Sheila Gunn-Reid and Chris Sims dissect Alberta’s Bill 2, the back-to-work legislation ending a three-week teachers’ strike, where the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) rejected a $2.6B contract before demanding another $2B—costing taxpayers $80M in interest. With 700,000 students affected and 189 teaching days/year, Alberta’s pay grid ($71K–$120K) remains competitive despite union claims of underfunding, as spending ranks second only to Quebec. The episode also critiques Saskatchewan’s $26K AI garbage can and Public Safety Minister Gary Ananda Sanguri’s alleged ignorance of Canada’s RPAL firearms course, proposing accountability measures like mandatory training for ministers. [Automatically generated summary]
Alberta invokes the notwithstanding clause to get kids back in the classroom.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
I don't know if you saw this absolutely cringe-worthy response from the NDP leader here in Alberta,
Nahid Nenshi, to Alberta's Premier Daniel Smith introducing and then passing in short order what we're calling Bill 2.
It's to legislate our striking teachers who have been striking for over three weeks back to work to get kids back into the classroom.
He says Daniel Smith is about to FAFO, if you know what that means.
Look at this.
There's an internet term that I feel like I've been using a lot lately.
It goes F-A-F-O and the Premier is in the F-O stage.
That means find out.
It doesn't mean anything dirty.
The first part is dirty.
So that's a pretty overt threat of a general strike from all the public sector unions.
Why?
Because Danielle Smith doesn't want our kids to fall behind thanks to the greed of the Alberta Teachers Association, the ATA.
That's the union, not the individual teachers.
I don't take umbrage with individual teachers.
I do have a big problem with their union using other people's kids for their means.
My child is not your political plaything and not your hostage in your negotiations.
And I'm glad that there is an end to the strike.
And as of this morning, Alberta kids are back to school.
Joining me today to discuss why Bill 2 had to be introduced and what comes next is my friend Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Take a listen.
So joining me now is good friend of Rebel News, good friend of taxpayers everywhere, and good friend of me, personally.
Chris Sims, she's the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
And she's on the show once again to tell us what happened with Alberta's Bill 2.
That's the back-to-work legislation for Alberta teachers.
Tell us what went down.
I see despite the NDP's best efforts, the law did pass.
So what does it mean for teachers?
What it means for teachers is they're back at work.
Good.
As of right now.
Yes.
Finally.
After almost a month of our kids, students, remember them, everybody?
Yeah.
Remember how this is all about the kids?
Yeah.
Schools aren't just make work projects for adult teachers.
You'd be forgiven for thinking the opposite because frankly, the last three and a half weeks, mostly all I've heard is a sounding board for union grievances.
Yep.
Largely in the mainstream media.
To be fair, there are some folks who are really digging into the numbers there in mainstream media and are doing thorough reporting, to be fair.
I am talking to some of them.
But as of right now, the teachers are back at work.
I'm told that a lot of teachers are wearing red for ed today, and a lot of students are feeling a lot of pressure to do a walkout.
Yep.
So I wanted just to let people know on the ground what that's sounding like in some schools.
As far as the taxes and the show me the money part goes, as of right now, this is what's happened.
So the Alberta government and the Alberta Teachers Association, which is the teachers union, were more or less bargaining off and on for around a year, give or take, okay?
It's a bit smushy.
They were at the bargaining table going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
At the beginning of September, end of August, the government says that the ATA leadership, the Alberta Teachers Union leadership, had tentatively agreed to a contract.
Meaning, okay, fellas, we think this is good.
We're going to take it back to our membership, the teachers, and have them vote on it.
And then we'll find out what happens.
Well, the teachers voted on it and they rejected it by close to 90%.
So then they kept going back and forth.
The Alberta government said, okay, listen, how about we do a school-by-school analysis of your overcrowded classrooms or of your classrooms where you have too many kids with too many special needs, okay, or too many kids who are ESL.
We're not going to do a blanket class size cap across the province because that's inefficient and it wastes taxpayers money.
But I'll tell you what, we'll do a thorough granular analysis of every single school.
And that's what was on the table.
But then the teachers union came back with, so the government had offered this entire package, okay, had offered about $2.6 billion in spending.
