May 16, 2015
Podcast: The impacts of austerity for students and teachers in Quebec’s public schools
May 16, 2015
The Liberal government’s proposed austerity measures have some very serious consequences for students and teachers in Quebec’s public schools. In addition to the insulting salary offer to teachers and the proposal to raid our pensions there are a number of measures that will directly affect students:
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Teachers and parents protest austerity in front of Westmount High
removal of limits on class size
- removal of the weighting system for special needs students
- cutting the funding for resource teachers that help special needs students
- cutting funding for after school homework programs
- cuts to support staff including child care workers and special ed technicians
Robert Green discusses the impacts of these proposed policies with CJAD’s Tommy Shnurmacher:
May 8, 2015
Does Quebec’s government have a mandate for austerity?
By Robert Green | Published April 29, 2015 by Ricochet.media
The Liberals won a majority promising stability, not a quiet counter-revolution of cuts
Quebec’s growing popular movement against government austerity is about much more than opposition to a particular government policy. It is quickly becoming a battle over the legitimacy of Premier Philippe Couillard’s Liberal government.
The concept of legitimacy is central to the study of political science, and it’s what politicians are getting at when, for example, they refer to a pipeline project failing to achieve social licence. Definitions of the concept by numerous philosophers all share the idea that legitimacy is tied to the notion of popular acceptance of the exercise of authority — what John Locke referred to as “consent of the governed.”
Whereas dictatorships and theocracies have relied on religion, tradition, ideology and the charisma of leaders as sources of legitimacy, secular democratic governments, which are supposed to be the heirs of Enlightenment values, have relied on elections and notions of the common good. In theory then, a legitimate democratic government is one that is elected on the basis of a transparent political program aimed at advancing the public interest.
This raises the question of whether the government of Quebec, given its actions since coming into office, should be viewed as legitimate.
A government with political legitimacy?
Supporters of the Couillard government are quick to point out that his Liberal party won a significant majority in the last election and therefore has the right to govern as it sees fit.
read more »
February 28, 2015
The gloves come off as the CJAD teachers panel discusses the PLQ’s ongoing assault on public education
Teachers Catharine Hogan and Robert Green pull no punches in discussing the PLQ’s ongoing assault on public education with James Mennie (sitting in for Tommy Shnurmacher). Originally aired February 17, 2015.
February 17, 2015
Quebec’s ongoing education-policy disaster
By Robert Green | Published February 16, 2015 by The Montreal Gazette
Earlier this month, an extensive study commissioned by Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport confirmed what Quebec’s teachers have known for over a decade: The famous “pedagogical reform” that was supposed to revolutionize the way students are taught in Quebec is a failure.
The study, which followed nearly 4,000 students, compared two cohorts of post-reform students with one that entered high school in 2004 just before the reform was implemented.
The results paint a portrait of an ongoing policy disaster.
Despite having added 50 hours of instruction in Mathematics and 150 hours of first-language instruction, results in both core subjects are significantly down.
Pascal / Montreal Gazette Feb. 7, 2015
Despite the fact that the reform was intended to raise the dismally low graduation rates of boys and at-risk students, these rates have instead seen significant declines for both groups.
Perhaps most worrisome for Quebec’s anglophone community is the fact that students in Quebec’s English school system were also identified by the study as one of the groups that saw a significant decline in graduation rates.
In other words, the millions of dollars spent developing and implementing this reform have been an utter waste of public funds.
read more »
February 8, 2015
602$ de moins par année pour les retraités de l’État
By Marco Fortier | Published Feb 7, 2015 by Le Devoir
Les 540 000 employés de l’État perdraient en moyenne 602 $ par année en revenus de retraite avec une des mesures proposées par le gouvernement Couillard, selon les calculs du front commun syndical.
Le président du Conseil du trésor, Martin Coiteux, compte désormais calculer les revenus de retraite des employés de l’État en fonction de leurs revenus gagnés sur huit ans plutôt que sur cinq ans, comme c’est le cas actuellement. Conséquence : au moment de sa retraite, un syndiqué qui gagne 48 000 $ par année (salaire moyen des fonctionnaires en excluant les cadres, les médecins et les policiers, notamment) toucherait 602 $ de moins annuellement qu’avec le régime actuel, indiquent des données compilées par des actuaires syndicaux.
