The Complexity of the Pandemic for First Nations

Originally published at the Sprawl

In the event there is a COVID-19 outbreak on reserve, First Nations in Alberta are following public health directives. But the painful legacy of colonialism has created a unique set of circumstances for Indigenous people broadly and within each nation.

“It’s very difficult to pinpoint just how this pandemic is affecting First Nations, because it’s connected to those broader systems of oppression that really defined the experiences of First Nations people here in Canada,” said Gabrielle Lindstrom, an Indigenous studies professor at Mount Royal University who was born and raised on the Blood Tribe reserve—the nation’s largest with 4,570 residents.

Blood Tribe recently had a COVID-19 outbreak, with 14 confirmed cases, 11 of which were active as of May 19.

Lindstrom says there are several specific challenges in combating COVID-19 on reserves.

“The biggest challenge is access to healthcare and adequate testing materials,” Lindstrom said.

“Another is the lack of access to other resources, like transportation for tribal members. We have very isolated members of the tribe who don’t get around, who may not have access to vehicles,” she added.

“Access to information is another, because lots of time information spreads through the internet quite quickly and a lot of members don’t have access to the internet, because they simply cannot afford a computer.”

The extent of these roadblocks vary from reserve to reserve, she emphasized.

Different plans for different reserves

The entire world is dealing with the same pandemic, but each community has different needs, priorities and resources. It’s no different for First Nations.

Ryan Robb, CEO of Stoney Nakoda, says First Nations are co-ordinating with each other through the various treaties and the national Assembly of First Nations, as well as public health officials.

“I think it’s important to recognize that all First Nations are just that—autonomous nations,” Robb said. “Different nations will have different capacities and capabilities, and even different focuses on what they want to do.”

The Stoney Nakoda First Nation—located between Banff and Calgary—consists of three bands residing on three different reserves. The Bighorn, Morley and Eden Valley reserves are home to the Wesley, Chiniki and Bearspaw peoples.

Stoney Nakoda had Alberta’s first major outbreak on reserve in Eden Valley, with 18 of 600 residents testing positive. This outbreak was traced back to the Cargill facility in High River, where a number of residents work.

Like many Cargill employees elsewhere, those in Eden Valley often live in cramped quarters and carpool to work, increasing the chances of transmission.

While High River’s positive test results skyrocketed, Stoney Nakoda successfully contained the spread. All 18 cases in Eden Valley, as well as a lone positive test result in Morley, have since recovered.

Robb says the tribal administration was uniquely well positioned to manage the pandemic. This seems to come as a result of their past experience in emergency preparation, resulting from the 2013 floods in southern Alberta, which hit Morley, and led to the implementation of the Incident Command System—a standard used by industry and municipalities across Canada.

“It’s a management system so we can identify where we have risks, where we might have issues and what we can do about it,” explained Robb, who is familiar with this system from his time employed at Suncor. “We were unique. Very few First Nations had this system in place.”

Another reason for their successful management, Robb says, is that Stoney Nakoda is a consultant nation on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, so they already had a robust emergency planning system for various scenarios, which could be adapted towards a pandemic.

“It let us plan ourselves exceptionally well. We were the first nation in Alberta, and possibly Canada, to have isolation centres on reserve,” said Robb.

‘We’re doing a lot more phone visits’

Linda Wonitoway-Raw is a registered nurse at Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation’s health centre. She says that the reserve—located about 85 kilometres northwest of Edmonton—has had zero confirmed COVID-19 cases, but is working on plans in the event there’s an outbreak.

As elsewhere, the number of in-person visits to healthcare facilities has been limited as focus has shifted to physical distancing and COVID-19 testing, she says.

“People are staying at home. We’re doing a lot more phone visits,” said Wonitoway-Raw. “It’s very, very different from everything that we’ve been taught. As a nurse practitioner or physician, you really don’t want to be diagnosing patients over the phone.”

Thus far, they’ve conducted about 20 COVID-19 tests out of the reserve’s total population of 1,170, she says.

However, members of the nation, particularly patients residing off-reserve, have the option of going to the nearest Alberta Health Services (AHS) site for testing.

The dynamics of physical distancing are complicated by the large number of multi-generational homes on reserve. This has also been an issue in High River, as observed in the outbreak connected to the Cargill meat plant, says Wonitoway-Raw.

