Dear Editor:
Re: Teachers should quit while they're ahead, Our View, May 4.
If Bill 22 really did force a cooling-off period and a round of mediation, then this editorial would make sense.
Unfortunately, it seems that The Record has swallowed the government spin on this bill rather than informing itself on what the bill really says.
Common sense and decades of precedent would clearly show that issues in dispute are taken off the table during a cooling-off period, and that mediation takes place with someone agreed to, and regarded as impartial by, both parties.
In Bill 22, the so-called cooling off period includes the imposition of serious concessions on teachers, reversing many years' worth of hard-won rights with the stroke of a pen; and the so-called mediator was not agreed to by both sides but rather appointed unilaterally by the government, and has been revealed to be, in fact, one of the people who helped draft the language of Bill 22.
As distinguished political commentator Vaughn Palmer has pointed out, when Christy Clark describes this bill as establishing a cooling-off period with mediation, it is as if she herself has not actually read the legislation.
Greg DePaco, New Westminster
