…And this is a family first government?

I’m curious which point of law i this ruling they’re going to argue that covers wether or not the ruling is affordable. Government’s self appointed duty doesn’t overide the constitution.

Yes, it’ll create huge disruptions. That’s why you were given a year to deal with the BCTF in designing an implementation plan in the initial ruling. You chose to discuss how many fire alarm tests were to be done each year.

Wow, the Liberal government going back into court on this matter is like a one leg man entering an a$$ kicking contest!

How embarrassing, but somehow… typically bull-headed Lib-Con!!!

Are there not more imaginative ways they could be wasting taxpayer’s money?

“Insanity”: Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

Appeal Court will probably fine tune it and that’s probably what government is looking for.

What a blatant waste of our tax dollars. These LIB/CONS are on the same track as the Harperites. Destroy unions and make the 1% the happiest people in the world as the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. Govt has our unlimited $$$s to pursue endless court cases. BCTF has only the union dues paid by their teachers. The plan is to bankrupt them while thumbing their noses at the Supreme Court decision. What a bunch of idiots. Shame o those who voted them back in.

There is nothing here to fine tune.Total insanity.

Imagine the outcry here in this comments section if it were the BCTF appealing the court decision.

Fasbender says the Government has a different legal interpretation of previous Supreme Court of Canada decisions on the issue which Justice Griffin based his ruling.
——————————————–
Of course Government lawyers will provide the interpretation that the Liberal politicians want to hear … that was why they were hired in the first place …. A Judge is appointed to be independent of the political leanings of the day … time to own up and get on with it

Posted by: People#1 on February 4 2014 12:27 PM

Are there not more imaginative ways they could be wasting taxpayer’s money?

——————–

That’s a good idea. Instead of lining the pockets of the union and it’s members why not put some money towards doing something that would actually benefit the kids?

If it was the BCTF appealing, the resident lefties would be fully supportive.

Totally agree with you JB!

“Of course Government lawyers will provide the interpretation that the Liberal politicians want to hear”

===================================

Utter nonsense. It’s not the job of the government lawyers to play politics with their legal interpretation and they wouldn’t. What they will do is provide the government with their interpretation of the decision, the governments case for appeal, potential outcomes, etc.

It’s 100% up to the government to decide if they want to appeal or not and they make this decision. At that point, it’s turned over to the lawyers to argue the government’s position as best they can.

If you think that governments always follow the advice of their legal representatives when it comes to the decisions they make, you are incredibly naive. Politicians are the ones who like to play politics, the lawyers could care less.

JohnnyBelt–I think the teachers have more brains than to appeal the Supreme Court ruling. Government is using your tax dollar so I guess it doesn’t matter.

Exactly oldman, if the shoe was on the other foot, the BCTF wouldn’t be using our tax money to appeal a Supreme Court decision.

So when was the last election… May 14th? We are going on 10 months and these Lib-Cons haven’t even bothered showing up for work at our Legislature yet!

Do tell where the BCTF gets its money if not from tax dollars? Oh right, its not direct so it doesnt count. Gotcha.

What an ignorant comment interceptor!

Those teachers worked hard for that money, it is THEIR money!!!

Go crawl back under your rock!

“Do tell where the BCTF gets its money if not from tax dollars? Oh right, its not direct so it doesnt count. Gotcha”

I can say with 100% certainty that teachers use more of their income to fund corporations (through mortgages, food, cars, vacations, etc.) than they do to fund the BCTF.

Does that mean that tax dollars are funding corporate lobbyist groups?

hey give Christy a break she cant help if shes uneducated dictator divorcee family first right 2 million here 6 million there what does it matter its your money right johnny, I can harrrrrdly wait until2015 when we will be in the black, debt free and livin in the land of utopia

NMG asks ….Does that mean that tax dollars are funding corporate lobbyist groups?

Not even that subtle … if you have been following the Keystone activities in Washington lately, the Federal Conservatives are the corporate oil industry’s primary lobbyist, front and center. ;)

All these commenters that hate teachers. I’ll bet if you hired any of them….you would have to fire them as they have no work ethic. Didnt succeed with their education and probably substantially in debt……and blaming teachers for this also

well the lieberals had no problem coming up with 6 million to give to Basi & Virk……..obviously they were trying to keep info away from the voters

All these commenters that hate teachers. I’ll bet if you hired any of them….you would have to fire them as they have no work ethic. Didnt succeed with their education and probably substantially in debt……and blaming teachers for this also

well the lieberals had no problem coming up with 6 million to give to Basi & Virk……..obviously they were trying to keep info away from the voters

All these commenters that hate teachers. I’ll bet if you hired any of them….you would have to fire them as they have no work ethic. Didnt succeed with their education and probably substantially in debt……and blaming teachers for this also

Please tell me that you are not an English teacher.

