DEAR EDITOR:
Re: Taxpayers must pay for teachers' wage increases, Letters to the editor, The Record, Oct. 12.
Joe Sawchuk seems to be either an incompetent researcher or a liar when he states Ontario pays the highest average (teacher salary), $75,668, while B.C.'s average (he uses the phrase are paid) is a high of $71,831.
First of all, how can an average be a "high?" High of what? From the number cited it looks as if it was the top of a teaching scale which isn't and never was an "average."
From the amount, it looks like the amount teachers there were being paid about five or six years ago.
Second, and worse, in reality the top of the Ontario scale for a teacher with five years of teacher training is now $89,614, while the top of the grid for maximum qualified is $94,303.
Sawchuk's statement is, to put it charitably, misleading by around $14,000 about the gap between the provinces.
By 2010, the last year B.C. teachers had a current contract, a Vancouver teacher with five years training and maximum years of experience would earn $74,353 and maximum earning on the grid for top experience and training yielded $81,489.
Thus the differences between B.C. and Ontario have escalated hugely.
Somehow Ontario can find the money to pay teachers more, but the money is just doesn't seem to exist in B.C.
Joe is pretty scornful of "university graduate people," but his looks like a case which would benefit from more honesty or education and probably both.
David Samuel, New Westminster