And we can pull up actually what that actually looks like here.
So this is the package, and we're going to look at it here in the graphic.
So brand new teacher, four years of education.
Okay, so you got your bachelor of education, fresh as a daisy at a teacher's college.
You're starting at $71,000 a year.
You put in seven years on the job, seven, you're already making over $100,000.
It's a $30,000 a year, or a $30,000 raise over the course of seven years.
That's pretty good.
You're moving up the ladder real fast, okay?
And if you're super smarty pants and you take extra schooling, okay, like you get a master's or something like that, look at where you're topping out.
You're topping out just shy of $120,000.
I need to also point out that A, standard qualifier, I had some really important teachers growing up in my life.
Same.
I still think about them.
They meant a lot to me.
But this is a fair wage.
This is a fair wage.
You're working in mostly daytime hours at a school, Monday to Friday, half Fridays here in Lethbridge, for about 189 days a year.
For context, other workforce days, typically in the calendar year, 240.
Right.
189, 240.
This is a fair wage.
I'm getting some emails saying it isn't fair.
It's too much.
Okay, I hear you.
Okay.
I'm hearing that for some people, but I'm trying to be reasonable here.
So that's what was offered.
And then the teachers union actually came back with, how about $2 billion more?
Where?
From where?
Exactly.
Thank you.
This is where I wanted to show people.
So we have a debt of more than $80 billion with a B in Alberta.
We're running a deficit this year.
Some people get confused.
They heard about the surplus from the last fiscal.
That has nothing to do with this year.
Last fiscal year's surplus is like a chapter in a book that is closed and on the shelf.
This year, we are running a deficit.
So every dollar that that teachers union was demanding extra is borrowed money.
Borrowed money plus interest.
So just the extra demand money, Sheila, would have cost all of us taxpayers $80 million with an M in interest.
I did the math.
That would cover the salaries of like 1,000 teachers.
So it was just a crazy demand.
I think they jumped the shark of people when they came back and said $2 billion more.
Because honestly, I spoke to a teacher, longtime teacher.
She's been in the game for between 15 and 20 years.
She teaches grade 11 English.
She teaches in Edmonton.
She was very upset by not being allowed to go back to work a couple weeks ago.
She said, I miss my kids.
I miss my student.
I am not getting a paycheck.
I have bills coming due on November 1st.
Like, what is going on?
We're getting no strike pay.
This offer was reasonable.
But to be fair, she said, you know what?
I'm not one to complain, but my last class of the day, I've got like 38 kids in there.
16 of them cannot speak English.
Or they have severe learning disabilities.
Like, I'm really struggling.
That's totally legit.
Like, and even the premier mentioned that teacher lady in question period and said, we have to fix her classroom.
So now what had happened was government was over here saying this is $2.6 billion, including hiring 3,000 more teachers, including hiring 1,500 new education assistants, including building over 100 schools.
Take it.
And the union said, well, no.
And then the premier said, well, we're already missing final exams for grade 12.
This is going to affect their ability with their transcript, by the way, with international universities.
Yep.
Or even out-of-province universities.
Exactly.
And I think a lot of people could see it on her face where she was done.
She's like, nope, these are the same cohort of kids who were locked out of school during the lockdowns.
We are damaging their education now.
We're out of time.
So she legislated the teachers back to work and they have legislated that contract.
So it's like, okay, here's your contract.
So if you look at those numbers again, you're starting at $71,000 a year as a teacher in Alberta.
Okay.
The government says that after taxes, this pay grid that you're looking at makes Alberta teachers the highest paid teachers in Western Canada.
The issue here, and this is where I don't know, because I'm not a legal scholar, okay?
They use the notwithstanding clause.
Good.
I'm getting a lot of those emails too.
But at the Taxpayers Federation, I'm the numbers lady.
Yep.
And I'm looking at this going, okay, what happens now?
Like, what happens now?
So I don't know what happens now.
It's been invoked before.
They invoked it in Ontario and they invoked it in Saskatchewan and Quebec invokes it like all the time.
Like on signage laws.
Like Thursday afternoon.
Yeah.
Like Thursday afternoon.