In the event there’s a positive swab result, she says the sample would be sent to the chief medical officer of health for contact tracing, which can be challenging on reserve.

“That could be a little more difficult, because sometimes our patients don’t always have their own phone number or they’re staying with relatives, so there’s a lot more informal methods of trying to track down patients,” said Wonitoway-Raw.

“If it spreads in our community, it’s going to be a little more difficult to find patients who have been known contacts, because some of them are a bit more transient.”

In the event of an outbreak, the health centre has support workers on the ground who reside on reserve and “are enmeshed in the community,” so they can track down those who might be harder to get a hold of, she says.

Public data could be weaponized against First Nations

Alberta Health doesn’t provide COVID-19 figures specific to each First Nation but Tom McMillan, a spokesperson for AHS, says they have been working closely with First Nations to share data.

“We are aware that vulnerable and marginalized populations can encounter unique barriers in accessing health services, including testing and treatment for COVID-19,” said McMillan.

Although Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, said AHS would look into collecting race-based data in the future, McMillan says it’s not in the cards at this time, at least as it pertains to First Nations.

However, their data is included in the total daily figures.

“Individual Nations are free to share relevant information as they see fit,” he said, emphasizing that AHS would need each nation’s consent to share those details publicly.

However, the federal government publishes aggregate on-reserve data for each province. Alberta reserves have 37 cases as of May 20.

There’s a certain reticence among some First Nations towards publicly sharing data with Canadian authorities, given how information about them has been historically weaponized against them by settler society, explains Lindstrom.

It’s a phenomenon which continues in the present.

“There’s a real mistrust among First Nations of researchers, because of the way we’ve been researched in the past and continue to be researched. Even though data-sharing can bring out a lot of good things, there’s just a real lack of trust on the part of First Nations and for good reason,” she said.

“So many of the statistics that track First Nations people involve everything that’s wrong with them. You can find statistics that speak to the overrepresentation of First Nations people in the criminal justice system and the underrepresentation of First Nations people in the employment sector, but you’re going to be hard-pressed to find a reliable indicator of First Nations PhDs in communities across the country and their success.”

 

How to get away dumping orphan wells on the public

Originally published at the Progress Report

When the oil and gas company Manitok Energy went out of business in 2018, it sent tens of millions of dollars worth of environmental liabilities to the Orphan Well Association or OWA, the non-profit agency responsible for cleaning up the environmental messes left behind by bankrupt oil and gas companies. But less than a year later, a new company with a different name but the same CEO was able to acquire all of Manitok’s remaining non-orphan well assets–while dumping the liabilities on the rest of us–and all with the tacit blessing of the Alberta Energy Regulator or AER. And while the OWA is supposed to be industry funded it is now majority funded by public money due to recently receiving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of taxpayer dollars.

Manitok Energy and its subsidiaries defaulted on their loan payments and went into receivership in February 2018, according to the most recent receivership report, which is dated Nov. 8, 2019. The receiver, in this case an accounting firm called Alvarez & Marsel Canada, is appointed to sell the remaining assets of the company in order to pay outstanding debt.

In November 2018, Manitok’s primary assets were sold to Persist Oil & Gas; the president and director of Persist Energy is Mass Geremia, the very same CEO of Manitok.

Mass Geremia’s LinkedIn

Persist was formed late-February 2018, according to the company’s Sedar profile. The phone number listed for Persist is the same as the one provided for Manitok, which is out of service, as are the emails listed for each company. According to the Orphan Well Association’s April 2020 inventory, Manitok has left behind 181 wells, 31 facilities and 282 pipelines.

Progress Alberta reached out to Manitok/Persist’s Mass Geremia for comment, but he did not respond to our questions before our publishing deadline.

Regan Boychuk, an independent researcher with the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project says broke energy companies are using the OWA as a recycling depot for their decommissioning costs while the owners move on. This is essentially “standard operating procedure” in the industry, which he attributes to the AER being a captured regulator.

“It’s not supposed to be legal,” Boychuk told Progress Alberta. But it’s a frustratingly common scheme. Many Albertan farmers have seen companies like Manitok come in, run up huge bills, and then evaporate. The public get left with the bill, the farmer gets stuck with a deteriorating oil well on their property that OWA may or may not get around to cleaning up, and next season the same people are back to do it again under a different corporate name.

