Alberta teachers return to school after weeks-long strike: Kris Sims reacts
After nearly a month of classrooms sitting empty and parents juggling chaos, Alberta’s 700,000 students are finally back where they belong — in school.
Premier Danielle Smith’s government pulled the plug on the Alberta Teachers’ Association’s (ATA) strike earlier this week by invoking the notwithstanding clause, ending a standoff that had held families hostage and violated children’s right to an education.
Despite the ATA’s hand-wringing, Alberta teachers are already the highest-paid educators in Western Canada, earning starting salaries around $71,000 and topping $110,000 with nine years’ experience, plus generous benefits.
Meanwhile, taxpayers are footing $2.6 billion in contract costs for about 50,000 teachers, even as education spending climbed 33 percent since 2021 to $10.4 billion a year.
The public seems to agree that enough was enough. According to a CityNews poll, two-thirds of respondents (66.8%) supported the province’s decision to force teachers back to work. And according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, it’s the children whose rights were being trampled, not the unions’.
Kris Sims joined Sheila to discuss why the strike dragged on despite record funding, how much Alberta taxpayers are already paying, and why Premier Smith’s move to restore sanity was both lawful and long overdue.
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