They just pass a law and then invoke the notwithstanding clause every single time.
It's kind of part of their culture, I guess.
So it's a thing.
So legally, I've spoken to constitutional lawyers who do say and point out repeatedly that this is a fundamental element of our Charter of Rights and all that jazz.
It's part of the star heed.
Yes.
Yes.
It's an element of it.
Like saying that this doesn't, the flies in the face of, no, no, no, no.
This is a tool and a mechanism of it.
The issue is that Western provinces haven't used it very much.
And so it's kind of bewildering to some people.
So at the end of the day, what the Taxpayers Federation cares about is the government did not back down.
The government did not cave.
The government also was leery about going to binding arbitration because they were worried that they're going to have to spend a billion dollars more of taxpayers' money.
Right.
And kids still won't be at school.
This is it.
Kids, I have to keep stressing this.
700,000 kids out of school.
I'm lucky.
I largely work from home, not all the time, and my kids are older.
That just means that they were, frankly, neglected while I was working.
They were spending too much time on screens.
But at least I wasn't worried about who to get child care from.
There are so many, oh my gosh, Sheila, the emails I've been getting from parents who were beside themselves.
So kids have now missed out on nearly a month extra of school.
And to be fair, I am hearing from local boards here in Lethbridge, and you're going to have to check with your local boards, everybody watching this, they are saying that they're canceling pro-D days.
Like they're making up time.
And the teachers are, like, for example, making sure, okay, we're going to learn Hamlet on the days that we were going to be off for exams.
I'm going to come in special.
We're going to make sure.
Like, there are some who are making an effort to try to catch these kids up.
I don't know if that's happening in every district, though.
It's definitely not happening in the one that my kids go to because they have fall break coming up.
So they're going to go back to school for a week and then be on vacation for a week right after that, as if the kids can afford that.
But it's funny to see people say that Danielle Smith violated the democratic rights of the teachers.
You know whose rights were being violated in all of this?
You know, the other side of this loves the United Nations.
So I'll go to their guys and I'll quote their favorite organization.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child say that kids have a right to education.
And as a parent, I am really tired of greedy unions violating my children's rights because that's what I saw.
And I just noticed that I think it's a global news poll today.
No city news poll.
Despite what the mainstream media tells you about this, and despite what the NDP tells you about the back-to-work legislation, they're polling as of like an hour and a half ago when I took a screenshot.
It's, do you support the Alberta government's decision to use the notwithstanding clause to force striking teachers back to work?
67% said yes.
Wow.
There we go.
I'm actually not surprised.
I don't know why I said wow.
We have to keep in mind this has been a month.
This has been a month of no school for students.
And to be very clear, teachers weren't getting paid strike pay.
Right.
They need to take that up with their union.
There should be a reckoning with the ATA over this.
Like, what's going on there?
And I really wanted to hammer this point home because I'm getting people saying, oh, you know, you're not good at math or you're not doing your, you know, budgeting well and all that jazz.
No.
So this is the issue.
Teachers' Strike Impact00:05:17
Spending.
Okay.
Premier Daniel Smith has handled this very well.
Very well.
Yep.
From a taxpayer's perspective, she's been a little too generous.
Sure.
I just need to point this out.
Because you would be forgiven, dear viewer and listener, if you happen to be listening to the usual narrative.
You would be forgiven for thinking that Premier Smith went full Ronald Reagan with air traffic controllers and fired everybody and hired them all back and hired them all back, that she went full Maggie Thatcher.
No, actually, she has increased spending on education by 33% since fiscal year 21-22.
I didn't use 2021 because that wouldn't have been fair because it was a much lower cost then.
I would have gotten a way better number then, but I didn't.
I made sure the kids were in school full time and I went back and did that math.
From fiscal year end, people can look it up in the documents.
You can't look at the forecast or the guessing.
Fiscal year end data, 2021, 2022.
Run your finger down, education, okay?
We spent just over $7 billion with a B.
This year, for the budget, we are on track to spend $10.4 billion, an increase of 33%.
My gosh.
And before anybody says, but what about inflation?
I checked that.
Of course you did.
This eclipses, it's not 33% over and above, but it still eclipses both inflation and student population growth.
