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Across Canada, we are witnessing a subtle yet sweeping shift: ideology increasingly outweighs empirical judgment, and institutions once grounded in caution are now pressing ahead with conviction. When belief eclipses observation, society risks felling its own future. This essay explores how the parable of A Short History of Progress becomes a cautionary mirror for our age, when economic vitality, civic trust, and long-term health hang, in effect, on that final swing of the axe.
“The Last Tree” draws a sharp line from the collapse of Easter Island’s ecosystem to three modern Canadian crises—net-zero policy, selective law-enforcement in protest, and rapid-onset gender-affirming care—to ask: when ideology becomes our arbiter rather than evidence, what are we willing to sacrifice?
The Last Tree: When Ideology Fells the Future
In Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress, the tale of Easter Island stands as a stark parable of human folly. Isolated in the vast Pacific, the Rapa Nui people arrived around 800 AD and transformed a forested paradise into a monument to their ingenuity and hubris. Over centuries, they felled the island’s palm groves to haul colossal moai statues across the terrain, using timber for sledges, ropes from bark, and fuel for fires. What began as a display of ancestral piety and clan prestige spiraled into ecological catastrophe. Soil eroded, fertility plummeted, bird populations vanished, and the once-vibrant ecosystem crumbled. By the 17th century, the population had crashed from perhaps 15,000 to a few thousand, amid famine, warfare, and cannibalism. Wright captures the inexorable logic: progress, unchecked, devours its own foundations.
Yet it is the final act that lingers—a moment of crystalline horror. The people who felled the last tree could see it was the last, could know with complete certainty that there would never be another. Imagine that islander, axe in hand, gazing at the solitary palm swaying against the horizon. The wind carries the salt of an empty sea, the ground beneath him scarred and barren. What raced through his mind? Not ignorance, for the warnings were etched in the dust: topsoil washing into the ocean, rats devouring every seed, canoes rotting on barren shores. No, it was something fiercer—a conviction forged in ritual and rivalry.
This tree, he might have reasoned, honours the ancestors; to spare it is to dishonour them, to invite the gods’ wrath. The rival clan cannot be allowed supremacy in statue-toppling; one more moai secures our lineage’s glory. Tradition demands it, the priests decree it, and in the face of clan elders’ unyielding stares, doubt withers like the fronds around him. Survival? A coward’s calculus, subordinate to the sacred narrative of progress through monument. With a swing, ideology claims its victory over reality, sealing the island’s doom.
This scene, Wright implies, is not ancient history but a mirror to our own susceptibilities. Ideological blindness is not partisan—it afflicts any society where belief eclipses observation. We stand at analogous thresholds today, where cherished convictions compel us to strike the final blow.
Consider our pursuit of net-zero emissions, pursued with a fervour that borders on the messianic. The federal government’s 2030 targets, however well-intentioned, risk undermining the very prosperity they claim to safeguard. The rhetoric of existential apocalypse—tipping points invoked like divine judgments—drowns out the data: Canada’s emissions constitute roughly 1.5 percent of the global total, and even full compliance would yield negligible climatic impact while rivals like China and India accelerate coal-fired expansion. Policymakers, axe raised, justify the cut: it honours the intergenerational covenant, shames the sceptic as a heretic. Yet the last “tree” here is economic vitality itself, felled in service to a narrative that confuses virtue with viability.
No less alarming is the selective blindness in enforcing the rule of law, particularly amid the surge of “Free Palestine” protests since October 7, 2023. These demonstrations, while not all hateful, have coincided with a documented explosion of antisemitism: synagogues vandalised, Jewish students harassed, and public chants equating Zionism with Nazism increasingly tolerated under the banner of free expression. Authorities often cite the need to avoid escalation or protect equity rights—but to apply the law unevenly corrodes the Charter’s promise of equal protection. The justification echoes the islander’s: equity demands deference to the aggrieved, lest we be branded oppressors. Thus, the final tree of civic trust is hacked away under the banner of performative solidarity.
