The Education Minister is in hot water and is under investigation - for a number of e-mails he sent to teachers, at the same time school boards are embroiled in contract negotiations with the province.
Minister of Education Jeff Johnson sent the e-mails on February 6, but it’s how his office obtained the e-mails that’s at the centre of the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s investigation.
Johnson obtained the thousands of e-mail addresses, when the teachers registered for their teaching certificates – many of them using personal e-mail addresses.
In a statement, Privacy Commissioner Jill Clayton said she “would like to ascertain for myself, and the teachers who were contacted, whether or not these e-mails were sent in compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the FOIP Act).”
The investigation will look into whether Alberta Education was working within the FOIP Act when the e-mails were sent, and make recommendations to make sure any contact information is collected and used within the act going forward.
Despite the investigation, Johnson said Thursday that he wouldn’t back down until results are released.
“Until we’re told ‘you made a mistake and crossed the line,’ we’re going to keep doing it,” Johnson said Thursday.
It was a move the Alberta Teacher’s Association president said makes the organization uneasy – because many felt the message was too political.
“We’re very uneasy about it, because we felt it was more of a political message, we would not use our own e-mail to do that,” ATA President Carol Henderson said.
The timing of the message is also raising eyebrows, teachers have been in difficult contract negotiations – just last week, teachers rejected another offer, and negotiations will now continue on the local level.
A number of teachers who received the e-mail thought it was inappropriate.
“I felt there was the implication that the ATA wasn’t listening to me,” Teacher Greg Carabine said. “He’s there for us, but the big ATA is not.
“That’s not how it works.”
In the meantime, while negotiations continue – the Education Minister said he’ll watch proceedings closely, and that an imposed settlement is still not out of the question.
“That is an absolute last resort, something that we don’t want to do,” Johnson said. “The reality is we’ve been working very hard at this for the last 2.5 years already.”
On the other hand, the ATA said that measure would go too far.
“To impose a settlement when we’ve hardly had a chance to sit down and try to do the collection, bargain at the local level, it would just be ridiculous,” Henderson said.
The Privacy Commissioner's findings will be made public, however, there's no timeline for the investigation or the results.
With files from Kim Taylor
