VANCOUVER - The B.C. government has been ordered to pay public school teachers $2 million in damages in a court decision that slammed the province for playing politics at teachers' expense.
The 115-page ruling released on Monday is the second time the court has struck down as unconstitutional provincial legislation around class size and composition.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Susan Griffin found the government didn't negotiate in good faith with the B.C. Teachers' Federation after a court decision struck down the original legislation in April 2011.
"One of the problems was that the government representatives were pre-occupied by another strategy," Griffin wrote.
"Their strategy was to put such pressure on the union that it would provoke a strike by the union. The government representative thought this would give government the opportunity to gain political support for imposing legislation on the union."
The original legislation, Bill 28, removed issues such as class size and class composition from the teachers' collective agreement. It also stripped their rights to negotiate such issues in the future.
In April 2011, Griffin ruled the legislation was unconstitutional and gave the government a year to address the repercussions of the ruling.
The government did not repeal the invalid legislation, but instead enacted "virtually identical legislation" after the 12-month period expired, Griffin said in the most recent ruling.
The new legislation, Bill 22, still eliminated class size and composition from the contract and prohibited teachers from bargaining those terms, but the prohibition would expire by June 30, 2013.
The new legislation sparked a three-day walkout by teachers in March 2012, and also prompted the teachers' federation to return to court last September.
The government, in its defence, said the new legislation is valid because of its time-limited nature, and because it negotiated with the union in good faith before enacting the new rules.
But Griffin found Bill 22 just as unconstitutional as Bill 28.
"The court concludes that there is no basis for distinguishing the new legislation from the previous findings of this court," she said.
"The new duplicative legislation substantially interferes with the charter rights of teachers, which protects their freedom to associate to make representations to their employer and have the employer consider them in good faith."
Griffin also wrote in her decision that the negotiations that took place between the province's team and union representatives were "largely a waste of time."
The government's team, led by former president and CEO of the Public Sector Employers' Council Paul Straszak, believed the legislation was legitimate, just that it had failed to consult with the union prior to introducing it. It thought all that was needed to make the legislation constitutional was consultation — a conclusion condemned by Griffin as incorrect.
"A party cannot say it is consulting if it starts from the position that its mind is made up no matter what the other side presents by way of evidence or concerns," she said.
Indeed, the court ruling described various meetings where former federation representatives insisted negotiations should be focused on restoring collective bargaining on class size and composition.
However, those concerns were largely ignored by the government's representatives, the court decision said.
"It was clear that the government representatives were trying to use the threat of continuing the legislation as leverage in their negotiations with the BCTF, in efforts to gain agreement from the BCTF to forgo the rights which had just been vindicated," Griffin said.
She said that the government's extension of legislation that was already declared unconstitutional is so "fundamentally unfair" that awarding damages of $2 million against it is warranted.
The decision means terms such as class size and class composition are retroactively restored to the terms of the contract and can be the subject of future bargaining.