There were multiple opportunities for the AER to shut Manitok’s own maneuver down. The agreement between Persist and Manitok was amended twice–in December 2018 to add and remove various assets in the Carseland, Rockyford, Wayne and Wildcat Hills areas, and on March 29, 2019, to remove the Nisku Pipelines and Facilities in Wayne–before the deal closed April 15.

This second amendment removed three facilities and 17 pipelines from the deal, according to an appendix attached to the receivership report, which then became the responsibility of the Alberta Energy Regulator. The receivership report says Manitok owes Kneehill County, where Wayne is located, about $66,000 in outstanding taxes for 2017 and 2018, plus an estimated $37,000 for 2019, assuming the assessment for that year is the same as 2018.

But the costs in foregone taxes pale in comparison to the millions the public spends decommissioning the orphan assets, says Boychuk.

He says it costs around $229,000 on average to plug and reclaim wells, with related pipelines and facilities doubling that cost.

Without knowing how many of the wells have been decommissioned already, Boychuk used $200,000 as a rough estimate of per-well costs. At 181 orphan wells, Manitok’s orphan wells will have a clean-up cost in the realm of $72 million dollars.

On Jan. 31, 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that insolvent energy companies have an obligation to pay off their environmental liabilities before reimbursing creditors, dubbed the Redwater decision, a ruling supported by the AER and OWA.

“The law’s on our side,” says Boychuk. “We can hold these folks accountable, but we have the same dilemma we’ve always had in Alberta — the sheriff won’t take his gun out of his holster, he won’t hold this industry accountable and, as far as complaints go from citizens to the regulator, the door’s locked.”

AER says it acted appropriately .

The AER’s Directive 067 of December 2017 allows the regulator to revoke or restrict licence eligibility for oil and gas development.

“Acquiring and holding a licence or approval for energy development in Alberta is a privilege, not a right,” reads the directive’s preamble.

AER spokesperson Shawn Roth says the regulator found out Manitok shared owners with Persist through a material change submission in June 2019–two months after the deal closed.

“The AER conducted a review and found that the change did not pose an unreasonable risk to public safety or the environment,” Roth wrote in an email to Progress Alberta.

Prior to this revelation, the AER made Persist “purchase and perform abandonment and reclamation work on infrastructure that was not part of the original sales agreement” to lessen the load on the OWA, he said. In total, Roth says Persist purchased a total of 942 wells, facilities and pipelines from Manitok. Manitok, by contrast, has 494 wells, facilities and pipelines registered with the OWA.

“These transactions reduced the amount of inventory sent to the OWA,” said Roth. “No other parties expressed interest in the Manitok inventory.”

Barry Robinson, a Calgary-based lawyer with environmental law charity Ecojustice, says the issue is whether the unproductive assets the AER required Persist to purchase will ultimately end up with the OWA.

“That’s the interesting question — the remaining properties that the trustee holds, which are non-productive, did the trustee get enough funds to do the cleanup on those, or are they going to end up in the orphan well program,” Robinson said.

While it’s completely legitimate for a bankrupt company to sell off its assets to pay off creditors, it’s another matter when those assets are sold to a company owned by the same people, he said.

“Why would they have allowed the transfer of the viable properties, unless they had some insurance that it was going to create enough income, enough value, to carry out the reclamation of the non-productive properties,” said Robinson. “We don’t know that.”

Kneehill kneecapped

Kneehill County’s top administrator says municipalities don’t have the resources to suss out shady transactions. That is the AER’s role.

“It’s outside our jurisdiction. We just sort of have to deal with the hand we’re dealt,” chief administrative officer Mike Haugen told Progress Alberta

He said the county lacks access to information on the inner workings of the various energy companies operating on its land.

“When assets switch company hands, we of course find that out for tax purposes, but we don’t have information on ownership or things like that,” Haugen said.

The taxable value of energy-related assets depreciates as the facilities age, making it difficult to determine definitively how much tax revenue is being foregone in the long-term, he added.

“Whether it’s one company or another company that owns it, we’re still taxing it and getting income,” said Haugen.

“Our concern is more broad and shared by most Albertans — what’s going to happen to these orphan wells? Somebody’s paying for them to be decommissioned or taken care of. That’s not the municipality, it’s the taxpayer through the Orphan Well Association.”

