Government & Policy
New Post-Secondary Learning Act Passes
Bill 43, with amendments worked out over the summer, was debated and passed in the Fall Sitting of the Legislature just concluded. The Bill was given royal assent on December 4, 2003, and will come into force when proclaimed, early in the new year, as the Post-Secondary Learning Act, 2003 (SA 2003 cP-19.5). In the debate on the Bill at Second Reading, and in Committee of the Whole, the question of tuition fees dominated, though both the Liberals and the NDs also raised principled objections to the removal of faculty’s right to strike. Yet, despite the many months allowed for consideration of the Bill prior to its reintroduction, few of the details were discussed by the MLAs, and the general lack of interest and awareness was marked. (See Alberta Hansard, pp. 1747-53, 1759-61, 1866-81, 2076-82, 2093-97.) Other than the Minister, no one on the Government side contributed to the debate until Third Reading (a formality).
The Minister’s spin on the new Act is that it will offer post-secondary students “increased access to degree opportunities” and “greater choice” within a system that is “adaptable and seamless, while preserving high-quality programming.” In short, from a political standpoint, the legislation is all about extending degree-granting powers to colleges and institutes. However, the Act itself contains few specifics on exactly how this is to be managed. The ‘Campus Alberta’ concept, to which all the players in PSE are forced to pay lip service, remains hazy, and open to interpretation. The ‘Campus Alberta Quality Council’ created by the Act (see sections 108 and 109, as amended), will be empowered to vet proposals for degree programs, but the set of criteria it will employ, and the standards it will seek to maintain, remain to be worked out – as does the membership of the Quality Council itself. The Regulations governing the Council have not yet been approved, and are unlikely to provide much detail in any case. So there must be a real concern that the Minister’s oft-repeated commitment to expanding access while preserving quality is no more than half-baked. (It is unlikely that approved programs will be up and running by Fall 2004, as the Minister hopes, even if new funding is made available.)
ACIFA’s lobbying efforts over the summer achieved mixed results. At our meeting this summer, the Minister stated clearly that Bill 43 was not intended to give the boards new powers at the expense of academic staff associations, and invited our input. With our university colleagues, we argued successfully for amendment of section 64 on ‘Settlement of Questions’ which gives boards the ultimate authority to decide questions concerning the ‘powers or duties’ of ‘any officer, employee or body of a public post-secondary institution’ where these are not definitely provided for in the Act. In the amended Act, academic staff associations have been removed from the terms of this provision – a ‘body’ is now clearly defined as an academic council of a college or technical institute for the purposes of section 64.
ACIFA was less successful in its attempts to convince the Government of the need to preserve the free collective bargaining rights of academic staff in our sector. In a series of consultations, we argued that these rights are fundamental, and that prohibiting the right to strike would be an unprecedented and unwarranted curtailment of free collective bargaining principles, to which Canada is committed by international treaty. We also argued, along with our university colleagues, that the original, draconian language of section 88 of the Bill, prohibiting strikes and lockouts, could only harm the national and international reputation of our post-secondary system, and aversely affect faculty recruitment. These arguments made some headway – section 88, as finally amended, simply establishes compulsory binding arbitration as the only acceptable dispute resolution mechanism, instead of explicitly banning strike/lockout – but the effect is the same. Mount Royal Faculty Association’s right to strike, currently enshrined in a freely-negotiated collective agreement, is legislated away; and other associations are prevented from negotiating to obtain it. This is a major blow to ACIFA, though it should perhaps be seen in the wider context of the Klein Tories’ attitudes to labour relations in the public sector as a whole. (One of the recommendations to the Learning Commission affirmed that the teachers’ right to strike is fundamental, but only in the context of a number of proposed changes in collective bargaining in the K-12 sector. To date, this recommendation has not been accepted by the Government.)
On several key issues, the Government chose not to proceed with amendments to the Bill proposed by ACIFA. Of these, the most significant undoubtedly concerns the statutory power of a post-secondary board to designate who is, and who is not, a member of the academic staff association. In our various submissions to Alberta Learning, and in our meeting with the Minister, we argued that this power of designation, as set out in the legislation, creates a critical imbalance in the relations of boards and academic staff associations, and prejudices free collective bargaining. Denied the protections of the Labour Relations Code, academic staff associations have no recourse; under the Act, the boards’ power of designation is limited only by a duty to consult. Nor does the legislation provide for a dispute resolution mechanism, in cases where consultation fails to produce an agreement between boards and academic staff associations. Despite ACIFA’s arguments that such a provision is a minimum requirement, and should be enshrined in the legislation, the language on designation remains unchanged in the new Act.
The Post-Secondary Act 2003 also fails to provide any solution to the increasing problems concerning the protection from liability of officers of academic staff associations, although there is new language in the Act (section 119) granting protection to board members, for example. Government lawyers flatly rejected our claims that officers of academic staff associations should be included under the provisions of this section.
ACIFA continues to press the Government on these issues. One useful by-product of the extended consultations on the Bill has been increased visibility for the provincial association as a recognized stakeholder in the post-secondary sector. Though in some cases we failed to change the Minister’s mind on sections of the Act, we were granted extraordinary access to Learning and the opportunity to provide feedback as amendments were considered. For the long term, the new working relationship which we have developed with the politicians and bureaucrats throughout this process can only work to our advantage. In recent weeks, for example, we have been invited to make a submission to the Minister on designation. Learning has also undertaken to examine the question of protection from liability as a policy issue. The ADM responsible for the post-secondary system, Phil Gougeon, has agreed to attend the ACIFA Presidents’ Council meeting at the end of January, to address our concerns.
-- John Nicholls, Research & Liaison Officer, ACIFA