Dr. Tim Walters’ March 12 screed, “Faculty supports teachers,” falsely claims that the members of the Okanagan College Faculty Association will stand in solidarity with the BCTF. I am a dues-paying member of the union he purports to lead, and I was not asked, nor polled, nor surveyed at any time, about who I will or will not “stand in solidarity with.”
This government upon which Walters heaps such scorn will contribute almost $5 billion (that’s a five followed by nine zeros) in funding for education over the next three years. Health care funding during the same period will be more than three times that amount. So much for “…squeezing our public services.”
But Walters’ polemic isn’t really about education funding, is it? He states quite clearly that “…hopefully, we can organize to run (the B.C. Liberals) out of office.” Well, not all Okanagan College faculty members agree with his narrow, loonie-left views. The rest of us understand that every single dollar of government expenditure comes out of the wallets of, well, the rest of us. So we encourage, support, and in fact, demand, reasonableness and accountability from our government in spending our money.
For that reason alone, I choose to stand side by side with Premier Christy Clark, and the leaders of the B.C. Liberal Party, as they “struggle in solidarity” with the rest of us in pushing back against soak-the-taxpayer, pie-in-the-sky wish lists from fat-cat union bosses.
Mark T. Ziebarth
Summerland