The federal government has announced $1 billion in bailout funds to assist Alberta in paying for abandoned well cleanup, but few details have been released about how that money would be distributed. If it’s the AER and the UCP making the call, these bad actors in the industry might not just get away with these dumping schemes–they may get paid for them, too.

Local schoolboards caught off guard by funding cut

Originally published in the Medicine Hat News

Administrators from all three local school boards say they were caught off guard by the government’s Saturday announcement that they will temporarily reduce funding for schools to free up money for managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ministry has signalled a 14 per cent cut to all school base instructional grants and 51 per cent from their transportation grant, which the Alberta Teacher’s Association says could result in upwards of 26,000 layoffs of clerical staff, substitute teachers, educational assistants, bus drivers and custodians.

“I, like everybody else, was very surprised,” says Medicine Hat Public School Division superintendent Mark Davidson.

“We know that there will be a level of layoffs. We’re just not sure yet exactly how deep those layoffs will go.”

According to the ministry, school boards will have the opportunity to decide whom to lay off based on their local needs.

Davidson says any new cuts will complicate MHPSD’s efforts to make as smooth a transition as possible to online learning.

“We want to ensure that what we’re asked to do by government will be done honourably and in a way that seeks to have minimal impact on the children we serve and staff we value,” he said.

Dwayne Zarichny, the Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education superintendent, says Saturday’s announcement runs counter to the government’s vow at the pandemic’s outset that they wouldn’t reduce education funding.

“At this point, what we’re doing now is trying to unpack exactly what that announcement means and who might be potentially impacted,” said Zarichny.

“We’re still in that stage of trying to develop a better understanding of what’s being asked of us and how we’re supposed to go about achieving those goals.”

Prairie Rose School Division superintendent Roger Clarke suggests the layoffs will throw the board’s plans for the remainder of the school year into disarray.

“This came after weeks of planning by our staff to ensure that a remote educational program could be delivered through the remainder of the year with the supports we had in place, that included educational assistants and bus drivers,” said Clarke.

In an emailed statement, Education Ministry spokesperson Colin Aitchison said the temporary layoffs will free up $126 million to spend on COVID-19 response measures.

“Funding will return to regular levels when in-person classes resume,” said Aitchison. “Staffing impacts will be determined on a school authority-by-authority basis. School authorities will look at the specific funding impact to them, and then determine the best course of action. They will consider how they are delivering at-home learning in their communities and take action based on their own circumstances.”

He cited speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, mental health workers, family school liaison workers and physiotherapists as some of the employees who will continue providing additional assistance to students and teachers.

Those affected by the layoffs should apply to the enhanced federal employment insurance program, Aitchison added.

CUPE Local 829 president Sharon Stolz, who represents custodians at the public and separate school boards, in addition to clerical staff and educational assistants at public, was unavailable for comment by deadline.

As the News previously reported, CUPE agreed last year to contracts for its MHCBE and MHPSD workers that include no wage increases for four years, which Stolz said was done to reduce the likelihood of layoffs.

Alberta Teachers Association president Jason Schilling called the government’s announcement “very concerning” in a statement.

“I appreciate we are in extraordinary times, but laying off tens of thousands of workers at this time is the wrong direction,” he said.

Hope in a time of unprecedented crisis

Originally published in the Medicine Hat News

There’s no question our world has changed immeasurably in less than a week.

Seemingly overnight, our daily lives have transformed into the beginning of every post-apocalyptic science fiction movie. But the choice of what happens next is in our hands.

Please, for the love of all that is sacred, listen to the advice of medical professionals. Wash your hands as much as physically possible. Limit your physical exposure to other people, particularly if you’re feeling ill. Better to err on the side of caution in the throes of a pandemic.

We in the media, who are fortunate enough to be one of the industries who can continue work from home with relative ease, have a particular responsibility to not understate the risk we’re in.

People will die. If you look to Italy – where hospitals are so overcrowded frontline healthcare workers must make the dreadful decision of who should receive treatment – this much is clear. The issue for us here in Canada is to minimize the number of deaths from this contagion.

The federal government must immediately take steps to close the border with our neighbour to the south, whose leadership tragically has no plan whatsoever to deal with the emergency at hand and is far more likely to contribute to the spread of the virus here than anyone else.

We have to be prepared for the worst, but we also have to look towards our future after the pandemic is settled, at the very least to avoid mass hysteria. It’s a delicate balance, undoubtedly.

