Janice MacKinnon, chair of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Alberta’s Finances, speaks to the media about the MacKinnon Panel report on Alberta’s Finances in Calgary, Alta., Sept. 3, 2019.A report into ways the Alberta government can cut costs and reduce its growing deficit delved, unsurprisingly, into the operations of big-spending ministries such as health and education. But it’s potential changes in the latter file that may be the most politically fraught for Premier Jason Kenney’s administration.
There are others, however, who insist there needs to be some accountability built into the education system and that it’s too easy for teachers to blame “home environments” for lousy outcomes in their classrooms. And, at the end of the day, the government gets to decide how it hands out the money to fund basic programs such as K-12 education.
Maybe that is the most realistic way of making the kinds of spending cuts the panel is advocating. The teachers’ union in Alberta would never go along with the changes being advocated so negotiating would be fruitless. But Mr. Kenney and his cabinet would be advised to tread extremely carefully when it comes to this area.Once upon a time, there was a fresh new premier in B.C. named Gordon Campbell, who won a massive landslide in 2001 on a mandate to slay the province’s rising debt situation.