Fewer Schools, More Politicians

More than 130 of British Columbia's public schools have been closed since 2001 when Gordon Campbell and his BC Liberals won election to government. Thousands of students have been forced to transfer from their shuttered schools to different facilities, and several thousand teaching positions have been lost.

Demographic change is the reason. Student enrolment is falling, and the Campbell Liberals believe that it is uneconomic to fund half-empty classrooms.

The Electoral Boundaries Commission recently recommended that three legislative seats representing the North and the Kootenays be eliminated, and five new ridings added to the Lower Mainland and the Okanagan.

Again, demographic change is the reason. While both the North and the Kootenays have declining populations, the latter two regions are experiencing dramatic growth.

But in sharp contrast to their active support for school closures, Gordon Campbell's BC Liberals refuse to accept the Commission's proposal that regions losing population should lose legislative representation. No seats will be lost, the premier declared, promising a bill to that effect during the upcoming fall sitting.

The reason for this hypocrisy? British Columbians need look no further than Shirley Bond, the minister of education and MLA for Prince George-Mount Robson, and the BC Liberal most likely to lose her seat through redistribution.

Ever so sanguine as schools were abandoned, students dislocated and teachers dismissed, Gordon Campbell and his BC Liberals will not allow demographic change to cause one of their own to lose her job.

BC's shifting population

British Columbia's population has grown every year since we joined Confederation. We finally reached the one million mark in 1946, and growth accelerated in the post-Second World War period. It took just 22 years to add a second million (in 1968), 18 years for the third million (in 1986), and then a mere 13 years to record our fourth million (in 1999).

Our population today is estimated at 4.3 million.

But some segments of British Columbians have seen -- and are seeing, for it is an ongoing process -- considerable fluctuations. And two of those segments, the school-age population and the rural population, have experienced significant declines in recent years.

Fewer school children

B.C.'s public school population peaked in 1997-98, when enrolment totaled nearly 639,000. Since then, the numbers have fallen steadily: last year the student count was under 588,000, and is projected for the current year at 570,000. (See page 2 here).

That's a loss of almost 70,000 public-school students in just a decade.

British Columbia is not unique in this regard. "Canada's elementary and secondary school enrolments fell by 1.2 per cent between the 1997-98 and 2003-04 school years," a report by the Canadian Council on Learning stated, "and further declines are anticipated over the next few years as the school-aged population shrinks."

Six years ago, Gordon Campbell's newly-elected BC Liberal government responded to the decline in enrolments by introducing a new funding formula. Not long thereafter, B.C. school districts began closing less-than full facilities and laying off teachers, librarians and other education professionals.

According to data compiled by the Ministry of Education, there were 1,780 public schools in 2000-01. The comparable number last year was 1,655, a decline of 125. (The total number of schools closed was 132; this difference is explained by the opening of new facilities.) (See page 29 of the Education Ministry report referenced above.)

Moreover, there were 36,650 teachers working in the public school system in 2000-01; the comparable number was 33,865 last year. That's a loss of 2,785 teaching jobs in six years. (See page 44 of the Education Ministry report.)

Pulling the hearts out of 'Heartlands'

Many of the abandoned schools were located in rural British Columbia, especially the North and the Kootenays. This caused considerable anxiety in affected communities, many of which also experienced other public sector cutbacks courtesy of the Campbell Liberals, notably the desertion of 24 rural courthouses, boarding-up of more than a dozen regional and district forest service offices, and elimination of government programs.

Worried by rising voter discontent, BC Liberal MLAs coined a phrase -- "the Heartlands" -- to describe the alleged importance of the province's rural areas. But they did little else other than to claim that painful financial decisions were made necessary by the province's changing demographics.

Typical of BC Liberal indifference was Shirley Bond. "My school district, school district 57, faces many, many challenges...," she told the legislature on February 13, 2003. "The largest fiscal challenge facing us is declining enrolment." She added: "Trustees are faced with empty classrooms, high heating bills and very tough choices."

But Bond took no action as local trustees closed seven Prince George district schools in 2002, vacated another seven in 2003, and shuttered one more in 2006.

Indeed, before the elimination of the last school, Bond seemed almost giddy about alternative uses for shuttered schools. "Because of declining enrolment, we actually closed 14 schools in my school district," she cheerfully observed in the house on March 28, 2006. "One of the schools has turned into an absolutely fantastic placed called the South Fort George community services kind of centre."

Rural population drain

The reason that the North and the Kootenays suffered more than other regions from school closures is the on-going decline in B.C.'s rural population. BC Stats recently reported that whereas the 1991 census found that 80 per cent of British Columbians were living in urban areas, the latest (2006) count put that figure at 85.4 per cent.

In other words, over the last 15 years, the proportion of B.C.'s population living in a rural setting has fallen from 20 per cent to 14.6 per cent. According to BC Stats, our province is now the most urbanized in Canada.

In both the North and the Kootenays, but especially in the former, the decline is not just in percentage terms, it is in real numbers. Two decades ago, when Bill Vander Zalm's government carved up B.C. into eight new Development Regions, the combined population of the four northern-most regions (Cariboo, Northcoast, Nechako and Northeast) was 320,000. The province's total population at the time was three million, meaning that the North was home to 10.7 per cent of all British Columbians.