Daniel Smith is still spending more money than we were years ago on kids' education in Alberta, including inflation plus population growth.
That is a numerical fact.
Just a dumb girl who can't do math, according to the comments.
Oh my gosh.
I sometimes wonder, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, I have been looking at budget documents for like 20 years.
Yeah.
So people can make errors.
Like it's easy to do.
I do it all the time.
But I checked.
Yeah.
Like I really checked and I'm right.
Yeah.
And, you know, our students have some pretty good outcomes here, by the way.
And, you know, when I see the teachers union say, oh, you know, like they, it's some of the lowest funding per student in the country.
And I'm like, but look at the outcomes.
To me, that means we're pretty darn efficient.
Yes.
Yes.
This is okay.
Sorry to vent.
Actually, that's why I'm here.
That's why I'm betting.
Get it out.
Get it out of here.
We're all on the grits here.
My head's going to spin like Beetlejuice.
I want to know what people thought of that new movie.
I loved it.
Anyway, this is what's going on.
We'll hear some of the union.
And again, I'm not saying all teachers.
I just finished speaking to a great one.
Okay.
Yep.
And I frankly can't imagine three and a half weeks with no paycheck.
That's got to be, you're in tough.
You seriously are.
So I hope things calm down and you're able to keep teaching and everything is hunky-dory.
But the union leadership will often quote what you just said, the lowest funding per student or whatever it was.
That's okay for them to point that out because it's from a Fraser Institute report, which does amazing work on education analysis and fiscal issues.
The problem though is they don't keep reading.
Like one line, like one, they just have to like finish the sentence.
It's right there.
Like it's right there where they say that the spending does not correlate to outcome.
We are second only to Quebec.
Yeah.
So our students are doing really well.
Okay.
We're second only to Quebec, even though we are spending lowest technically per student.
The reason why that number gets pulled down to technically the lowest, you know why?
Because of the big, bad private schools and the big bad independent schools that this teachers union is freaking out about right now.
Because at the private schools, because the funding follows the student, no matter which student you are, y'all get the same funding.
Funding follows the student.
When you go to private school, though, it's 70%.
We're saving 30%, folks.
That's what that is doing.
And outcomes are higher.
This is it.
So this is where the scales are going like this in the way you want them to.
Lower spending, but higher outcomes.
That's sounds like a success story to me.
The other way that they're saving money there, Sheila, is charter schools.
I just finished speaking with Kaylin Ford.
Yeah.
And the amount is the same.
So for charter schools, it's 100, 100.
But they save a ton of dough on capital.
Sure.
Because charter schools have to like squat in like existing buildings.
They're not building new buildings.
Again, there's money saving for taxpayers.
And again, better outcomes.
So don't, when you hear them say it's the lowest funding per student, okay, numerically correct, but look at why and look at the outcomes.
We're thinking outside the bun, as they say in those Taco Bell commercials.
Tell Us About The AI Garbage Can00:03:16
Chris, before I let you go, I got three minutes before I have to run into my next thing that I'm doing.
Tell us about the AI garbage can.
Oh my God.
Saskatchewan, please.
I love this story.
One of my favorite things that I count my blessings for, seriously, are my coworkers.
And Gage Haubrick, he's wonderful.
He is our prairie director.
Okay.
Go follow him on Twitter.
Gage Haubrick.
Okay.
Good Saskatchewan boy.
He found this crazy story in the wild.
He was out with his girlfriend walking in the mall.
I love it.
And he sees this thing.
It's this yellow screen next to a whole bunch of recycling bins.
And it's this AI recycling bin.
And it turns out, he's like, I bet you we spent money on this crap.
Darn it.
He was right.
He filed FOIs.
This is his story.
I'm just eating his lunch.
He filed FOIs.
Taxpayers were stuck with a $26,000 bill for an AI garbage can.
That didn't work properly.
You know, I take some solace that Skynet is still failing when the garbage cans aren't working right.
But yeah, it didn't work like half the time.
So apparently it's supposed to give you like a smiley face or a sad face when you put things in the wrong slot.
I would frankly, I might just put them in the wrong one just to fight the machine.
