On Tuesday evening, in the final 10 minutes of the supper hour newscast, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith made a televised address to announce her government’s plan to spend $8.6-billion spread out over the next seven years to build 30 new schools a year.
The plan will create, through the new school construction accelerator program, as it has been dubbed, 200,000 student spaces. In a province that has seen a historic surge in population (we’ll get to that), this is good news.
Every Albertan has likely heard the stories about public schools bursting with pupils and classrooms overflowing, leaving staff overwhelmed and kids trying to learn in challenging environments. So even through the most partisan of lenses, it’s tough to have an issue with any government looking to build schools.
But how exactly is this going to happen so quickly?
In an interview with The Globe’s Kelly Cryderman ahead of Smith’s announcement, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said the province will speed the building of schools by allowing multiple steps of a project to be approved in the construction process without having to wait for the next budget cycle. And with the help of school boards and municipalities ensuring sites are ready, the government says it’s ready.
At the government press conference the day after the speech, Smith was gung-ho about getting started: “If you can prepare the sites, the province will have the dollars set aside to get shovels in the ground,” she said.
The province’s two biggest school boards, Edmonton Public Schools and Calgary Board of Education, both said they have 25 sites ready to go.
Now it’s not to say there aren’t questions. As Kelly asked in her column: Where’s the money going to come from? Because as she points out, the “Premier’s characterization of the province’s finances is rosy.”
Kelly cites soft oil prices and even the Finance Minister himself a few weeks ago speaking about how even though the province has a surplus of $2.9-billion, that money is spoken for.
“We must be more measured and responsible in making budgetary decisions,” Nate Horner said in August. “We can’t spend beyond our means.”
And there are legitimate questions from public school proponents about why any money would be going toward private schools. As The Globe’s Alanna Smith reported, while the details remain fuzzy, Smith has said her “government is still ironing out the details of a pilot program that will ‘incentivize investment’ by non-profit private schools to create thousands of student spaces.”
Smith says it’s about “choice” but her political rival, NDP leader Naheed Nenshi says he thinks it’s the first time in Canadian history that public money is being used for private school construction.
No matter where you stand on public vs. private, how did Alberta end up in a situation where we are so behind on major infrastructure as basic as schools? Well, if you were listening to Smith’s speech on Tuesday, she pointed the finger directly at the massive population growth seen in Alberta the last few years, blaming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his “unrestrained open border policies.”
As Carrie Tait reported for The Globe last weekend, the province estimates its population will soon hit 4.9 million, up 4.6 per cent in 2024. That is the biggest spike in more than a century, according to provincial data stretching back to 1921.
The quick jump in the number of new Albertans (and let’s be clear, the moment you move here and decide to settle here, no matter how long ago or recently, you are now an Albertan) has put a real strain on resources. Not only are classrooms crowded, but housing costs are rising and the province itself has said economic growth will lag population growth.
And of course there’s the health care system. The other big government-run plank that could use some love. Whether it’s the time it takes to see a family doctor, shuttered rural emergency rooms or what could be a deadly wait for cancer treatment, there’s a lot to consider. While outgoing Alberta Medical Association president Paul Parks points the finger at government, I’m not sure anyone has an $8.6-billion magic bullet to solve that problem.
This is the weekly Alberta newsletter written by Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.