Or is this “ice” posting under yet another moniker ?

middle pinky is that your counting finger

Comment Posted by: taxpayerteacher on February 4 2014 7:11 PM
well the lieberals had no problem coming up with 6 million to give to Basi & Virk……..obviously they were trying to keep info away from the voters
—————————————-

But that fake letter Dix wrote was so much more horrible than that 6 million in hush money.

So ice, this is what, your #6 personality ? I think you need a shrink, not a teacher.

Government should set policy not the BCTF. They are right to appeal. If unions making the rules over elected officials is just not how it works. This judge was clearly stretching on this ruling and if it became precedent our system of government would not function for the left or right.

Morewaste of taxpayers money, just give them their rights as Canadians to bargain, and get off the bloody pot! Next you’ll sell another crown corp to pay for all this BS.

Adrian Dix ran a bad campaign and is totally not suitable to be in politics……his idiotic rejection of job creation via Mogan Kinder and other follies is the reason why we are stuck with devious Christy Clark. A new political party is necessary. One that hasnt been over run with extreme right wing religious evangelicals and a party that keeps the left wingers who are too extreme in check…..in other words a REAL middle of the road party that respects the Charter and Canadian laws. This is the reason why we are stuck with Clark. There is vacuum in regard to adept leaders and also people havent been showing up to cast their votes in the numbers required.Clark promised a yellow brick road going to job utopia. Debt ridden British Columbians merely chose what they thought would be the least worst…..and will realize by the end of all these court cases that they…. chose the worst.

Hopefully taxpayerteacher doesn’t teach computer studies.

To dow 7500…..the Judge was not stretching the ruling. She examined govt notes and instructions. The Liberals conduct was fatal for any win. Clark is just buying time .

Dow states; “Government should set policy not the BCTF. They are right to appeal. If unions making the rules over elected officials is just not how it works.”

This was about the Lib-Con government trying to pass “laws” that has been deemed “unconstitutional”. This is not about “policy”.

This is not about the union making the rules over elected officials, this is about an incompetent government, not once, but twice trying to pass laws that would take away the right for teachers to negotiate working conditions like class size and composition.

Three years ago. Justice Susan Griffin ruled the provincial government’s removal of teacher rights to bargain class size and composition through the 2002 Public Education and Flexibility Act (also known as Bill 28) was unconstitutional.

Last year, the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) brought the government back to Justice Griffin’s court over government’s replacement legislation, Bill 22, The Education Improvement Act, because it included restrictions on bargaining class size and composition.

In a ruling released today — one day before the twelfth anniversary of the introduction of the Bill 28 — Griffin agreed the newer law was also unconstitutional and ordered government to restore teacher bargaining rights, and pay the teachers’ union $2 million in damages.

– See more at: http://www.thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2014/01/27/BC-court-rules-in-favour-of-teachers-union-on-Bill-22/#sthash.U3FXaXYZ.dpuf

I agree that the BC Government is likely just buying time. When the government chose not to appeal in 2011 they lost most of the opportunity to appeal what they would like to appeal now. My prediction is that the court of appeals will choose not even to hear the case, on the grounds there is no appealable aspect of the governments argument.

Fassbender’s explanation that the appeal is being done because it is not “affordable” is not really grounds for an appeal. If breaking the law was not affordable, you shouldn’t have done it. You played a dangerous game of chicken and lost.

1. $560 million for BC Place stadium. Do, I actually need to say more?

2. Remediating the unconstitutional law would cost 1 billion dollars according to Fassbender. That was money saved by making unconstitutional laws. Where did the savings go? (sidebar, Fassbender pulled that number out of the air today with no explanation of how it was calculated)

There is still some misinformation out there. This court case is not about the BCTF dictating education policy. This is about the BCTF having a constitutional right to bargain working conditions. Writing laws at will, refusing to bargain, and intentionally creating a condition where the other side is forced to strike so you gain political momentum to impose legislation is what it is about.

All the government had to do to avoid the unconstitutional law breaking was to negotiate in good faith. Quite simply, by refusing to negotiate working conditions they broke the law.

If one were to apply Fassbender’s ideology re affordability….one could go to their bank and abruptly cancel their 5 yr. mortgage after year 2, by reasoning that they find the terms too expensive and can’t afford it…..Minister Fassbender says this is okay to do…..he applies this method to the education system!!

It’s interesting to read all of the left-wing comments regarding this issue. There are always two sides to every issue and each side has it’s own agenda!

