Not an either-or situation between trades, tech

Draining money from public colleges and universities only weakens Alberta

It's finally official. Future generations of Albertans will no longer have to worry about windmills and solar panels interfering with their pristine view of the strip mines, clearcuts and pumpjacks that currently adorn the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies.

If you think this is a silly vision of Alberta and its possibilities, you are right. There is no reason continuing to extract our remaining carbon resources means we can't also be leaders in pulling future energy from the wind and sun. There's no reason that continuing to pocket oil and gas revenues means we can't also benefit from renewables. And it doesn't make any sense to protect our “pristine” landscapes from windmills and solar panels while licensing lumber, oil and mining companies to set up whatever equipment they want.

But if you think these are silly choices, then you mustn't be a cabinet minister in the UCP government. There, it seems, the world is full of false choices and hobby horses. Pumpjacks, not windmills; private health care, not well-funded public care; contributing to the Heritage Fund, so abandoning our public services.

As presidents of the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations and the Alberta Colleges and Institutes Faculties Association, we are used to seeing this kind of false thinking from the government. We have a desperate need for skilled labour: traditional trades such as carpentry, welding, plumbing and electricians, but also jobs that require training such as truck drivers and massage therapists. Many of these are taught in our non-profit public colleges; some are taught in private, for-profit, career colleges; relatively few of them are taught in our universities.

To the average Albertan, the answer to this “dilemma” might seem simple: make sure that we are promoting the skilled trades alongside our internationally recognized university system. The fact that we need truck drivers and carpenters doesn't mean we don't need engineers and biologists, or people with the soft skills, cultural awareness and critical thinking that are increasingly important in our global, networked marketplace.

We need both mechanics and tech entrepreneurs, shopkeepers and teachers, librarians and short-order cooks, farmers and gallery owners. The benefit of living in the country's richest province should be that we don't, as a society, have to choose whether we pay the mortgage or buy groceries, add to our savings account or make a car payment. Managing wealth requires different skills than avoiding bankruptcy. It is about building for tomorrow and finding ways to ensure we maintain the standard of living we are used to.

That means finding ways of promoting the trades while maintaining our world-class system of public universities and colleges.

Unless, of course, you are in the Alberta government. There, like the false choice between resource extraction and renewable energy, the fact that we need skilled trades must mean we do not need university graduates. And if we need private career colleges, we must not need non-profit colleges and universities.

That's presumably why they have increased funding that goes to the office concerned with Alberta's for-profit private career colleges by almost 25 per cent, while reducing the amount that goes to our province's public universities by more than the same amount over the past four years. Alberta universities and colleges have fallen from among the best-funded in the country to nearly tied with Ontario for the worst.

Poor quality public education is not an Alberta advantage. Our universities and colleges were built by the taxpayers of this province over the last century because they knew high-quality education is the way to weather the inevitable boom and bust of a resource-based economy.

Sometimes, knowing you do not have to choose is the best choice of all.