Perhaps most viscerally, our medical institutions’ embrace of gender-affirming care reveals ideology’s grip on empirical mercy. Provincial guidelines expedite hormones and surgeries for minors, often with scant longitudinal scrutiny, despite emerging evidence of regret and harm. Critics—including those echoing the UK’s Cass Review—argue that compassion has been recast as affirmation, turning clinics into ideological fortresses where dissent is pathologised. This is not to deny the reality of gender dysphoria or the dignity of trans adults seeking relief; it is to insist that true compassion must rest on evidence, not dogma. The clinician, scalpel poised, rationalises: empathy compels affirmation; to probe deeper risks transphobia’s charge. Reality—the patient’s lifelong body, the data’s gaps—yields to the doctrine, mutilating futures in the name of inclusion.
These Canadian vignettes, like Easter Island’s denouement, expose ideology’s seductive tyranny: a narrative so totalising it renders the evident obsolete. Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw this abyss in his dissection of nihilism, that devaluation where “the highest values are losing their value.” Like Wright’s islanders, we mistake self-destruction for virtue—a form of nihilism Nietzsche saw as civilisation’s end-game. Cloaked in Marxist activist garb—equity as the new god, progress as its prophet—these policies dissolve society’s sinews not through malice but through a will to power masquerading as justice. Nietzsche warned that such illusions prolong torment, for “hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”
To reclaim our ground, we must confront the axe in our hand: interrogate the story, honour the verifiable, and plant anew before the last tree falls. The islanders could not. We still can.
References
- Wright, Ronald. A Short History of Progress. Anansi, 2004.
- Fraser Institute, “Measuring the Cost of Canada’s Net-Zero Climate Policy,” 2024.
- B’nai Brith Canada, Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, 2024.
- Government of Canada, 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, 2022.
- Cass, Hilary. Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People (The Cass Review). UK NHS, 2024.
- For Canada-specific studies on gender-affirming care outcomes:
- Jackman, Liam et al., “Patient-reported outcomes, provider-reported outcomes, and physiologic parameters after gender-affirming hormone treatment in Canada: a systematic review” (2025). (SpringerLink)
- Lawson, M.L. et al., “A Cross-Sectional Analysis from the Trans Youth CAN! Study” (2024). (Jah Online)
- “At-a-glance – Gender identity and sexual attraction among Canadian youth: findings from the 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth” (2023). (canada.ca)
“The issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.” This maxim, drawn from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, exposes a tactical pattern: a left-wing movement cloaks a raw power-grab in moral-righteous language. Nowhere is that clearer than in the 2025 teachers’ strike in Alberta.
On the surface, the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) insists the fight centres on a “funding crisis” harming students—demanding an additional C$2.6 billion plus large wage increases and stricter class-size caps. Yet the empirical record undermines the narrative that Alberta is desperately under-funded, and it raises the question: is this truly about pedagogy or about politics?
Funding vs Outcomes: The Data
In high-income countries, higher spending per pupil does not reliably produce higher student achievement. For example, U.S. elementary/secondary expenditure was about $15,500 USD per Full-Time Equivalent in 2019, compared with the OECD average of $11,300. (National Center for Education Statistics) A detailed Canadian analysis by the Fraser Institute found that spending fails to correlate strongly with performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests. (Fraser Institute)
In Canada, real (inflation-adjusted) per-student spending on public schools increased only modestly from 2012/13 to 2021/22—5.1 % nationally—per the Fraser Institute. (Fraser Institute) More relevant: Alberta’s spending dropped 17.2 % in the same period. (Education News Canada) Hence the claim that Alberta’s education system is starving for funds is misleading.
Teacher Compensation & Relative Position
If wage deprivation were the core issue, one would expect Alberta teachers to be significantly out-of-line with their peers. But data show Alberta is not vastly behind. While the ATA asserts salary stagnation, the context is more nuanced: overall compensation is competitive at the national level. That suggests bargaining is less about emergency pay than about positioning. This implies the strike rhetoric—“kids first,” “funding crisis,” “education collapse”—acts as cover for political mobilization.
From Bargaining to Politics
The strike began October 6, 2025, involving some 51,000 teachers across the province and impacting hundreds of thousands of students. (Wikipedia) On October 28 the United Conservative Party (UCP) government invoked the notwithstanding clause through Bill 2—forcing teachers back and imposing a contract. (Alberta Teachers’ Association) That is a dramatic escalation for what many would expect to be a wage-and-conditions dispute.
The Broader Labour Mobilisation
But the strike did not remain isolated. The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) president called an “emergency meeting” of public and private-sector union leaders, demanding the government rescind Bill 2 or face “unprecedented collective action.” (Alberta Federation of Labour) Other unions—nurses, custodians, public-sector workers—were implicitly or explicitly aligned. This is no narrower labour stand-off. It is a broad labour front coalescing around a political narrative.