Policy prescriptions that were seen as beyond the pale just five days ago, such as a universal pharmacare, guaranteed basic income, printing money and nationalization, are now necessities when so many are going to be out of work and in poor health for the foreseeable future.

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.

The reality is we’re going to need a massive pooling together of public resources, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Second World War to ensure society doesn’t collapse under the weight of this pandemic.

The government is going to have to step in to offer massive bailouts to entire industries that will be affected. But we can learn from the mistakes of the 2008 bailout of the financial sector, where financial institutions were propped up while the rest were left to suffer.

There will be those who use this crisis, just as they used the financial crisis, to promote their corporate agenda.

While we’re all rightfully focused on COVID-19, the Alberta government is still, as of press time, preparing to auction off Crown land near Taber on March 31.

And Premier Jason Kenney is using the chaotic scene at airports to flex his Wexit “fair deal” muscle, lambasting “inadequate federal screening protocols for international travellers” and directing the province to step in.

Provinces should indeed play a salient role in addressing this crisis alongside the feds and municipalities, but now is not the time for superficial political theatrics between the different levels of government.

For the time being, the provincial government appears to have called off its wars on nurses, doctors and teachers.

But when there’s a return to a semblance of normalcy, be prepared for the hits to come even harder.

Those of us who are proponents of strong climate action and all the major, structural changes it entails need to make the case that if we can come together in a time of crisis to ensure everyone is taken care of, we can do so to avoid the next major crisis on the horizon.

In these trying times, it’s easy to fall into despair. But just remember, we’re all in this together and we can only get through this crisis collectively.

So reach out to your loved ones, particularly those who are elderly, immunocompromized or living with mental illness. Even though we’re going to be physically isolated from each other, we have the opportunity to put the “social” back in “social media” and, like Noah from the Bible, figure out what happens after the deluge.

This will all end eventually. The question is what sort of world we want to build afterwards.

Prez says layoffs inevitable at MHC after grant cut

Originally published in the Medicine Hat News

Cuts to the Alberta Campus Grant in the 2020-21 provincial budget mean Medicine Hat College will have to lay off some staff, president Kevin Shufflebotham says.

The overall grant was cut by 6.3 per cent, although MHC’s was reduced by just 1.7 per cent, which Shufflebotham says comes to $540,000 in practice.

He said although MHC “has been incredible stewards of their resources,” gone are the days when the school could simply absorb a half-million-dollar cut.

“It’s absolutely significant,” he said. “Positions will be impacted … The exact number, we don’t know, but we’re already having conversations.”

He expressed confidence the college is well-positioned to weather the storm, touting MHC’s 10-year strategic plan that was passed this month.

“The decisions we make will support that strategic plan and have minimal impact on our students,” Shufflebotham said. “I can’t stress that enough. Every decision we make at the college focuses on students and so will our budget decisions.”

A tuition hike is coming in September, as was planned in the wake of cuts in October’s budget.

“Students will pay more – seven per cent more – than they paid last year,” Shufflebotham said. “It’s the expectation from government that we find other revenue streams.”

Fewer staff on campus wouldn’t necessarily impact students’ learning, he said.

“It depends where the staff come from,” said Shufflebotham, adding that layoffs wouldn’t “necessarily” be confined to administration.

“There’s two sides of the house – the administration side and the student-facing side. What government’s saying is that we need to maintain frontline services for the students, that we can’t impact the student experience, so if there’s courses, for example, that students aren’t enrolling in, we’ll look at those courses and that could impact faculty positions.

“Everything is on the table.”

Infrastructure maintenance program funding, which took a hit in the 2019-2020 budget, with MHC losing out on $1.3 million, has been restored to 2018-19 levels, Shufflebotham added.

Ministry of Advanced Education spokesperson Laurie Chandler told the News the grant allocations are based on data from the U15 and CAUBO, which rank the financial information of post-secondaries across the country.

Colleges and universities “asked that we use these data sources,” she emphasized.

“Each institution in Alberta was compared against another institution either within Alberta or another province based off the following: size, enrolment, demographics, programming, etc. in order to determine the level of taxpayer funding that is appropriate.”

Shufflebotham said the government has signalled its intention to continue reducing the grant over the next few years, in line with the MacKinnon report on the province’s finances’ recommendations.

“This is really just the start,” he said.

