Hello Chestermere,
We have had an interesting week up at the legislature this week, and as I reflect on this past year I am constantly amazed by the resilience of the amazing people in this province. I am constantly inspired, and truly feel blessed to represent you. The government is in an interesting position of having to filibuster it’s own bills right now. What does that mean? Well, they do not have some of their larger legislation ready to go yet, so they are extending their own debate on their own bills. We in the opposition have notoriously filibustered the government’s bills over the past 2 years, specifically, Bill 6, the farm safety bill, Bill 34, the balancing pool, Bill 27, and 25 which were the electricity capacity, and the cap on the oilsands bills, Bill 35, where the government was attempting to take big money out of the election process except for themselves as they use the public purse to advertise the necessity of the carbon tax and install lightbulbs, and of course the infamous carbon tax. We extended these debates well past session, because as your official opposition we felt it was imperative to try and amend these bills where possible, or send them to committee to resolve some of the issues. Unfortunately, these suggestion, and amendments fell on deaf ears, and ideology ruled. What is concerning is that the governments labour legislation is on the docket to be discussed this session. This legislation could see workers lose their ability to vote with a secret ballot as to whether or not they even want to unionize. This could lead to intimidation of workers, and takes away the rights of voter confidentiality. Can you imagine if you needed to provide a card stating how you vote for your leaders in a democratic society? These kinds of bills, and ideology are concerning and require debate. We have not seen this legislation yet, so the government may try to ram it through towards the end of session.
I attended the Alberta Teachers Association meeting on Saturday, May 20th and was able to see what the government thinks about those of us asking for accountability in our education system. Because of our stance on the labour legislation, and that we are concerned that big Union bosses may intimidate public sector workers, we were “called out” at the meeting suggesting that we lumped delegates of the ATA as big union bosses. It is interesting when a government gets up to give a speech, and decides to use partisan attacks when they hold the balance of power in their hands. Well as you know, because you might be a conservative, the only thing you and I want to do is slash billions from public service. This is the rhetoric of the government. There will be a monument to the ATA put on the legislature grounds to mark the 100th anniversary of the ATA. The ATA was formed the year after women in Canada won both the right to vote and to hold provincial office. Another interesting announcement was that the government will leave it up to teachers as to whether or not to test grade 3 students. Mark Ramsankar, the president of the ATA at least until July is quoted as saying:
“We’re not looking to get away from accountability on how to deal with children but what we are looking for is a diagnostic tool to help with programming for student learning”
This announcement received a standing ovation and 75% of teachers surveyed were stated as having little faith in the worthiness of the SLA’s. The Student Learning Assessments were supposed to be used to help teachers find out what students were struggling with and what they were doing well in. This information would ultimately lead to a better understanding for the teachers and how to apply the curriculum. There have been difficulties with the technology, and the 2 hours the students use to do the SLA’s. We will see how many students will be tested now that it is not mandatory. I am a believer in testing, and I was long before I had the privilege of being elected, especially when the mechanism for testing is to help teachers understand the strengths and weaknesses of their students. I would think this would be and excellent resource in the classroom.
Finally, I read an article by Terry Etam from the BOE report, and I would highly recommend reading this article and the one he reported on “Why green might not be the colour of money” by Sarah Wolfe, and Jennifer Lynes. In a nut shell they recognize that only 20 percent of the population is motivated by the health of the planet. What does that mean? Well simply that the environment is not the primary motivator in your consumer decisions. Why? It is because the message is not resonating, and not because we don’t care. We need to be able to create products that are desirable and that are logical. Environmental groups do not seem to be willing to sit and have a discussion about how to proceed, but instead are paid to cast aspersions on everyone who do not follow their ideology. Let’s have an honest discussion about things like pipelines and pollution, and let’s also understand that none of these environmental groups is in any way stopping the growing need for petro-chemicals all over the world. We are the cleanest producers of natural resources in the world. If anyone should be producing more it should be Alberta. As always we love to hear from you.