Un employé qui gagne 40 000 $ perdrait 502 $, tandis qu’un salaire annuel de 70 000 $ entraînerait une perte de 879 $ au moment de la retraite, selon les chiffres syndicaux.
February 7, 2015
L’échec transversal
By Michèle Ouimet | Published Feb 6, 2015 by La Presse
La réforme au secondaire est un échec. Ce n’est pas un journaliste qui le dit ni un enseignant frustré ou un syndicat militant qui tape sur le clou de la réforme, mais une équipe de chercheurs qui a déposé un rapport étoffé de 113 pages.
Le mot échec n’apparaît pas dans le rapport et le directeur de la recherche, Simon Larose, ne l’a pas prononcé quand je lui ai parlé, mais le constat est là, incontournable, gros comme un éléphant dans un magasin de porcelaine.
L’étude est sérieuse, elle n’a pas été griffonnée sur le bord d’une table. Les six chercheurs de l’Université Laval ont suivi 3724 jeunes et 3913 parents de 2007 à 2013. Ils ont étudié trois cohortes: la première a échappé au vortex de la réforme et a commencé son secondaire en 2004; les deux autres étaient composées d’enfants de la réforme qui ont commencé leur secondaire en 2006 et 2007. Les chercheurs ont comparé les cohortes à l’aide de questionnaires, de tests et d’examens. Du sérieux.
Read more: http://www.lapresse.ca/debats/chroniques/michele-ouimet/201502/06/01-4841783-lechec-transversal.php
February 5, 2015
Une étude révèle que le renouveau pédagogique a causé du tort
By DAPHNÉE DION-VIENS | Published Feb 4, 2015
excerpt:
Faits saillants de l’évaluation de la réforme au secondaire
- Baisse du taux de diplomation au secondaire chez les garçons, les élèves à risque et les élèves anglophones
- Légère baisse des résultats à l’épreuve d’écriture en cinquième secondaire, particulièrement en orthographe
- Baisse des résultats en mathématiques chez les élèves à risque et ceux venant de milieux défavorisés
- Vision plus négative de l’école selon les élèves de la réforme et les parents interrogés
September 26, 2014
La Presse reports Liberals planning massive overhaul of education system
September 26, 2014
La Presse is reporting today that Couillard Liberals are planning a massive education reform that includes the abolition of school boards, reduction of private school subsidies by 50%, reduction in the number of ministry exams and the creation of a professional order by teachers.
September 17, 2014
CJAD’s Gang of Four discusses cuts to parental leave
Anne Lagacé-Dowson, Robert Green and Trudy Mason discuss cuts to parental leave and the Couillard government’s austerity agenda.
August 29, 2014
Will the Liberals ensure schools get proper funding?
By Robert Green | Published Aug 27, 2014 by The Montreal Gazette
Along with just about every teacher in the province, I was left speechless by Liberal Education Minister Yves Bolduc’s statement last week that “no child is going to die from (budget cuts) or stop reading because there are already books” in school libraries.
That such words would be uttered by a minister of education is just baffling. Either Bolduc is unaware of the very serious impact of denying Quebec’s schools the resources they need to get kids excited about reading, or he simply doesn’t care about the quality of education in Quebec’s public schools.
That this statement happened to also have been made by a man who saw no problem double-dipping into Quebec’s public coffers for over $200,000 in personal gain is downright infuriating.
Thus far, the government’s attempts at damage control have done little to restore confidence. While Bolduc has apologized for his statement and both he and Premier Philippe Couillard have affirmed that it’s important for school libraries to be able to purchase new books, neither has provided an alternative that won’t affect the province’s most needy students in other ways. Both have made vague suggestions that school boards should choose to cut elsewhere.