$136 million cut from K-12 budget: ATA

Originally published in the Medicine Hat News

The Alberta Teacher’s Association has gotten its hands on documents that suggest K-12 education funding has been cut $136 million from the previous school year, contrary to the education minister’s claims.

Since enrolment has increased by 13,000 students from the previous year, the ATA says this amounts to a four per cent reduction in per-pupil funding.

ATA president Jason Schilling told the News the ATA sought out the documents, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information request, because there was information missing from the education budget.

“When you get the budget document, you get the proposed budget and then it projects out, but you usually get the actuals. That was the column that was missing from the budget documents,” Schilling said.

The union also heard from multiple school boards across the province that they were short funds, with some having to make substantial cuts.

Medicine Hat Public School Division was one, although it was able to plug the hole in its budget with a combination of reserve funds and the province’s $153-million transition grant, without having to resort to layoffs or programming reductions this year.

Chair Rick Massini, who has repeatedly expressed concern about an unsustainable budget shortfall, says the documents confirmed the board’s suspicions.

“The ATA release confirms some of the questions we had regarding the budget. I don’t think it was really a surprise to us,” said Massini.

The documents contain the actual funding for 2018-19 and projections for 2019-2020.

Medicine Hat public’s show $78.589 million for 2018-19 versus $75.48 million projected for 2019-2020 – a $3.514-million disparity.

For the separate school board, there’s a $883,000 discrepancy – from $28.414 million in 2018-19 to $27.531 million for this school year.

Schilling said there’s some confusion regarding the budget for the school year, which goes from September through August, and the fiscal year, which runs from April through March.

“When they talk about maintaining the funding, they capture a little bit of the 2017 school year and a little bit of the 2018-19 school year into that one year, and there’s enrolment differences between the two years,” he said.

“It’s an average between the two, but the average is less than we had.”

Massini says he hopes these funding issues will be addressed in the upcoming provincial budget for 2020-21.

“We do remain hopeful that the government plans to deliver on their assurances that all of the $8.223 budget will make its way into the schools. We also remain hopeful that the government will provide clarity and transparency, so we can actually sit down and properly understand how to allocate resources to support student learning,” he said.

The Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education declined comment for this story.

While previously it was the ATA’s word against the government’s, Schilling says the union now has “actual numbers in black and white.”

However, he stopped short of characterizing Education Minister Adriana LaGrange’s repeated statement that no funds were cut, but simply frozen, as a deliberate falsehood.

“I don’t know if I would call it an outright lie, but I feel that the information that we were looking for was being suppressed and it was unfortunate that we actually had to FOIP to get the information, especially the column in the budget that has always been there,” said Schilling.

Massini said LaGrange has vowed to continue providing transition funds next year.

“We’re suspending judgment on that and hoping for the best,” he said. “We’re concerned about the programs and services we offer our students. We want to continue to provide those services and see the growth that we’ve been experiencing over the past couple of years.”

Colin Aitchison, a spokesperson for LaGrange, accused the ATA of “trying to mislead Albertans” in an emailed statement.

Previously, the ATA said the government has “legitimate claims” to having maintained K-12 funding, but Aitchison says they’ve now changed their tune and are attempting “to walk their previous statements back.”

He insisted the government has maintained schools’ overall funding at $8.223 billion, with the same base instruction rate per student.

“We are actively working towards a new funding model for the 2020-21 school year which will better manage system growth, provide funding predictability and ensure funds are directed to the classroom,” said Aitchison.

“It is completely normal for program-specific funding to vary year to year. But total education funding remains the same, and enrollment (sic) growth was accounted for.”

7% tuition hike proposed at MHC

Originally published in the Medicine Hat News

Medicine Hat College administrators will come to Tuesday’s board of governor’s meeting with a proposal to increase tuition by seven per cent after the students’ association agreed this was the most prudent course of action to weather the province’s cuts to post-secondary funding.

The government cut the Campus Alberta Grant to post-secondary institutions by five per cent in its October budget, part of a 2.8 per cent cut to overall expenses.

Medicine Hat College Students’ Association president Dalton Ehry told the News a tuition increase is the most effective way to avoid cuts to programming.

“It’s a little unfortunate that tuition does need to be raised,” Ehry said. “Some of the pressure from the government to raise it is unfortunate as well, but I think students overall want their services and are willing to pay for those services.”