The Political Narrative: NDP Strategy
Enter the Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP). Its leadership framed the battle as existential for the UCP, calling Premier Danielle Smith “coward” and declaring the strike “the beginning of the end” for the ruling party. Polls report the UCP’s approval tumbling.
The symbiosis is clear: union mobilisation, educational disruption, and political leverage combine. The “funding for students” narrative appears to morph quickly into a power-battle for political realignment.
When the “Kids First” Slogan Masks a Revolutionary Agenda
Framing the strike as entirely student-centric hides the political logic. By shutting schools and generating parental strain, the strike creates electoral pressure. The rhetoric of “for the kids” serves as a Trojan Horse. Unions and the NDP do not merely seek more money—they seek to reshape fiscal policy, entrench union influence, and weaken the standing party. As the Fraser Institute reminds us, simply throwing more money at K-12 education rarely produces measurable gains; the real levers lie in teacher-quality, accountability, curriculum rigour—not just budgets. (Todayville)
In Alberta the material case for emergency action is thin: if funding and compensation are already broadly in line, the crisis rhetoric becomes suspect.
What Should Parents & Taxpayers Do?
- Demand transparency: If the ATA or any union claims a “funding crisis,” ask for hard numbers—what line-items, what enrolment ratios, what outcome improvements are promised?
- Insist on measurable results: Additional spending should come paired with accountability—higher literacy scores, lower drop-out rates.
- Consider union-monopoly reform: If classrooms become battlegrounds for ideological or political conflict rather than learning, the monopoly model must be questioned.
- Focus on high-leverage reform, not just dollars: Empirical studies suggest teacher quality and delivery matter far more than marginal increases in spending.
- Recognise tactics: If a labour dispute evolves suddenly into broad political mobilisation, parents must ask: am I seeing advocacy for children or agitation for power?
The Stakes
If the revolution behind the strike succeeds, classrooms become pawns in a much larger game: the transformation of Alberta’s political economy, the elevation of public-sector unions as political actors, the weakening of fiscal restraint.
Parents may believe they support “kids first,” but without scrutiny they might end up supporting ideological conquest. The issue is never merely education—it is power. The question isn’t only “will teachers get more pay?” but “who gets to control the education agenda?”
Let classrooms remain places of learning, not battlegrounds for political realignment.
Bibliography
- Fraser Institute. Education Spending in Public Schools in Canada, 2024 Edition. Vancouver: Fraser Institute. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/education-spending-in-public-schools-in-canada-2024.pdf (Fraser Institute)
- Fraser Institute. School Spending and Performance in Canada and Other High-Income Countries. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/school-spending-and-performance-in-canada-and-other-countries.pdf (Fraser Institute)
- Fraser Institute. “Six out of 10 provinces increased per-student spending on public schools, even after adjusting for inflation.” Education News Canada, August 23 2024. https://educationnewscanada.com/article/education/level/k12/3/1097267/six-out-of-10-provinces-increased-per-student-spending-on-public-schools-even-after-adjusting-for-inflation.html (Education News Canada)
- ATA. “ATA to Challenge Bill 2.” Alberta Teachers’ Association News Release, October 27 2025. https://teachers.ab.ca/news/ata-challenge-bill-2 (Alberta Teachers’ Association)
- Amnesty International Canada. “Alberta’s use of notwithstanding clause in Bill 2.” Press Release, October 28 2025. https://amnesty.ca/press-releases/alberta-notwithstanding-clause-bill-2/ (Amnesty International Canada)
- Discover Airdrie. Anna Ferensowicz, “Where Alberta stands in national school spending: Fraser study.” September 12 2025. https://www.discoverairdrie.com/articles/where-alberta-stands-in-national-school-spending-fraser-study (Discover Airdrie)
- Todayville. “Spending per K-12 student in Canada ranged from …” (2022-23 data summary) https://www.todayville.com/spending-per-k-12-student-in-canada-ranged-from-13494-in-alberta-to-19484-in-quebec-in-2022-23/ (Todayville)
- Global News. “Alberta teachers say fight just begun but will follow the law …” October 2025. https://globalnews.ca/news/11497853/alberta-teachers-strike-will-follow-law-back-to-work-bill/ (Global News)
- Wikipedia. “2025 Alberta teachers’ strike.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Alberta_teachers%27_strike (Wikipedia)
In an age that demands shame from the West, Douglas Murray deploys the ultimate counterstrike:
“I don’t especially think of myself as being white and don’t particularly want to be cornered into thinking in such terms. But if you are going to corner me, then let me give you an answer to the best of my ability.
