A stEp backward
For a party looking to lead Albertans into the future, the United Conservatives took the unusual step of reaching back into the past and purloining their education platform from a previous regime — one that voters turfed in the last election.
If elected to government, UCP Leader Jason Kenney vowed this week to replace Alberta’s recently minted School Act by proclaiming the Education Act of 2012, which was the handiwork of the Progressive Conservatives on the last legs of a dying dynasty, but was never officially proclaimed.
Is adopting an old PC bill expedient policymaking or cynical backsliding? It’s up to voters to decide, but resurrecting education policy from seven years ago doesn’t reflect favourably on a party often accused of living down to the nickname Regressive Conservatives.
If the Education Act were merely dated, recycling it might be a tolerable — if lazy and unnecessary — move, but that legislation was also flawed to begin with. Like the party that originally crafted it, times have passed it by.
There’s a lot to unpack in the UCP education platform, from raising the age of free public schooling to 21 from 19, and bringing back provincial diploma exams that count for 50 per cent of a student’s final grade, instead of 30; reinstituting Grade 3 provincial achievement tests and pausing a K-12 curriculum review.
Kenney wants to bring back practices and policies that were changed for good reason for no apparent reason other than to turn back the clock to a time before the NDP held power.
The most disturbing implication is regressing on protections for LGBTQ students won after one of the most bitterly contested political battles in recent provincial history.
The old PC legislation did have a provision that compelled school principals to permit a gay-straight alliance — clubs intended to offer safe and welcoming spaces for LGBTQ students — when a student requested one.
But even at the time, NDP critics, then in Opposition, pointed to loopholes that some schools used to delay or deny students from setting up GSAs. When they formed government, the NDP increased protection for LGBTQ students, including banning schools from informing parents whose kids joined GSAs as a safeguard against outing students whose families might not accept them.
That privacy provision disappears if the UCP rolls back the law. The rules now in place to protect some of our most vulnerable kids are appropriate and necessary.
Voters must ask the UCP why the party wants to turn back the clock on human rights for children.