The population of the four Development Regions peaked a decade ago, in 1997, at 356,000, but it then went into decline. Last year, B.C. Stats calculated that the four regions held 331,000 people, or just 7.7 per cent of the province's total population of 4.3 million.

Prince George, by far the largest urban centre in northern B.C., also had a real decline in population over the last decade. The 1996 census put the city's population at 75,150, but the 2001 tally dropped that number to 72,406, and the 2006 count found just 70,981.

That's a loss of more than 4,000 residents in the last decade.

The population in the Kootenay Development Region peaked in 1997 at almost 153,000. Last year it was down to under 149,000. As a proportion of B.C.'s total population, the Kootenays over the last decade have dropped from 3.9 per cent to 3.4 per cent.

Independent commission's proposal

Confronting data which showed a growing provincial population, but declining numbers of people living in the northern and southeast regions, the independent Electoral Boundaries Commission chaired by Judge Bruce Cohen issued a controversial initial report.

The commissioners proposed that the legislative assembly be enlarged by two seats for a new total of 81. This would be accomplished by abolishing two seats in the North and one in the Kootenays, and adding four new ridings in the populous Lower Mainland and another in the fast-growing Okanagan.

One of the northern seats to be sacrificed was in Prince George. The city currently has three, but that number would fall to two if the commission's report was enacted by the legislative assembly.

Minister Bond cries foul

The politically weakest of Prince George's three BC Liberal MLAs, Shirley Bond won re-election in 2005 with just 41.6 per cent of the vote in Prince George-Mount Robson. By comparison, John Rustad garnered 51.7 per cent in Prince George-Omineca, and Pat Bell obtained 49.9 per cent in Prince George North.

And so, seemingly indifferent as schools were closed, students transferred to different schools, teaching and librarian positions eliminated, courthouses scrapped, forest-service offices vacated and public-sector employees laid off, she finally was roused to action when threatened by the disappearance of her own job.

On August 17 Bond told the Prince George Citizen that she was "enormously disappointed" by the commission's suggested alterations. Shortly afterward, when the Cohen commission returned to Prince George on Sept. 5, she appeared in person to express her displeasure with their work. Northern MLAs have "a daunting task [to represent constituents] given the size of our ridings," she complained. "But never once in my years in office has a constituent approached me to say Northern B.C. is over represented."

Premier Campbell to the rescue

Fortunately for Bond, Premier Campbell -- who, it must be remembered, campaigned in the 1996 general election with a promise to reduce the legislature to just 60 members -- announced that he was overriding the independent commission. The BC Liberal government will introduce legislation this fall, he said, to expand the house by eight seats to 87.

No sitting MLA will lose his or her seat through redistribution. Bond's job is safe.

Unconcerned by school closures, the abandonment of courthouses, forest services offices and other public facilities, and the attendant loss of thousands of public-sector jobs, Campbell and his BC Liberals finally leapt into action when one of their own was at risk.

'Tough choices' for whom

Public officials have a responsibility to spend the public's monies in the most efficient, prudent and responsible manner possible. It is manifestly obvious, therefore, given the decline in B.C.'s student population over recent years, that the closure of a sizeable number of public schools was the best public policy decision for the province as a whole. As difficult as it was for students, parents, teachers and others, it simply had to be done.

Public officials also have an ethical and constitutional duty to ensure that our electoral system is fair. Given the decline of B.C.'s rural, northern and southeastern populations -- in real terms and as a proportion of the whole -- it is evident that the number of legislative representatives from the North and the Kootenays must be reduced, and fast-growing regions given greater representation.

In the former case, the Campbell government accepted the necessity of school closures. Perhaps that was because the difficult decision-making (in Shirley Bond's words, the "very tough choices") was offloaded onto B.C.'s school trustees. Perhaps it was because the pain of school closures was not personally felt by government MLAs. Or, maybe it was just the right thing to do.

In the latter case, Gordon Campbell rejected an impartial recommendation to eliminate three seats in the North and the Kootenays. There is only one possible explanation: the premier is unwilling to allow a BC Liberal MLA -- most likely Shirley Bond, but possibly Pat Bell or John Rustad -- to lose his or her seat (that is, their job) because of redistribution.

"I feel your pain," was a line used by former U.S. president Bill Clinton when he wanted to empathize with voters who had suffered economic or other hardship.

Gordon Campbell and his BC Liberals have a different philosophy. They simply refuse to allow one of their own to suffer the pain of dislocation and job loss so many other British Columbians -- students, parents, teachers and other public-sector workers -- have endured in recent years as a result of government policies.

Related Tyee stories:

• BC's Move to 'Big Box' Schools
  Parents worry closing small schools hurts kids.
• Hard Feelings in the Hurtland
  Lillooet went solidly Liberal in 2001. Devastating cuts have residents crying betrayal.
• Can BC's North Be Saved?
  Northern towns grapple with a shifting economy, government cutbacks, and doubts about whether the rural way of life is worth saving.