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“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)
I am tired of the bad rap Unions get. You know why they get a bad rap, because they are one of the few institutions in society that can mount effective opposition to corporate power. You like your 8 hour work day? Thank unions for that. Health and Safety regulations? Thank a union for it. You know why you’re thanking a union and not your employer? It’s because they don’t give two shitz about you, your family or your future.
Union history does not get taught in the classrooms because of course like actual democracy, it is a threat to corporate control and power. I’ve been reading Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Hedges and Sacco and I will share a few excerpts with you today.
“Workers in this country paid for their right by suffering brutal beatings, mass expulsions from company housing and jobs, crippling strikes, targets assassinations of union leaders, and armed battles with hired-gun thugs and state militias. Unions created the middle class. They opened up our democracy. Federal Marshals, state militias, sheriff’s deputies and at times even U.S. Army troops, along with the courts and legislative bodies, were repeatedly used to crush organized workers. Striking sugar cane workers were gunned down in Thibodaux, Louisiana, in 1887. Steel workers were shot to death in 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Railroad workers were murdered in the nationwide Pullman strike of 1894. Coal miners were massacred at Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914 and at Matewan, West Virginia, in 1920.
The Rockefellers, the Mellons, the Carnegies, and the Morgans – the Goldman Sachs and Walmart of their day – never gave a damn about workers. All they cared about was profit. The eight-hour workday, the minimum wage, Social Security, pensions, job safety, paid vacations, retirement benefits and health insurance were achieved because hundreds of thousands of workers physically fought a system of capitalist exploitation. They rallied around radicals such as Mary Harris “Mother” Jones – arrested at one point in the West Virginia coalfields for reading the Declaration of Independence to a crowd of miners – United Mine Workers’ President John L. Lewis, and “Big” Bill Haywood and his Wobblies, as well as Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs.
“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle […].” Frederick Douglas said. “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. […]” […] Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. “
From Days of Destruction Days of Revolt p. 159 – 160.
So before your next anti-union rant, maybe just stop and think of all things you are benefiting from right now that was paid for in blood and misery by people who had the courage and will to demand justice in society.
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