Prince George, B.C.- While the BCTF  issues calls for a mediator to settle its contract dispute with the Provincial Government,  Minister of Education, Peter Fassbender says the time is not yet  right for that  step.

In a statement issued late yesterday afternoon, Fassbender says  over the past few days, the BCPSEA and BCTF  “engaged in exploratory discussions with Justice Stephen Kelleher to determine whether the time was right for mediation”.

Fassbender says  the  discussion made it clear ““the BCTF executive would not commit to tabling a set of demands that fall in the same affordability zone as the other public sector agreements reached to date” and  Justice Kelleher  found that mediation is “not indicated at this time.”

Fassbender says the BCTF are demanding total compensation packages that are more than twice  what other unions  have  settled for, and that there is pressure for  “hundreds of millions more each year in other contract demands.”

Fassbender  says  “There is no process and no mediator that can bridge this gap at this time.  To pretend otherwise only raises false expectations and serves to delay the tough decisions the BCTF executive needs to make to get to an affordable agreement.”

250News wanted to know if  you  thought the time had come to put this dispute to binding arbitration.

More than a thousand votes were cast, and  72 (66.5%) said yes, it is time to  send this  dispute to binding arbitration,  while  394 (33.5%) said no.