“The good things about being white include being born into a tradition that has given the world a disproportionate number, if not most, of the things that the world currently benefits from. The list of things that white people have done may include many bad things, as with all peoples. But the good things are not small in number. They include almost every medical advancement that the world now enjoys. They include almost every scientific advancement that the world now benefits from. No meaningful breakthrough in either of these areas has come for many centuries from anywhere in Africa or from any Native American tribe. No First Nation wisdom ever delivered a vaccine or a cure for cancer.
“White people founded most of the world’s oldest and longest-established educational institutions. They led the world in the invention and promotion of the written word. Almost alone among any peoples it was white people who—for good and for ill—took an interest in other cultures beyond their own, and not only learned from these cultures but revived some of them. Indeed, they have taken such an interest in other peoples that they have searched for lost and dead civilizations as well as living ones to understand what these lost peoples did, in an attempt to learn what they knew. This is not the case with most other peoples. No Aboriginal tribe helped make any advance in understanding the lost languages of the Indian subcontinent, Babylon, or ancient Egypt. The curiosity appears to have gone almost entirely one way. In historical terms, it seems to be as unusual as the self-reflection, the self-criticism, and indeed the search for self-improvement that marks out Western culture.
“White Western peoples happen to have also developed all the world’s most successful means of commerce, including the free flow of capital. This system of free market capitalism has lifted more than one billion people out of extreme poverty just in the twenty-first century thus far. It did not originate in Africa or China, although people in those places benefited from it. It originated in the West. So did numerous other things that make the lives of people around the world immeasurably better.
“It is Western people who developed the principle of representative government, of the people, by the people, for the people. It is the Western world that developed the principles and practice of political liberty, of freedom of thought and conscience, of freedom of speech and expression. It evolved the principles of what we now call ‘civil rights,’ rights that do not exist in much of the world, whether their peoples yearn for them or not. They were developed and are sustained in the West, which though it may often fail in its aspirations, nevertheless tends to them.
“All this is before you even get onto the cultural achievements that the West has gifted the world. The Mathura sculptures excavated at Jamalpur Tila are works of exceptional refinement, but no sculptor ever surpassed Bernini or Michelangelo. Baghdad in the eighth century produced scholars of note, but no one ever produced another Leonardo da Vinci. There have been artistic flourishings around the world, but none so intense or productive as that which emerged around just a few square miles of Florence from the fourteenth century onward. Of course, there have been great music and culture produced from many civilizations, but it is the music of the West as well as its philosophy, art, literature, poetry, and drama that have reached such heights that the world wants to participate in them. Outside China, Chinese culture is a matter for scholars and aficionados of Chinese culture. Whereas the culture created by white people in the West belongs to the world, and a disproportionate swath of the world wants to be a part of it.
“When you ask what the West has produced, I am reminded of the groups of professors assigned to agree on what should be sent in a space pod into orbit in outer space to be discovered by another race, if any such there be. When it came to agreeing on what one musical piece might be sent to represent that part of human accomplishment one of the professors said, ‘Well, obviously, it will be Bach’s Mass in B Minor.’ ‘No,’ averred another. ‘To send the B Minor Mass would look like showing off.’ To talk about the history of Western accomplishments is to be put at great risk of showing off. Do we stay just with buildings, or cities, or laws, or great men and women? How do we restrict the list that we put up as a preliminary offer?
“The migrant ships across the Mediterranean go only in one direction—north. The people-smuggling gangs’ boats do not—halfway across the Mediterranean—meet white Europeans heading south, desperate to escape France, Spain, or Italy in order to enjoy the freedoms and opportunities of Africa. No significant number of people wishes to participate in life among the tribes of Africa or the Middle East. There is no mass movement of people wishing to live with the social norms of the Aboriginals or assimilate into the lifestyle of the Inuit, whether those groups would allow them in or not. Despite everything that is said against it, America is still the world’s number one destination for migrants worldwide. And the next most desirable countries for people wanting to move are Canada, Germany, France, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The West must have done something right for this to be the case.
