The President's Message

Debt Free?

The recently tabled provincial budget contains a few new items to benefit K-12 public education.  The basic education grant is increased by 2.5%, which is a half a percentage point more than the CBE had been projecting in its own budget deliberations.  There is money for textbooks and for new student desks, and several small initiatives.

But a significant portion of the $287 million education budget increase comes in three big-ticket items, two of which are re-announcements.  The third, involving the teachers’ pension and the unfunded liability, received no attention whatsoever.

Funding for the hiring of 435 teachers across the province this coming year was reported as an increase in education spending for next year.  Perhaps, but this increase had already been announced last year.   The same is true of AISI funding.  While it is heartening to see that the government intends to keep its promises, it has miles to go before it can claim to be fully funding education.

Skepticism threatens to devolve into cynicism the more our government re-announces initiatives, each time posing as additional increases in funding.  Such public relations spin efforts contribute to replacing citizens with today’s cynizens who view every effort government announcement as an exercise in Orwellian double speak.

Take the context of this provincial budget, widely touted as the first budget in a debt free province.  Debt free?  What happened to the over $4 billion this province owes to the Alberta Teachers’ Retirement Fund? Where is the story detailing the predicted increase in this unfunded liability to over $10 billion in the next couple of decades?  What happened to the news that the increase in the government contribution to that fund will increase next year by $88 a month per Alberta taxpayer?   Where is the news that $44 million of the $287 million education increase will go to the pension fund, largely to service the unfunded liability?  What could we do with that money if it was put into classrooms instead?

I doubt there was a teacher anywhere in the province who did not choke over that “debt-free” headline.  And none of the above refers to the teachers’ portion of that debt, (another $2 billion) which is of great concern to all teachers who pay high pension contributions in addition to their portion of the taxpayer contribution.

ATA Locals have been told that the pension, including the unfunded liability, will be a major focus of the Annual Representative Assembly being held in May in Edmonton.  We will discuss the issue and develop an action plan to deal with it.

I realize the ultimate upshot of this action plan will be to make honest politicians of MLAs who claim this to be a debt free province, but I think we would all be willing to pay that price in return for a reasonable pension contribution rate.