2011 BCSC 469 (CanLII)
Supreme Court of British Columbia — British Columbia
collective bargaining — teachers — class size — government — school
cited by 3 cases
The teachers constitutionally challenged Bill 27 (the Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act) and Bill 28 (the Education Services Collective Agreement Act), which together eliminated hundreds of clauses in the teachers’ collective agreement and prohibited bargaining on various matters in the future. The prohibited matters included hours of work, class size and composition, and the levels of non-enrolling teachers such as librarians. The parties were in the midst of bargaining collective agreements when the government passed the legislation. The Court applied B.C. Health Services and held that provisions of Bill 27 interfered with collective bargaining rights and infringed s. 2(d) of the Charter. The infringement was not a reasonable limit demonstrably justified under s. 1 of the Charter.