its citizens through education, health care and pensions. I don’t think anyone wants to revert to feudalism or even a rigid class system, where one per cent has most of the money and the rest have little.
Recently in Gibsons, we experienced first hand what not having clean drinking water is like. Do we want to experience an illiterate society? Our provincial government wants to move us in this direction.
The Supreme Court ruled this year that the B.C. government bargained in bad faith and forced teachers into a strike. Now it has done it again. Why? If they can break the BC Teachers Federation, they are well on their way to a two-tiered system — private schools for the rich and under-funded, overcrowded public schools for the rest. This is why teachers are out on the picket line without strike pay.
Education may not be cheap, but having an ignorant population is far more expensive. Already, the provincial government funds private schools 50 per cent with taxpayer dollars.
Patti Bacchus, the chair of the Vancouver School Board, recently asked, “Should those schools be getting our public dollars when they wouldn’t take maybe my kid or your kid?”
The funding of public education is not a matter of money, but of will.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recently published a Policy Note blog, which stated that if the richest one per cent of British Columbians paid only a few per cent more in taxes, the class size and composition guidelines the Supreme Court has ruled must be restored, could be. Do we voters value the ultra rich more than children’s welfare?
Susan Telfer, Gibsons
