Teachers’ strike revealed B.C.’s inferior services
The recent teachers’ strike has provided British Columbians with the opportunity to reflect on the kind of society we want to live in [“B.C. teachers’ strike is Christy Clark’s strike”, web-only]. Questions raised in that debate, such as why our exceedingly rich province has the worst teacher-to-student ratio and the second-worst per-student funding in Canada, lead to further questions.
Why do we have the highest health-care premiums, the second-lowest arts funding, and a largely unstaffed provincial park system? Poorer provinces than ours provide far more affordable and better-supported services.
Wealthy British Columbians may opt out of our underfunded public services through private schools, private health care, and private hobbies, but where does this leave middle- and lower-income earners? No expanse of beauty, no amount of temperate weather, can make up for shocking inequalities that characterize our increasingly Americanized province.
> Andrea Harwood-Jones / Vernon
Comments
1 Comments
cosmicsync
Oct 8, 2014 at 11:12am
And why, year after year, do we lead the country in child poverty?
You know, I can almost buy the right-winger's argument that we all make our choices in life, and should accept the consequenses of our decisions. As an adult I can accept that there may not necessarily be someone there to bail me out if I find myself having to make choices between, say, eating and paying the rent.
But children don't choose the life they are born in to. For the most part, they have no voice; and nobody asks their opinion of how the great wealth we enjoy in this province and country should be utilized.
It just really makes me sick, especially when I hear rhetoric like "families first."