UPDATED: Hundreds of people showed up outside Province House today despite the premier’s promise to slow down introducing changes to the education system.
That’s a far cry from the thousands who marched last year when government legislated a contract on teachers.
Jason MacLean, president of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union, believes the Premier’s promise to the teachers union not to legislate on education this week was a distraction.
“He just talked, I think, around everybody yesterday, and I believe, in order to have a lesser crowd here today. But still ended up getting a good turnout, which is nice.”
Premier met with NSTU, promised a slow down of implementation and will not introduce legislation today.
— Brittany Wentzell (@BrittWentzell) February 27, 2018
NSGEU is one of several unions representing education employees that have spoken out against structural changes to the education system.
People protested education reform, a lack of family doctors, issues with Northern Pulp, clearcutting, and more outside of Province House from 12 until 5 pm in a protest dubbed Nova Scotians Rise Up.
The 63rd sitting of the legislature began today at 1 pm.
After question period Premier Stephen McNeil took questions from journalists.
Despite what appeared to be a slow down in introducing education reforms, McNeil says a bill will be tabled before the spring break of the session.
McNeil added that although he discussed some of the issues the Nova Scotia Teachers Union has with recommendations from the Glaze Report, a bill would not have been tabled today regardless.
“The complexity of a number of the acts that are associated with, that we will have to bring together around, making sure that when the bill comes in, it includes all of the changes that will be required from the education act to some other specialty acts that are there,” says McNeil.
The government is looking to dissolve all of Nova Scotia’s English-speakinig elected school boards and remove principals from the teacher’s union as a part of their implementation of 11 of 22 recommendations from an independent review on the education system.
McNeil says he’ll look at the teachers union’s issues that were raised in their recent meeting and meet with NSTU president Liette Doucet again before a bill is brought to province house.
He did not specify what, if any, changes would be made to an education bill.
When asked whether anyone from the education department had studied data used to to create the Glaze Report, the premier skirted the question.
He also did not answer when that data may be made available to the public.
The teacher’s union issued a press release last week calling on the government to release that information publicly before tabling any education legislation.
The education minister previously said his department had read summaries of the data, but had not gone over all of the surveys done. Minister Zach Churchill, also did not provide a timeline as to when that information would be made public.