“So if you ask me what is good about being white, what white people have brought to the world, or what white people might be proud of, this might constitute the mere beginnings of a list of accomplishments from which to start. And while we are at it, one final thing. This culture that it is now so fashionable to deprecate, and which people across the West have been encouraged and incentivized to deprecate, remains the only culture in the world that not only tolerates but encourages such a dialogue against itself. It is the only culture that actually rewards its critics. And there is one final oddity here worth noting. For the countries and cultures about which the worst things are now said are also the only countries demonstrably capable of producing the governing class unlike all of the others.
“It is not possible today for a non-Indian to rise to the top of Indian politics. If a white person moved to Bangladesh, they would not be able to become a cabinet minister. If a white Westerner moved to China, neither they nor the next generation of their family nor the one after that would be able to break through the layers of government and become supreme leader in due course. It is America that has twice elected a black president—the son of a father from Kenya. It is America whose current vice president is the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica. It is the cabinet of the United Kingdom that includes the children of immigrants from Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan, Uganda, and Ghana and an immigrant who was born in India. The cabinets of countries across Africa and Asia do not reciprocate this diversity, but it is no matter. The West is happy to accept the benefits this brings, even if others are not.”
-Douglas Murray from the Conclusion of War on the West.
Alberta’s first province-wide teachers’ strike has drawn national attention, exposing deep tensions between educators’ demands for fair compensation and the government’s drive for fiscal restraint. With more than 51,000 teachers on strike, classrooms across the province remain closed, and Premier Danielle Smith’s government prepares back-to-work legislation. Here’s what’s really at stake—and where both sides stand.
The Dispute at a Glance
The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA), representing over 51,000 public, Catholic, and francophone teachers, initiated a province-wide strike on October 6, 2025—the first full withdrawal of services in its history. Collective bargaining began more than 18 months ago, but talks broke down after the ATA tabled a comprehensive proposal on October 14, which the government rejected as unaffordable, estimating an added cost of nearly $2 billion beyond current budget projections.
As of October 26, no new bargaining sessions are scheduled. Premier Danielle Smith has pledged to introduce back-to-work legislation on October 27 if no deal is reached, and her government has signaled readiness to invoke the notwithstanding clause to preempt legal challenges.
Core Issues and Divergent Positions
The ATA argues that chronic underfunding, rising classroom complexity, and stagnant wages threaten teacher retention and student outcomes. The government counters that its funding model already reflects enrollment growth, claiming the union’s proposal exceeds fiscal limits without introducing new revenue sources, such as a provincial sales tax.
Both sides cite inflation and federal immigration policy as aggravating factors but assign responsibility differently.
Key Positions Compared
| Issue | ATA Position and Demands | Government Position and Offers |
|---|---|---|
| Salary Increases | 15% compounded over three years to offset inflation (20–25% since the last agreement) and keep wages competitive. | 12% over four years (3% annually), plus a $4,000 one-time retention bonus; claims this would make Alberta teachers the second-highest paid in Canada. |
| Class Sizes and Complexity | Enforceable class caps (20–23 students max, K–9) and 200 minutes of guaranteed weekly prep time for high school teachers. | No mandatory caps; promises to hire 3,000 new teachers and 1,500 educational assistants, citing federal immigration policies as the main driver of class complexity. |
| Educational Supports and Funding | $2.6 billion in stable, dedicated funding for mental health, professional development, and special needs support. | $2.6 billion in base funding tied to enrollment, alongside over 130 new schools; focuses on infrastructure and hiring without raising taxes. |
| Negotiation Process and Strike | Rejects mediation as overly restrictive; frames strike as a lawful escalation after failed talks. Will adopt “work-to-rule” if legislated back. | Labels union demands as inflexible; offers enhanced mediation if the strike ends immediately. Proceeding with back-to-work legislation to “protect students.” |
Escalation and Public Response
What began as rotating regional walkouts has now become a province-wide shutdown, impacting hundreds of thousands of students and families. Public sentiment remains split—polls show strong support for smaller class sizes but growing concern about prolonged disruptions to schooling.
The ATA has twice rejected the government’s 12% wage proposal, calling it insufficient given inflationary pressures. Finance Minister Nate Horner maintains the offer exceeds adjustments made under the previous NDP government and aligns with broader public-sector restraint measures.