This of course raises the question of where exactly school boards should cut.
read more »
August 11, 2014
The Hypocricy of Austerity
By Robert Green | Published August 9, 2014 by Ricochet
In a move that seems perfectly symbolic of the sort of politics his government represents, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard announced this week that the five members of the government commission charged with reviewing government programs and recommending where to make cuts will be paid the tidy sum of $1.03 million for about eight months of work. Commission President and ex-Liberal cabinet minister Lucienne Robillard will take home $265,000 for explaining to average Quebecers where they must make sacrifices.
The message being sent here is unmistakable: Tough choices, sacrifice and austerity are for the common people, not Quebec’s elites.
Though his government has been in power only a short time, this is not the first time it has sent such a message. The government’s first budget contained cuts to school boards that are likely to seriously affect the services provided by already underfunded public schools, while leaving the subsidies wealthy families receive to send their children to private schools untouched. Apparently it is for the children of Little Burgundy to shoulder the burden of repairing Quebec’s public finances, not the privileged children who live up the hill in Westmount.
In fact this message is nothing new. From the PQ’s “deficit zero” politics of the late nineties to the Charest government’s attempts to “re-engineer the state” in the 2000s, Quebec’s political leaders have for years been saying that average Quebecers need to make do with less, that government spending is “out of control” and that we as a society are “living beyond our means.”
In 2010, Finance Minister Raymond Bachand called for a “cultural revolution” of austerity. This revolution led directly to the longest student strike in Canadian history and the defeat of Bachand’s government. Now back from exile, and sporting a new leader, the Liberals are set for round 2.
However, a cursory examination of Quebec’s recent spending trends shows a very different picture. With the exception of a spike in stimulus spending following the 2008 economic downturn, Quebec’s expenditures as a percentage of GDP have been trending downward since the early nineties. Even at the height of stimulus spending in 2009-2010 Quebec was spending significantly less as a percentage of GDP than it was in the early nineties. This is hardly a picture of out-of-control spending.
So if spending is not the cause of our current economic predicament, what is? The answer lies on the other side of the balance sheet, in revenues rather than expenditures.
read more »
August 6, 2014
Who should pay for Quebec’s deficit, the rich or the rest? CJAD’s Gang of Four debates the politics of austerity
Anne Lagacé-Dowson, Robert Green and Matt Gurney discuss the politics of austerity in Quebec with Tommy Shnurmacher. Click here for the podcast
June 15, 2014
A response to Jim Wilson’s letter “Education won’t be able to escape budget belt-tightening”
By Robert Green
On June 13th the Gazette published a letter entitled “Education won’t be able to escape budget belt-tightening” by Jim Wilson. The letter was an attack on my recent op-ed about the injustice of the Liberal government’s austerity measures for education. As Mr Wilson is a well known commentator on Quebec’s English school system whose writing has been often published on this blog, I feel it is important to publicly respond.
The whole reason I submit articles to the Gazette is to stir up public debate. Though I strongly disagree with the positions Mr Wilson takes in his letter, I am more than happy to debate these issues with him. I hope this exchange of ideas will be interesting and informative for readers.
As Mr Wilson’s letter raises a number of points and poses a number of questions, I will deal with them one paragraph at a time.
Robert Green makes one point that I fully support: that public funds should not be used to support private schools. However, he fails in his principal arguments that the budget means that “the neediest students are asked to make serious sacrifices” and that cutting the private-school subsidies would do much to remedy the overall financial situation.
Actually my principal argument was not about remedying the province’s overall financial situation so much as it was about the injustice of imposing austerity on the public education system while leaving generous subsidies for the rich to attend private schools untouched. I’m surprised that someone who claims to oppose public subsidies for private schools doesn’t share my outrage over this blatant injustice.
A secondary point of my op-ed was to show that there is no good reason to exempt private school subsidies from sharing in the burden of austerity. The private schools claim these subsidies save the system money. However, this is a highly questionable claim due to the other forms of government support private schools receive (listed in my article) in addition to the 60% tuition subsidy. While the FAE’s claim that there are significant savings to achieve by integrating private school students into the public system may also be somewhat questionable, even if this reintegration is cost neutral it is still extremely worthwhile as it will eliminate the significant social costs associated with an education system that is segregated along class lines.
read more »
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