This Day In Snookland (ctd)....The Minister In Charge Of Grandstanding Contradicts Self.

AllTheRealHarmThatFits
DumberAndDumbestVille


Earlier today we noted that Janet Steffenhagen of the VSun had done the right thing and called the Education Minister out on his obfuscation when he told Bill Good this morning that he didn't know that the teachers and the school boards were planning to announce their (real) 'framework agreement' for moving forward with labour negotiations just a few days after he suddenly announced his government's (bogus) 10 year plan for labour peace that was based on, essentially, nothing at all.

Which means the bogus plan was very likely little more than deflector spin.

So....

Now caught in the headlights of his (and/or the Snook's Wizards') own making, the Minister has changed his tune and contradicted himself completely with a big bowl full of word salad filled to bursting with blather of the most nonsensical kind:

“I was aware that the BCPSEA board and BCTF were looking at a short-term agreement on how the two sides could better manage this next round of bargaining.

“To clarify, what I was referring to when speaking to Bill Good this morning was that I was not aware until a week or two ago that this matter was to be the focus of discussions at the BCPSEA AGM this past weekend.

“There was an expectation that this short-term bargaining initiative was going to be dealt with at the BCPSEA board meeting in the second week of January, but the board members deferred the discussion until this past weekend.

“It’s important to point out that the measures agreed to by the two parties are very close, if not identical, to what is proposed in the government’s framework. The key difference is that the BCPSEA-BCTF agreement lasts for the next four months only, whereas government is looking to make a broader set of improvements for the long term.”

Short-term my rear end (and yes we see what you did with that little second vs. third week of January thingy which shows just how much you did really know, so...deflect...deflect...deflect...and when that doesn't work deflect some more).

Look.

The Minister should resign immediately for doing his best to derail a process of substance, short-term or otherwise, that has the potential to  actually make things better for kids in this province.

OK?

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And that last paragraph....Does that mean that the Wizards got wind of the agreement and then tried to hijack it for their own PR purposes (don't forget - there was NO consultation with either party before the grandstanding)...This is pathetic and entirely counterproductive...For example, based on the truth-challenged Minister's latest 'statement', what if the government had just waited until after the announcement of the framework agreement, praised it (given that the Minister is now saying that it is, indeed, praiseworthy), and then made the suggestion that it could be used as the basis for good faith negotiations to make a long-term approach feasible?....Would that not have been an attempt to actually govern rather than grandstand by spiking the real, honest good work of others with a premature announcement of a bogus, empty process?...
Now...Spin for spin's sake is one thing...But spin that is designed to try and destroy something good that is in the public interest is something else entirely, which is why I honestly believe that heads should roll here.
Rant over, sorry....But in my opinion this is just one more example of both the incompetence and the willful destructiveness of these people.

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