Tuition for the 2019-2020 school year at MHC ranges from a low of $2,808 for the third year of the paramedic diploma program to a high of $6,084 for the first year of the power engineering technology diploma.

He said the association met with administration to discuss budget issues twice in November, which he characterized as constructive.

“As far as our conversations have gone, the programming is going to stay at what it is,” said Ehry. “I know from our end, we’re fighting to continue with the services that we’re getting and we’ve had a lot of conversations about the auxiliary services sticking around.”

The association “hit the ground running” as soon as they heard about the cuts to solicit a variety of perspectives from MHC’s student body, he added.

“What we were looking for is what is important to students and what they would not be looking to lose,” said Ehry.

Dean of Student Services and registrar Sandy Henderson says the cut in October’s budget is likely just the beginning of heightened fiscal scrutiny of post-secondary schools.

“It certainly sounds like they’re signalling for further reductions in the next three years, so we’re still waiting to see what the impact of that will be for our particular institution,” he said.

The college is also going to increase its non-instructional service fee, which covers accessibility and counselling services, as well as athletics and recreation, by 10 per cent, which Henderson says will equal about $5.70 per credit.

The government is allowing schools to raise this fee by as much as they need to recover costs associated with these services, he said.

The MacKinnon Report commissioned by the government before its budget suggested “shifting the pie to less reliance on government grants, more on tuition and fees,” so the cut to their grant didn’t come as a surprise to administrators, said Henderson.

As per the MacKinnon Report’s recommendation, the UCP government also lifted a cap on tuition the previous government instituted in 2015, which Ehry says was inevitable.

“I don’t think tuition being frozen for a long period of time is sustainable,” he said. “It was just a matter of time.”

‘Where is the money going?’ Public school board feeling provincial budget pain

Originally published in the Medicine Hat News

Medicine Hat Public School Division chair Rick Massini says the government’s numbers on K-12 education funding simply don’t add up.

The Oct. 24 budget froze funding for public, separate and francophone schools at $8.223 billion.

“We’re having a little problem with the math here,” said Massini.

He says the government has repeatedly ensured school boards across the province that funding would remain consistent, however “virtually every board” he’s interacted with “has indicated that they’ve had significant cuts, or reductions, to their budgets.”

“Where is the money going?” Massini asked rhetorically. “Are they actually putting $8.223 billion into the budget?”

The board is $4.7 million short of what it submitted as a budget request, but it expected the $900,000 classroom improvement fund to get axed, so it didn’t allocate any funds toward it.

That leaves a $3.8-million hole in the budget, which the government partially plugged with a $1.4 million transition grant.

“That leaves us with a $2.4-million shortfall for this year,” said Massini.

He says the MHPSD has enough reserve funds to cover the gap this year, but that won’t be the case next year, especially if the transition grant is discontinued.

“From what I can understand, all of our counterparts are in about the same boat,” Massini said.

This poses “some significant challenges” for K-12 education, he says.

It could mean larger class sizes and fewer supports to meet the various needs of students in the public system, said Massini.

“We believe in inclusion where possible, but may be forced to make difficult decisions that are contrary to what is in the best interest of students,” he said.

“Notwithstanding these cuts, we still have an obligation to serve children. We raise the risk of meeting student needs and it becomes easier for kids to fall through the cracks. We will have to do more with less.”

The government’s elimination of its class size initiative grant doesn’t help matters, he added.

Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said in October that the 16-year-old grant wasn’t particularly successful in reducing class sizes, but Massini says its name is a bit of a misnomer, since it was used for more than one purpose.

“The issue wasn’t really about class size so much as it was about class complexity,”he said. “Over the last few years, we’ve really witnessed more students with social, emotional and behavioural needs – stress, anxiety, depression, language and cultural barriers – and that has added to the challenge of providing quality educational programs and instruction to all students.”

The funding was used to maintain “relatively reasonable class sizes,” while “accommodating all of these students,” Massini said.

Massini is also critical of the government’s decision to boost funding for charter, alternative, private and home schools to $400 million from $396 million at a time of general austerity.

“That $400 million would serve to assist 10 boards like ours through this problem,” he said. “I’m not suggesting that they cut that, but that’s the reality.”

He says he appreciates the financial difficulties facing the province, but the government’s mantra that the province has a “spending issue” ignores the other side of the equation – revenue.

“Giving $4.8 billion away in corporate tax cuts doesn’t seem to jibe with the claim that we’ve got a real serious budget issue happening here,” Massini said.

