Wednesday marked the end of the spring session at the Alberta legislature. It’s a session Premier Jason Kenney touts as one of the most successful across Canada, with the passage of 34 bills, six of which were in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Wednesday morning, the premier spoke in detail about each of the bills before sitting down with Global News for a one-on-one interview with Global Edmonton’s Breanna Karstens-Smith.
Kenney spoke on a number of topics, including the back-to-school plan for students this fall, as well as the legislation passed in the spring session and what’s ahead in the fall for Alberta.
Spring session
When speaking about the session that wrapped up Wednesday, Kenney said he was most proud of the human trafficking legislation passed by his UCP government.
“It’s a terrible, kind of modern form of slavery that people are not aware enough about and this gives new legal tools to the victims of human trafficking. They can sue now, their traffickers, for civil damages. If they don’t succeed in getting a criminal prosecution against the trafficker, it does give them an additional power,” the premier explained.
“It also raises public awareness of the threat of human trafficking.
“That’s not a high-profile bill, it didn’t get a lot of notice but for me, I’ve known victims of human trafficking. It destroyed their lives and for me, it’s a very important commitment that we help them.”
The premier was also asked about some the more contentious bills, including Bill 32 which passed after an all-night session in the legislature the ended early Wednesday.
The bill requires members to opt in to have their dues spent on political causes instead of the spending being automatic.
“Their main objective in that bill is a provision that we ran on in the last election which is to give union members the power to choose whether or not their dues will go to certain political campaigns or not,” Kenney said.
“There are unions that are campaigning against pipelines, taking union dues from pipeline workers in Alberta, to give you one example. And they should not be forced, I think, to send their dues down to big national unions in Toronto or Ottawa only for that money to be spent against their own jobs, their own economic interests.”
In the past, union members who did not agree with the decisions being made by the union were able to vote for a leadership change.
A large coalition of Alberta unions has promised to launch a constitutional challenge to the legislation.
But Kenney isn’t worried, saying “we have legal advice that this is completely constitutional.”
The bill also includes limits on where and how workers can picket during strikes or lockouts.
“It doesn’t limit their right to strike,” Kenney said. “We respect entirely the right of collective bargaining and the right to strike. It does say, basically, that a union can’t go in front of an unrelated business and shut it down indefinitely. It requires giving notice to the labour relations board and really it’s just reverting back to what policy was about four years ago in Alberta.”
The Opposition NDP have decried Bill 32 as a union-busting strategy that attempts to shut down free speech. Unions have also opposed the bill, including the Alberta Federation of Labour which called it the “anti-worker, anti-union labour bill.”
Back-to-school plan amid COVID-19 pandemic
Last week, the province announced that Kindergarten to Grade 12 students will head back to class in person this fall. It comes after in-person classes were suspended in March due to the growing COVID-19 pandemic.
The province has said the plan will see students return to a “near-normal” learning environment with added public health measures, which include frequent cleaning of surfaces, placing hand sanitizers at school entrances and classrooms, grouping students in cohorts and planning the school day to allow for physical distancing, which could include staggering start times for classes, recesses and lunches.
The plan does not put a limit on class sizes.
In the days since the return-to-school plan was announced, several parents, teachers, doctors and the Opposition NDP have voiced concerns with the plan.
NDP Leader said the UCP’s plan fails to provide any additional funding support to school to implement the added cleaning and safety measures.
“We’ve heard from thousands of Albertans who are deeply concerned about sending their kids back to school under the UCP’s plan. This includes parents, teachers, and pediatricians. But all of these concerns have been ignored by Jason Kenney,” Notley said.
Speaking alongside the UCP on Tuesday, physicians said parents shouldn’t have to choose between safety and sending their kids back to class.
“The UCP safety plan is a large-scale human experiment without safety nets to see what will happen to kids and their teachers and their respective families if we reopen schools based on our current re-entry plan,” pediatrician Dr. Tehseen Ladha said.
The premier stood behind the plan, saying schools boards will be able to access their reserve funding if needed.
“I don’t think it is in the interest of kids to keep the schools closed for another year. Either we move forward with a plan developed by public health experts, consultation with school superintendents safely to reopen the schools, or we make the decision basically to suspend them for months to come, perhaps the entire academic year ahead,” he said Wednesday.
“That, I think, would be very damaging to the well-being of children on so many different levels. So that’s why we are moving forward with safe reopening of the schools.
“If the chief medical officer of health comes forward with additional recommendations for additional public health measures in the safe reopening of schools we will incorporate those into our protocols.”
Parents who cannot or choose not to send their children back to school will not be provided financial assistance to allow them to homeschool. The premier said there are already homeschooling incentives in place and the federal CERB program has been extended into the fall.
Teachers have raised concerns that they will be doing double the work by teaching in-person classes and then setting up online instruction for students who cannot or choose not to return.
Kenney said if teachers need more resources to accomplish that, they could rely on their reserves.
“We put out $15 billion in fiscal action to support people through the depths of the crisis. But, at the end of the day, money doesn’t grow on trees. We cannot lock ourselves into a situation where governments have unlimited borrowing for an unlimited period of time.”
Previewing the fall session of Alberta Legislature
Kenney said the finance minister will have an update on the province’s fiscal situation at the end of August. On Tuesday he warned the deficit could exceed $20 billion.
As for the upcoming fall session in October, the premier suggested dozens more bills will be tabled, including recall legislation.
“There is a special legislative committee that is drafting the recall bill, as well as the bill for citizens’ initiative referendum and other democratic reforms. So there will be a bit of a democratic reform agenda this fall,” he said.
“We have a lot of work to do. Obviously job number one protecting lives and livelihoods in the COVID crisis. At the same time, we want to demonstrate that we’re showing up at work just like everyone else is, safely operating to get things done for Albertans. That’s what we’ve done over this spring session.”