I hope that machine is still there.
I would make a pilgrimage to that machine just to put my recyclables in the organics and see how it went.
It would probably arrest you.
Oh, God, I hope so.
Send out its robot armies like from itchy and scratchy land.
All the little robot dogs, those Boston robotics, scary dogs.
Oh, don't get me started.
DARPA is frightening.
But yeah, no, everybody go check that out.
That is Gage's work.
I'm just pilfering it, but go check that out.
It's going to be a teddy waste award for sure.
It has to be.
No, Chris, before I let you go, tell us how people can get involved in the Canadian Taxpayers Federation because you not only tell people what the problem is, but you invite them to help you solve it.
Perfect.
Thank you.
And thank you for listening to me.
It was the teacher strike thing.
So people can go to taxpayer.com, go to the petition link, sign the petitions that speak to you.
It can be anything from getting rid of all carbon taxes to defunding all media so that we have a free press in this country again, even to simple little things like take the PST off of thrift shop stores in British Columbia, right?
So sign up on the petition that speaks to your heart, and then you're part of the taxpayer army.
And the next time it is time to gang up on a politician or emulate a bureaucrat, you'll be there.
And it works.
That's why you don't pay the carbon tax right now, guys.
Chris, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Sorry, I have to cut it short.
I could talk to you all day, as you know, and some days I do.
I know.
Say hi to the gang for me.
I will.
Thanks, Chris.
have a great day well as always the last portion of the show belongs to you because of course without you there's no rebel news you You know, we will never take a penny from Mark Carney to do the work that we do to hold the government to account on behalf of our viewers.
Spread the Word00:03:34
That's why we rely on you to support us.
Our subscribers who support this show, those of you who share our content, there's no us without you at all.
And that's why I care about what you think, about the work that we do here.
And it's why I give out my email address right now.
If you've got comments about my interview with my dear friend Chris Sims, send them to me.
Put gun show letters in the subject line.
My email address is sheila at rebelnews.com.
You can get in touch with me directly.
But also, if you want to help us get around the censorship algorithms, interact with our work, leave comments on YouTube or on Facebook or on the website or on Rumble.
It's one of those ways that introduces us to other people.
If our content is interacted with, it gets served up in front of more people and helps us spread the good word, evangelize the good word of small government and personal accountability.
Now, today's letter comes to the email and it comes in relation to my last week's show with Rick Igersich of Canada's National Firearms Association.
And Chris writes, Hi, Sheila.
As a non-gun-owning supporter of the NFA, I really enjoyed your interview with Rick.
My only remark is about your statement that the government is spreading misinformation.
You might be right.
Sometimes I use misinformation and disinformation interchangeably, but misinformation is sort of accidental telling of lies, repurposing, sharing things that aren't true, getting the facts wrong, but not maliciously or sinister motives attached to it.
And I believe Chris is right that the government doesn't spread misinformation.
Rather, it purposefully disseminates disinformation, which is done maliciously.
Members of the public can be misinformed and thus spread misinformation.
Exactly.
Government has no excuse to be misinformed.
They spread wrong information by definition disinformation.
It is their obligation to inform themselves before they inform the public.
They cannot hide behind the oops, I didn't know.
Keep up the good fight.
Yours truly, Chris.
Yeah.
And it's one of the, I mean, the government spreads a lot of disinformation, but particularly on the firearms rights issue, where you have the public safety minister, the minister in charge of the gun grab, Gary Ananda Sanguri, not knowing anything about the firearms licensing system.
I feel like that's sort of your job.
And if you're telling law-abiding, licensed Canadian firearms owners that they are the problem, you better know what they've done to get those licenses and the classifications of the licenses.
There's only two.
It's not like you're going to have a tough time remembering.
If you are the public safety minister, you should have to submit yourself to the RPAL course and pass it.
That's my rule.
I don't make the rules, but I'd love to make that one.
If you are the public safety minister, you should submit yourself to the RPAL course and pass it.
And if you're the health minister, you should have a healthy BMI.
I think that's only fair.
That's the show for tonight.
Thanks so much for watching, guys.
As I said, we couldn't do this show without you.
I'll be back here in the same time, in the same place.