So far none of the left-wing commentators have brought up a point that was mentioned in Michael Smyth’s “Victoria’s Secrets” column in the Sunday Province on February 02. 2014. In his column, Michael Smyth poses the following”

“On what grounds could the government appeal? Consider this twisted history of the dispute:

Many of the class-size limits and staffing levels the Liberals scrapped in 2002 had been brought in by the previous union-friendly NDP government. Back in 1998, then-premier Glen Clark struck a deal with the teachers’ union to reduce class sizes from kindergarten through Grade 3 and hire 1,200 new librarians, counsellors, English as a Second Language instructors, special education teachers and learning assistants.
Teachers ratified the deal, voting 73 per cent in favour.

But school-district trustees — representing the teachers’ employers — voted 87 per cent against. Trustees rejected the deal because it was too costly and inflexible.

Ironically, one prominent Victoria trustee
who complained was Carole James, who would go on to become NDP leader. “It’s going to be a challenge to get the schools open in September, to get the staffing in place,” James said at the time.

What did the NDP government do with a tentative union contract opposed by the teachers’ employers? They rammed it through the legislature and forced it into law over the objection of school districts. In other words, the Liberals have now been found guilty of bad-faith bargaining for removing contract provisions that were arguably imposed through bad-faith bargaining by the NDP. The government argued in court that stripping the teachers’ contract was not illegal because the contract had not been freely negotiated in the first place. The judge rejected the argument, though you can bet the
government will raise the point again in any appeal.”

Hmmmmm, very interesting! Any wonder that the left-wing commentators on this site have failed to bring this up??

Fate wrote: “:Government’s self appointed duty doesn’t overide the constitution.”

All the Constitution says is that all individuals in Canada have the freedom to associate.

I see no one stating the Teachers Federation is illegal. They are associating and they can continue to associate.

But I had already linked to a decision that the Federal Government restricted the amount of increase government workers can get for a specific number of years. That was no more than 1%. So, their negotiations were limited.

There is nothing in the Constitutions that the associations that are formed are allowed to have unrestricted demands that must be granted. Just because they have associated does not give them unlimited powers or authority. To do so would be asinine.

This “debate” once again nothing more than an emotional tirade.

I see no one addressing the legal aspect of this. This is a story about a legal matter.

gus states; “Many of the class-size limits and staffing levels the Liberals scrapped in 2002 had been brought in by the previous union-friendly NDP government. Back in 1998, then-premier Glen Clark struck a deal with the teachers’ union to reduce class sizes from kindergarten through Grade 3 and hire 1,200 new librarians, counsellors, English as a Second Language instructors, special education teachers and learning assistants.”

Yet here we are gus, in 2014, with the lowest teacher to student ratio in Canada. Please tell us how this is good for our kids, particularly the IEP students!

Statistics Canada data shows B.C. has the worst class-size averages in Canada and the lowest teacher-to-student ratio, and it has been stated publically in the media, that the province would need 6,600 teachers to get B.C. to the Canadian average teacher-to-student ratio.

My apology gus, I was responding to Hart Guy not you… maybe I am eager to engage you in a debate, because Hart Guy comes up short on so many occasion?

Here is th4e case which the learned Provincial judge may not have been learned enough about …. ;-)

“In Public Service Alliance of Canada v. The Queen in Right of Canada it was held that the Charter was not infringed by the Public Sector Compensation Restraint Act (S.C. 1980-81-82-83, c. 122), which extended compensation plans for employees in the federal public sector, fixed their wage increases for a two-year period and thus limited collective bargaining during the extension.

“THE MAJORITY OF THE SUPREME COURT OF CANADA DETERMINED THAT FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION DOES NOT GUARANTEE THE RIGHT TO STRIKE OR BARGAIN COLLECTIVELY.

“Therefore, it was not necessary for the Court to investigate whether the Act would be justified under section 1. The legislatures were said to be free when they find it necessary to define and qualify in various ways the rights that flow from association.”

—————————-

They mention section 1 of the Charter, which they did not have to go to, but seems that the inference is that if they did, that would also have upheld government’s position.

“The section is also known as the reasonable limits clause or limitations clause, as it legally allows the government to limit an individual’s Charter rights”.

I have posted on the student-teacher ratio debate once before. Essentially I side with the research which shows there is not solid correlation between the students’ learning and the ratio.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/21/class-size-debate_n_812238.html

“Harvard researcher Matthew Chingos, who studied class sizes, found there was no direct correlation between how many Florida middle school students were in a class and their educational achievement.”

To Gus….yes to what you wrote above but the Liberals were found via govt instructions andother documentation to have bargained in bad faith and with “dirty hands” to try and force a strike. And what really determines success in the classroom is a student’s DNA. Also in the 90’s school enrollments were sky rocketing…..not flacid as they are now.

Christy has appointed another puppet Peter Fassbender. I think what he is trying to say is we would like all of you to bendoverfaster.

I just think the name Peter(we all know what a peter is) F-assbender is hilarious for a politician.