By E. Wayne Ross
University of British Columbia

The economy in British Columbia is booming and the provincial government enjoys a surplus. The benefits of this strong economy, however, are not finding their way into public schools. In fact, private interests, as a result of the provincial government policies, are trumping public interests.

The Liberal Party of B.C. (the provincial version of the current federal government, which is now cozying up to the Bush administration) has already sold off public assets such as the provincial railroad and ferry networks. Are public schools next? Here’s a look at the economic situation in the B.C. and the incongruous treatment of public school financing.

In December 2004, there were 17,000 new jobs and overall employment for the year rose by 2%. As a result the jobless rate in the province hit 6.1%, it’s lowest level in 24 years.

B.C. leads all of Canada in the increase of housing starts for the past year, up 32%. In Vancouver, the housing market saw double-digit appreciation across the board in the fourth quarter of 2004. Home sales in B.C. generated $9.4 billion in economic activity in the past three years (all figures CND$).

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business recently released a survey that shows B.C. business owners are among the most optimistic in Canada. Nearly a third of businesses expect to add jobs in 2005 and only 9% expect reductions.

The provincial government has forecast a $1.2 billion surplus due to higher natural resources royalties and income from Crown corporations. Provincial debt is expected to decline by over $600 million.

The Liberal government in Victoria, the provincial capital, touts the fact that no corner of the province has been immune from this economic boom.

One would think that under these economic conditions public schools would be expanding services and resources to all students. Instead, this same government — lead by Premier Gordon Campbell — has produced a series of budgets that are devastating schools and making education less accessible.

Canada’s spending on public education lags behind the average developing nations spend ($7,480/student) according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and B.C. spends 13% less than that ($6,529/student).

Under the current government, real per student education funding has plunged since 2000. Cuts in the provincial education budget have produce 92 school closings in the past two years, displacing more that 14,000 students. And 2,881 teaching positions have been cut, even though enrollment is 12 percent higher now than it was a decade ago.

The number of school librarians in the province has fallen from 939 to 706 in the past four years. A study the B.C. Teacher Librarians shows money available for library materials has declined by 12% over the same period.

According to Statistics Canada the student/educator ratio for B.C. rose nearly 5% percent from 2001 to 2003. While most other provinces were experiencing a decrease in student/educator ratio, B.C. saw largest increase in the nation. Tom Christensen, the B.C.’s Liberal minister of education, argues for the importance of flexibility in labor contracts over the impact of large class size on student learning and safety in B.C. Schools. Christensen goes as far as claiming “Students in B.C. are better off since class limits were removed from teacher union contracts.”

The B.C. government has refused to fund treatment for children with autism. In July 2000, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled declared that the treatment intervention known as Lovaas (or Applied Behavioral Analysis) was a medically necessary service and must be funded by the government. That court concluded that the failure to fund this treatment constitutes direct government discrimination against children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and is a breach of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The provincial government appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada and in November 2004 the lower court rulings were overturned. CBC News reported that B.C. Attorney General Geoff Plante “hailed the judgment, while extending his sympathy to parents with autistic children.”

In his election campaign Premier Campbell promised a 5% reduction in higher education tuition, but instead has delivered steep increases. In the last two years tuition fees have increased by more than 80% at B.C. universities and by 100 percent at B.C. colleges. If tuition had risen by the rate of inflation since 1995 the average university student would be paying $2,907, rather than the current $4,735. (It is even worse for international students, who are paying up to five times as much as Canadian students. One recent report described international students at the University of British Columbia who were having to work illegal jobs and sift garbage for food to make ends meet.)

At the same time, provincial government funding per full-time post-secondary student fell by 9%, government support for postsecondary education in the province is at its lowest level in B.C. since the 1950s.

The cuts to public education funding in a time of plenty seems are much more than an absurdity. As in the US, the current situation in B.C. is a reflection of neoliberalism—the policies and processes that permit a handful of private interests to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit.

Embraced by parties across the political spectrum neoliberalism is characterized by social and economic policies shaped in the interests of wealthy investors and large corporations. The free market, private enterprise, consumer choice, entrepreneurial initiative, and government deregulation are fundamental principles driving the attack on public education across North America.

The Vancouver based Fraser Institute is leading the charge in the war on public schools in Canada and has close ties to the US Business Roundtable, Manhattan Institute, Olin and Thomas B. Fordham Foundations, all of which are players in the assaults on public schools in the US.

On a recent visit to Vancouver public schools, historian John Ralston Saul (spouse of Canada’s Governor General Adrienne Clarkson) observed that the erosion of public school funding was a direct threat to democracy in Canada.

Saul offered an assessment reminiscent the “manufactured crisis” in the pre-NCLB United States: “Over the last ten years to 15 years there has been a growing chorus, an orchestrated chorus, a bad Greek chorus of a phony tragedy, claiming that there is a failure, and that this is a failure of public education, of the economy — that there are too many taxes.”

Canadians are being presented with public policies that will result in the kinds of inequities and perversions that neoliberal policies such as NCLB as created in US public schools. Saul warned his Vancouver audience that “our neighbor chose to go to an elite education, which is increasingly divided from the public system, and it makes [Americans] more and more like the old Britain, which was a class-based society.”

In the end, whether or not the savage inequalities of neoliberalism — which define US/Canadian relations as well as approaches to school reform across North America — will be overcome depends on how people organize, respond, learn, and teach in schools.

Teachers and educational leaders need to link their own interests in the improvement of teaching and learning to a broad-based movement for social, political, and economic justice, and work together for the democratic renewal of public life and public education across North America. The resistance network in the US is well-established and now is the time to start thinking globally and building international alliances because the forces that threaten free, high-quality, inclusive public education know no boundaries.