Former Speaker talks about life after office

Originally published in the Medicine Hat News

Bob Wanner has been keeping a relatively low profile since announcing in late 2018 he wouldn’t seek re-election to the provincial legislature.

Wanner was elected with the NDP in the 2015 election as the MLA for Medicine Hat, after which his peers elected him speaker of the legislature.

The News caught up with Wanner, 70, to discuss his life after politics, as well as various challenges and accomplishments from his party’s four years in government.

“I’ve sort of been in hibernation,” he said of the past six months of his life. “I’ve got a garage that needs to be cleaned out and I’m still working on it, and catching up on sleep from the last four-and-a-half years.”

Wanner says he’s proud of the NDP’s single term in government for implementing “policies that treated all of our citizens more fairly, particularly the vulnerable of our society who saw a more fair opportunity for access to services.”

He cited enhanced recognition of the struggles of LGBTQ and Indigenous communities – through legislation mandating gay-straight alliances in schools and an official apology for the Sixties Scoop – as well as a more labour and climate-friendly legislative agenda.

“They were long, long overdue and they were at least creating the opportunity for the transformation of our society,” said Wanner.

Concerning climate, Wanner insists his government took the most prudent approach by supporting the traditional oil and gas sector and pushing for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, while simultaneously implementing a carbon tax and encouraging renewable energy.

“We are not going to achieve a clean economy overnight and we need to have a transitional plan to go there,” he said.

Wanner said renewable energy is both vital for the planet’s future and a sound business choice, considering the region’s abundance of wind and sunlight.

Although the UCP – which was elected in a landslide with about 55 per cent of the popular vote – are in the process of rolling back many New Democrat policies, Wanner says the NDP left a long-term mark on the province that will be difficult to erase from the public consciousness.

“While (our policies) may be delayed, deferred or amended, they remain a real presence in people’s minds, and something to aim for at another time,” he said.

Wanner didn’t expect to be a candidate, let alone win, in 2015, but NDP leader Rachel Notley called him to ask if he would enter the race after Jason Soklofske – the party’s initial candidate – was charged with assault while campaigning just over a week into the campaign.

He was leaning toward declining the offer until his then-15-year-old granddaughter gave him a call, telling him, “Papa you must run. Alberta has to change.”

“Most people when they run for political office have sort of a drive to win. I certainly had a drive to represent and speak, and at that particular juncture people voted and I found myself about 20, 25 days later in a completely new stage of my life that we just never expected,” Wanner recalls. “It was surreal.”

Although he and Cypress-Medicine Hat UCP MLA Drew Barnes have “vastly different” political views, they maintained a cordial relationship, sometimes carpooling to the legislature in Edmonton.

“I would say, in my biased perspective, he thinks solutions are a little more simplified than I do, but there was a relationship there that I think was rooted in mutual respect,” Wanner said.

The same can’t be said of his relationship with Mayor Ted Clugston, who repeatedly blasted Wanner in the media towards the end of the MLA’s tenure, particularly with regards to the NDP’s support for supervised consumption sites, of which one was supposed to open in Medicine Hat.

Wanner says he was “profoundly disappointed” with the mayor’s disposition toward him.

“I found the comments to be both personal and partisan,” he said. “I felt it my duty and responsibility to be respectful of his role as mayor. Many times, I would have liked to have said something in response to him, but I chose not to, because that wasn’t the way in which you build good relationships.”

He claims he repeatedly attempted to arrange meetings with Clugston to discuss the supervised consumption site – particularly the “major public sentiment of divisiveness that developed in the community” as a result of the debate surrounding it – but the mayor wasn’t interested, contrary to his public remarks.

“I don’t ever remember a mayor being so partisan,” said Wanner, who was a city administrator for 35 years, including 12 years as public services commissioner. “He needs to remember he represents all of the people, not just some of the people.”

As speaker of the legislature, he says he sought to cultivate a more co-operative approach to politics, even if it appears that political discourse is generally moving in the opposite direction.

Despite being the first government in Alberta’s history to not be re-elected after a single term, Wanner said there’s much to be proud of in the NDP’s record, which he suspects will be more appreciated in the future.

“Leadership is about making choices with a long-term vision in mind,” reflected Wanner. “It’s not the plan, it’s the planning that’s important. You find a way to move forward together.”