Province still hopeful of agreement with teachers: MLA Hunter

Posted on October 23, 2025 by admin

By Trevor Busch
Westwind Weekly News
editor@tabertimes.com

As the labour dispute between Alberta teachers and the provincial government dragged into its third week on Monday, Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter is still hopeful the two sides can reach an equitable agreement that will send more than 750,000 students back to their desks.

“This is very disruptive for parents – the kids need to be back in the classroom. I think that everybody agrees on that. So we just need to figure out how to come up with the proper compensation model that works for the teachers and Alberta taxpayers,” said Hunter. “And that’s really what’s going on. I’ll let the professionals do their work – they have all the numbers, all of the comparisons with other jurisdictions. I think that that’s the right way to do it. I don’t – I’ve always said I don’t believe that it’s a smart idea to negotiate in public. And that’s unfortunately where it’s gone. And because people don’t have all the information, you start hearing things that maybe aren’t 100 per cent correct – it’s just not helpful to negotiate in public. I hope that they can come to an agreement that will get people back to students, back to the classroom. That’s my position – it’s been my position from the beginning.”

Last week, Premier Danielle Smith said teachers could “fully expect” back-to-work legislation if no agreement has been reached between the two sides when the Alberta legislature reconvenes on Oct. 27.

“I think it’s a little premature to talk about that. I am very hopeful that we can come to an agreement together,” said Hunter. “You don’t want to have to do something like that. It would be better if we came together and and agreed on a program, something that works for each of us. A win-win is what we’re looking for.”

Smith has also proposed forming a commission on education to study the problems facing Alberta’s public school system and make recommendations once the strike is concluded.

“I think it’s extremely important,” said Hunter, who went on to detail some of the logistical problems the province currently faces with regard to education. “I think that the reality is there’s a lot of complexity going on in the classroom – we have a situation where over the last seven years, we’ve had 600,000 people move to Alberta. Everybody knows this, everybody is aware of this. Even the Liberals admitted that federally, they opened up the floodgates and let a lot of people in. And where did they go? They came to Alberta because there was jobs here and there was opportunity, so a disproportionate amount came here. So because of that, we’re now in a situation where the complexity within the classroom has gotten even worse. We’re now seeing people who have come from war-torn countries, they need support, they need help. We’ve got people who have no English skills whatsoever, no English learning at all, and so you need help for that. So the federal government, for the past 10 years, really has messed up the immigration file. They’re trying to fix it now, but we’re dealing with all of these things. It’s not just an education – look at the housing. Housing has just skyrocketed in cost. You can’t find rentals. You’ve got situations where our health care is being overwhelmed because so many people have moved in.”

“How do we address so many people being let in by the federal government, if this ever happened again? We can see what the effect is, it overwhelms our wraparound services that we provide in the province. We’re trying to address those things now, it’s just that it’s very difficult to be able to make it work for Albertans because of all of the immigration that we’ve seen,” said Hunter.

About 2,500 Alberta schools were closed when roughly 51,000 teachers went on strike on Oct. 6.