What Comes Next
With back-to-work legislation imminent, Alberta faces a pivotal test of both fiscal discipline and labor relations. The proposed bill would compel a return to work while imposing fines for defiance. ATA leadership warns that if the law passes, teachers will respond through work-to-rule actions and broader public advocacy campaigns.
Observers note that this standoff could galvanize other public-sector unions, creating a wave of coordinated opposition to legislative back-to-work measures across Canada. Whether a negotiated settlement or legal confrontation emerges first may determine the tone of public-sector labor relations for years to come.
References and Data Sources
- Alberta Teachers’ Association. “Moving forward with bargaining.” October 15, 2025.
https://teachers.ab.ca/news/moving-forward-bargaining - Alberta Teachers’ Association. “ATA rejects government’s biased mediation proposal.” October 17, 2025.
https://teachers.ab.ca/news/ata-rejects-governments-biased-mediation-proposal - Alberta Teachers’ Association. “Bill 2 won’t fix the crisis in Alberta classrooms.” October 24, 2025.
https://teachers.ab.ca/news/bill-2-wont-fix-crisis-alberta-classrooms - CBC News. “Province will consider back-to-work legislation for Alberta teachers if no deal.” October 15, 2025.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/nate-horner-alberta-teachers-strike-talks-legislation-9.6939589 - CBC News. “Back-to-work legislation to end Alberta teachers’ strike coming Monday, says premier.” October 23, 2025.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/back-to-work-legislation-to-end-alberta-teachers-strike-coming-monday-says-premier-9.6949884 - Calgary Herald. “Alberta teachers’ union has proposal for province amidst strike.” October 15, 2025.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/teachers-union-contract-proposal-alberta-teachers-strike - Edmonton Journal. “ATA angered by back-to-work legislation, but still considering options.” October 24, 2025.
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/edmonton-teachers-have-harsh-words-for-the-upc - Nate Horner (@NateHornerAB) on X (Twitter), October 2025 posts detailing government offer.
https://x.com/natehornerab - Red FM Calgary. “ATA President Jason Schilling calls for smaller class sizes and fair wages as teacher strike talks continue.” October 16, 2025.
https://calgary.redfm.ca/ata-president-jason-schilling-calls-for-smaller-class-sizes-and-fair-wages-as-teacher-strike-talks-continue/
As Alberta’s teachers’ strike enters its fourth week, the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) continues to frame its demands as a crusade for student welfare. Yet the claim that “more money equals better outcomes” collapses under scrutiny. From OECD comparisons to provincial spending data, the evidence shows that educational achievement depends far more on teaching quality, curriculum, and social factors than raw dollars. The strike, for all its moral packaging, reveals a deeper struggle over power, perception, and the limits of evidence-based policy.
The Alberta Teachers’ Association claims more funding will improve student outcomes—but decades of Canadian and international data show little correlation between spending and achievement. Here’s what the evidence actually says.
The Illusion of “Funding Equals Outcomes”
The ATA has justified its province-wide strike—launched on October 6, 2025—as a moral stand for students, demanding over $2.6 billion in new funding, along with wage hikes and class-size caps. This narrative, however, fails the empirical test. International and domestic data demonstrate no consistent correlation between per-student spending and academic performance in either Canada or the United States.
By invoking student welfare while halting instruction for hundreds of thousands of children, the ATA’s rhetoric converts a standard labor dispute into a manipulative moral appeal. The union’s campaign, in effect, weaponizes classrooms to secure greater compensation—substituting sentiment for substantiation.12
International Comparisons: Money Doesn’t Buy Results
Cross-national data dispels the myth outright. In 2021–22, the United States spent an inflation-adjusted $15,500 per K–12 student, compared to $12,229 in Canada.3 Yet on the 2022 PISA assessments, Canadian students outperformed Americans across all domains—mathematics (497 vs. 465), reading (507 vs. 504), and science (515 vs. 499).4
Within Canada, spending disparities tell the same story. Quebec, investing roughly $11,000 per pupil, consistently ranks among the top performers in PISA literacy and numeracy, while Saskatchewan, despite a 14.8% real spending increase from 2018–2022, has seen no corresponding gains in outcomes.56 As the Fraser Institute concludes: “Higher levels of per-student spending do not achieve higher student scores on standardized tests.”7
U.S. Evidence: The Plateau Effect
American data reinforces this pattern. Brookings Institution research on state-level NAEP scores finds that per-pupil expenditure is “only weakly related” to student performance, with intrastate differences far outweighing funding gaps between states.8 The Mountain States Policy Center adds that even after controlling for demographics, “little if any positive correlation” remains.9
Despite record K–12 spending of $857 billion in 2022, U.S. achievement continues to slide: 8th-grade reading scores fell three points since 2022, even after adjusting for inflation.10 Meta-analyses from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) quantify these effects precisely—every 10% increase in spending yields only a 0.05–0.09 standard deviation improvement in test performance, with benefits plateauing beyond basic adequacy.1112 In short: money matters, but only up to the point where systems are competently run.
