Premier Danielle Smith and her UCP government, up to its figurative eyeballs in the murky and still-growing AHS procurement scandal, haven’t had much time to wage media war against the education support workers who continue to strike for better pay and working conditions in Edmonton, Calgary, Fort McMurray and elsewhere.

But that doesn’t mean their allies outside of the Legislature aren’t on the job. Spotted in the wild this week: a conservative Christian lobby group trying to convince Albertans that private schools are somehow more “accountable” than the public system.

We first spotted this piece in the Lethbridge Herald, but they picked it up from Troy Media, a wire service whose Albertan editorial content appears to be dominated by editorials from right-leaning think tanks.

Let’s be charitable and consider the editorial’s arguments before we ruin things by pointing out who wrote it.

Are private schools more accountable than the public system?

The editorial’s author argues that having 93 per cent of students in the public system means it’s not accountable.

“Alberta parents could regain control if they had access to a greater number of affordable learning options,” they argue.

‘Vote with your wallet,’ essentially.

Never mind that parents with children in the public system actually do vote—with their literal votes. Public school trustees are publicly elected. You don’t get to vote for the board of directors at the local private school, unless you’re a shareholder.

“Affordable learning options” is doing a lot of work in that quote too. Tuition at Rundle College in Calgary starts at $18,000. West Island College, also in Calgary, will cost you at least $21,000 annually. Strathcona-Tweedsmuir in Strathmore? That’s also $21,000 a year.

The author clings to the popular right-wing belief that private systems are inherently more agile thanks to the power of competition. A bit further down the article, they argue that “for instance, in 2020, 84 per cent of independent schools missed no more than three days of classes during the initial COVID-19 closures, whereas public schools struggled to adapt,” as though conservative, religious private schools in Alberta refusing to protect their students from COVID was positive.

The language of “parents regaining control” over education in Alberta cuts someone crucial out of the story: the workers who are providing the education. Are we supposed to believe that knee-capping workers’ rights is a good thing?

Editorial comes from right-wing Christian lobby group that once opposed same-sex marriage

A look at the author and organization behind this op-ed suggests that yes, they may indeed want you to believe that workers’ rights are bad.

Catharine Kavanagh, the listed author for this piece is the western stakeholder lead for Cardus, a Christian conservative lobby group aligned closely with the UCP.

Kavanagh and Cardus have argued that teachers’ unions and school board organizers are “ideological extremists.” Cardus—sometimes through Kavanagh, and sometimes through its CEO Michael Van Pelt—have gotten themselves in Alberta’s papers quite a bit over the past few years inveighing against education workers’ unions and arguing against federally funded daycare.

Van Pelt has lent his voice to campaigns by business lobbyists like the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses and Calgary Chamber of Commerce, so his anti-labour perspective shouldn’t come asf a surprise.

Financial disclosure from previous years tell us that Cardus’s budget was in the realm of $4 million to $5 million (CAD) in 2019. They also operate in the United States. The organization, which advocates for the financial interests of religious private school owners and shareholders, somehow enjoys charity status here in Canada.

Cardus was originally known as the Work Research Foundation (WRF) and was founded in 1974 by Harry Antonides. Readers in the labour movement may be familiar with that name: Antonides was also one of the founders of the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC), an infamously employer-friendly organization that the rest of the house of labour broadly rejects as a false union.

In 2016, WRF merged with the Institution of Marriage and Family Canada, a religious organization which advocated for years against same-sex marriage and against access to birth control and abortion.

Kavanagh’s arguments for more privatization aren’t strong. It’s obvious on its face that a school board you vote for is more accountable than a private company you don’t vote for. It’s immediately clear that allowing private operators to scoop profit out of the education system isn’t going to make things cost less. 

But behind the byline, this attack on the striking workers is coming from the same old places: an ugly axis of fundamentalists who oppose secular society and wealthy businessmen who oppose workers’ rights.