Education minister, PC leader at odds over school funding
Demand for new schools is affecting every growing municipality in Alberta. The government plans to spend almost $5 billion over six years on school projects, but there’s no sign the demand will abate.
“It would be good to have more schools announced and built every year, but everybody in Alberta is in these situations if it’s a growth area,” said Lorne Parker, executive director of infrastructure for Edmonton Public Schools.
“Given the significant growth of our population — and it doesn’t look like it’s changing any time soon — we’ll need more schools in an expeditious manner.”
Education Minister David Eggen put the blame on past Conservative governments that, he said, did not allow school construction to keep pace with Alberta’s growing population. Eggen also suggested former governments hesitated to build during economic downturns.
“In a way, an economic downturn is not a bad time to be engaged in capital projects ... We can probably get better contracts and better deals with the construction industry and from the banks,” he said.
The PCs’ five-year construction plan did not allocate the money needed to keep school construction on track, Eggen said.
But PC leader Ric McIver, who served as infrastructure minister for the PC government in 2013, noted the provincial government in recent years had to deal with massive migration to Alberta.
“I think we were dealing with the population boom and we were behind in construction. In government, you need to do your best to keep up with the population changes, but each school is a major investment ... When we were in government, we tried to balance those two very important priorities.”
But he denied his party put off construction when the economy slowed.
“What you also have to balance is when you have money and when is the right time to spend it,” McIver said. “The one thing the current government is trying to do to catch up is ruining the economy so that less people will come here and there will be less pressure to build schools.”
Asked how to deal with downturns in the energy industry, Eggen said: “I think the key is to look at a longer cycle that will hopefully overarch the economic cycle, the boom and the bust of the energy industry. And to make responsible decisions.” Eggen said former PC premier Ralph Klein “balanced the budget on the backs of this infrastructure deficit.”
Eggen said the education departments needs to pay more attention to each school board’s capital plan — the plans are written by local officials who understand the construction needs of that district.
“Then (it’s) turning those into our provincial capital plan in a much more timely way.”