Alberta’s Context: Selective Honesty and Strategic Obfuscation
ATA President Jason Schilling claims “chronic underfunding” drives poor outcomes. Yet Alberta’s per-student funding already aligns with or exceeds most provincial benchmarks when enrollment growth is accounted for.13 The union’s October 14 proposal advances structural demands unsupported by the evidence it cites, while rejecting a 12% wage offer that would make Alberta’s teachers the second-highest paid in Canada.14
This contradiction reveals intent. The ATA’s approach—threatening continued disruption and “work-to-rule” resistance post-legislation—shows the strike is less about pedagogy than about extracting concessions under moral camouflage.15 Polling confirms this miscalculation: while Albertans sympathize with smaller class sizes, they oppose protracted strikes that harm students.16
What the Evidence Actually Shows
Decades of research converge on one conclusion: achievement is driven not by spending, but by teaching quality, curriculum coherence, and socioeconomic stability.17 The global example is Estonia, which spends less than half the U.S. per pupil yet consistently ranks among the top five PISA performers due to its rigorous national curriculum and teacher accountability systems.18
The ATA’s position, by contrast, exemplifies a form of narrative warfare—a strategic fusion of moral rhetoric and material self-interest. Its funding narrative exploits public empathy while sidestepping empirical accountability. Policymakers should reject this coercive model and instead target resources toward proven reforms: effective instruction, rigorous content, and genuine equity—not symbolic spending.
Footnotes
- Alberta Teachers’ Association, “Moving forward with bargaining,” October 15, 2025, https://teachers.ab.ca/news/moving-forward-bargaining ↩
- CBC News, “Back-to-work legislation to end Alberta teachers’ strike coming Monday,” October 23, 2025, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/back-to-work-legislation-to-end-alberta-teachers-strike-coming-monday-says-premier-9.6949884 ↩
- OECD, Education at a Glance 2024, Table B1.1, https://www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance/ ↩
- OECD, PISA 2022 Results (Volume I), 2023, https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2022-results.htm ↩
- Statistics Canada, “Elementary-Secondary Education Expenditure,” 2023, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-582-x/81-582-x2023001-eng.htm ↩
- Fraser Institute, “Comparing the Provinces on Education Spending and Student Performance,” 2024, https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-provinces-education-spending-student-performance ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Brookings Institution, “The Geography of Education Inequality,” 2023, https://www.brookings.edu/research/geography-education-inequality/ ↩
- Mountain States Policy Center, “Education Spending and Student Outcomes,” 2024, https://mountainstatespolicy.org/education-spending-outcomes ↩
- NCES, Digest of Education Statistics 2023, Table 236.10, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_236.10.asp ↩
- NBER, “The Effects of School Spending on Educational and Economic Outcomes,” Working Paper 24649, 2022, https://www.nber.org/papers/w24649 ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Alberta Education, “Funding Manual 2024/25,” https://www.alberta.ca/funding-manual ↩
- Nate Horner (@NateHornerAB), X posts, October 2025, https://x.com/natehornerab ↩
- Alberta Teachers’ Association, “Bill 2 won’t fix the crisis,” October 24, 2025, https://teachers.ab.ca/news/bill-2-wont-fix-crisis-alberta-classrooms ↩
- Angus Reid Institute, “Alberta Teachers’ Strike Poll,” October 2025 (summary via media) ↩
- Hanushek, E., “The Impact of Differential Expenditures on School Performance,” Educational Researcher, 1989. ↩
- OECD, PISA 2022 Results, Country Notes: Estonia. ↩
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