Oh hey, did you hear the teachers were striking again? What? You haven’t? I wonder why that may be. Maybe it’s because they’ve been slapped on the wrist by Mr. McGuinty’s new legislative bill and told to sit in the corner nice and quiet.
Now this might have seemed like a half-decent move were it not for the duality of it. Tough economic times (which you are no doubt aware of unless you’ve spent the last half a decade in some jungle, eating fruit with your primate companions) call for economic budgeting and some unpleasant decisions. Hey, we all have to tighten up our belts and take some of the load, and that’s understandable. So the teachers receiving the wage freeze and having some of their benefits taken away seems a reasonable proposal, even if the teachers moan and groan about it. But hey, they would probably have complained about something else anyways. Who doesn’t complain? Complaining is what gets you stuff. If you don’t ask, you won’t receive.
But this move went past that sort of “acceptable” jerk move, straight to full-out swindling. It was a very cheap double-whammy; almost like playing tag with one other person where the moment they catch you they call no-touch-backs.
Well those of you who remember the days of tag know that the no-touch-backs is a really necessary move for those games when the two people decide they’re just going to smack each other repeatedly instead of running away and continuing on with the game. The same sort of logic applies to the two-year ban on striking. If the moment any sort of bill is passed, the teachers go on strike, nothing will progress. There is some reasoning behind a temporary ban on striking… perhaps. Temporary is on of the key words here.
The other key word is democracy. Last time I checked, Canada had a democratic government. Now, I know it’s been a long time since your civics class, but what that means is that we have the right to complain. We choose our government, and when stuff happens that we don’t like, we complain to them, and they try to fix it (or at least make it look like they did). Taking away a significant part of teachers’ voice like that is getting rid of the only bragging right we have as a democracy; the ability to challenge the government when we think something is unjust.
Now people may think that striking is a very financially wasteful process, and it is. But one must also take into consideration the debate that will result because of this bill. The legislative time that will be required for amendments on the bill will be removing time that could have been used to solve other pressing issues. Think of the money in the media coverage alone; having a controversial topic is always expensive.
Also controversy always makes nerves on edge and patience run thin. Trying to take away what most people see as a constitutional right just causes more uproar within the teaching community, rather than quieting complaints. In a system where we expect our voice to be heard (but, unfortunately, with a high noise-to-signal ratio as a cost), trying to mute the voices will only cause them to fight back harder. Just think about the scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when Voldemort tried to keep Hogwarts a quiet, captive audience. I don’t mean to liken the Canadian Government to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but look at his attempt to silence upset people. And he used magic; laws and bills only apply on the legal battlefield, and we know that issues can easily go past that.
People must also remember that striking is not just that clichéd image we have of people rioting angrily in the streets, amounting to nothing. Striking is a long-used method that has been used in order to call attention to serious unaddressed issues. It might not be the most esthetically pleasing solutions (what country likes to see its workers on international news for refusing to work?) but hey, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.
The last thing to consider would be why people dislike the idea of their government gaining more power. Read one u(dys)topian novel to find out how a society like that looks to the present-day eye. Get one glimpse at the Big Brother notion in Nineteen Eighty-Four and you can understand why people have been so hesitant to just sign off their life in total faith to the government (see also: communism). The more they try to take complete control, the unhappier the people are going to be, and the more rebellious the people are tempted to be.
So yeah, there are some very good intentions and ideas behind the banning of teacher strikes, but keep in mind that the road of good intentions might lead to a very dark place… Dark Lords included.
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