Opinion

Originally published in the September 2018 issue of Alberta Views magazine.

"Our province has Canada’s most generous subsidies for private schools. Setting aside those private schools serving children with special needs, many of which fill gaps in our public systems, the Alberta government spends $110-million per year subsidizing private schools. This would be far better spent supporting students in public schools.

Parents enrolling children in private schools choose to opt out of their local public, Catholic or francophone system. They certainly have the right to do so, but they shouldn’t expect the public to fund that choice. Similarly, public funding makes library books available to anyone at no charge. Some people instead buy books from a bookstore, but they don’t expect the government to subsidize those purchases."

Read the full article.

Originally published on July 8, 2018 at Ricochet Media.

Op-ed by Executive Director Joel French originally published in Calgary Herald on August 19, 2017 and in the Edmonton Journal on August 23, 2017.

This op-ed was originally published in the Edmonton Journal, May 18, 2017

If the appointment of Kwong See is not followed by a redefinition of the role, the advocacy positions described as a “work in progress” may turn out to be a tragically missed opportunity.

Given the frantic and outraged reaction by representatives of three Alberta opposition parties, a casual observer might suspect that a recent proposal for democratic reform by NDP MLAs on a legislative committee involved something like a massive and direct transfer of assets from Alberta’s Heritage Fund to NDP MLAs for their personal use.

The revenue shortage is a problem that will continue until our provincial government takes significant steps to solve it. There are really only two ways it can be fixed: either raise substantially more revenue, or make massive cuts to public services. Ralph Klein’s government took the latter approach to the extreme by cutting $3 billion from public services. In many ways, the province has still not recovered.

Over the past 30 years in Alberta, the wealthy elites in the top one per cent have seen their incomes rise by 72 per cent, while the other 99 per cent of us saw only an 11 per cent increase. That trend is not inevitable; it is the direct result of misguided government policies of the past. Minimum wage increases are one of the ways we can begin to rebalance the scales.

"There is a group of Albertans being treated as second-class citizens. They have a second-class illness and get second-class treatment in our so-called universal health-care system. How else can you describe a health-care system that either refuses to treat or knowingly aggravates a patient’s condition.

"The Alberta government’s recent Speech from the Throne began with a focus on women. Delivering the speech on International Women’s Day, the government said it would 'recommit to carrying on this work' for gender equality, while also noting that a new mother now heads the Ministry for the Status of Women. But noticeably absent in the speech was any mention of the government’s promise to increase child care funding."