Seven Oaks Magazine.

With the next provincial election set for May 17, 2005 – just over five months away – the battle lines are being drawn. With a corporate media constantly bemoaning “big labour’s” anti-Campbell campaign, Seven Oaks spoke to Irene Lanzinger, 1st Vice-President of the British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF), an organization that has made no secret of its desire to defeat the neo-Liberals in this province.

1) Especially coming out of the BC Federation of Labour convention a couple of weeks ago, we’ve been hearing endless talk about “big labour” taking on the B.C. Liberal government in this next election. What’s your view on the framing of the coming provincial election in these terms?

Well, I guess my question would be, “what do we mean by ‘big labour’?” I think of myself as representing the 43 000 teachers in this province. And, you can talk about the BCTF as a big union, but really what it is is all of the teachers in the province getting together to talk about the decisions that the Campbell government has made and the ways in which those have harmed education.

2) It has been much publicized that the BCTF has set aside a $5 million “war chest” to fight this current government. What do you say to charges that this is a lot of money – teachers’ money – to be putting into an election campaign?

It is a lot of money – I don’t think there’s any denying that. But at least we’re not using taxpayers’ money, which the government is doing at this very moment. The government is running ads defending their positions, and defending what they say is a good economic situation, which some people would dispute. And we have, through the democratic decision-making processes of our organization, decided to spend our own money to speak out for the kids we teach. To speak out about what we believe is an unacceptable situation in the public school system in the province.

3) What have been some of the main manifestations of Campbell’s cuts in the classroom?

Larger classes. One of the biggest issues for teachers is the inability to meet the needs of the students they teach. And one of the reasons it’s more difficult today to meet the needs of kids than it was three years ago is because classes are larger. There’s less support for special needs students, less specialty teacher time to help kids that you think need help. There’s less ESL support, and 25% fewer librarians in the province today than there was before the Liberals came to power. All of those things are ways in which we see the public school system being eroded by the policies of this government.

4) What are some of the specific demands that teachers are putting forward in this election campaign?

Well, we say it would take about $310 million to return the public education system to where it was before the Liberals came to power, and even at that time we argued that the system wasn’t well enough resourced. So that’s the first thing that we say, that we have to put some money into reducing class sizes and increasing the number of specialist teachers that provide support.

5) There has been a good deal of discussion and debate about how much of the damage to public services like education the NDP would reverse. What do you see as the prospects for these changes being implemented should the NDP return to power provincially?

As to whether or not the NDP will do that, you have to ask them. We are not a partisan union, we are not a spokesperson for the NDP, we don’t donate money to the NDP, and we don’t as a provincial organization endorse any political party. They haven’t specifically, my understanding is, come out with their platform yet, but it’s up to them to say what they would do. We say we will put pressure on every government to fund public education and we’ll put pressure on every government that we believe is making bad decisions about the public education system. And we spoke out very vocally against some of the decisions made by the NDP government, so we don’t let any government off the hook.

6) How have the deregulation of tuition fees and their subsequent increase, and the increasing inaccessibility of post-secondary studies, impacted students and the choices they make at the high school level?

We are in danger, I think, of making university something that is accessible to the rich and not accessible to people who are in financial difficulty, who come from lower-income families. And that’s a huge concern, because one of the things we pride ourselves on as Canadians is that everybody has a chance to go on to university or college. That’s not going to be the case any longer if tuition fees aren’t held in check.

7) Finally, we’ve gotten used to hearing that a given election is the most important in a generation, and many certainly have already used that language about the coming provincial election. What is at stake, and what can we expect in the scenario that Campbell wins re-election?

I think that people feel that way about this election because this government has done particular damage to the public services and to the institutions that we hold dear as a society, like public education and health care. And so people tend to see this election as very, very important. It is important, but it isn’t everything. We have a saying in the BCTF that governments come and come, but we’re here for the long term. And that’s true. The Federation has been around for 80 years fighting for public education and for what we believe is right for kids. So, whatever the outcome of the election, we’ll be here on May 18 making the same arguments and trying to put pressure on whatever government is there to fund education properly.