Alberta Teacher Associations Call for More Consistent and Better COVID-19 Protections | The Canadian News

Teachers and staff at the province’s post-secondary institutions are calling on the Alberta government for better protection for themselves and their students against COVID-19.

In a letter sent to the Minister of Advanced Education, Demetrios Nicolaides, eight presidents of teachers’ associations called for a province-wide vaccination mandate for all higher education campuses, similar to what other Canadian jurisdictions have done.

They call for the reinstatement of contact tracing, a commitment to mandatory quarantine, improved compliance and continued funding for public health measures.

The teachers’ associations also want to have better information from the province on how to implement public health measures.

“The main reason we wrote this letter is because we feel that health decisions have been discharged at institutions at great cost,” Shauna MacDonald, president of the NAIT academic staff association, told Global News.

The presidents of eight teacher associations representing approximately 3,500 members in Edmonton, Calgary, Olds, Red Deer and Medicine Hat jointly signed the letter that was sent to the minister of advanced education.

The letter comes after faculty members saw the province lift restrictions and then COVID-19 cases spiked.

And when classes began, there were serious concerns about the safety of students, staff, and faculty.

“When it comes to the safety of our members and the safety of students and the safety of the community at large, we believe this is one way to ensure a safe workspace for faculty members, students, and employees alike. “SAIT said the President of the Association of Academic Professors, Blair Howes.

“We are entering blindly (in a classroom), and in good faith, that everyone is fine and we do not know.”

Postsecondary Institutions (PSIs) that do not implement the Provincial Restrictions Waiver Program or are not covered by the Calgary Vaccine Passport Regulations require masking and physical distancing. That would affect the in-person delivery of technical programs that require hands-on instruction, for example.

“We really feel that our institutions are being placed in a really unfair situation where they started to have to act almost like their own chief public health officers in facilitating their own spaces, and we see what results from that,” NorQuest College The president of the teachers’ association, Alexandru Caldararu, told Global News.

In a statement, Minister Nicolaides’ press secretary Laurie Chandler said that many of the jointly signed postsecondary institutions (ISPs) have adopted their own immunization mandates for working, attending or visiting campuses.

“If any ISP chooses not to implement a proof of vaccination requirement system, they will be subject to the public health restrictions outlined by the Medical Director of Health,” said Chandler.

In asking for sustained provincial funding for pandemic measures through the pandemic, the letter said that “it is not reasonable to put the cost of implementing public health protocols on the backs of workers, students and / or individual institutions who want to go further. there in the fight against COVID-19 ”.

“The cost of fully implementing a government mandate is not free,” Caldararu said, noting that schools would have to bear the costs of things like legal opinions, investigation, compliance, contact tracing and testing.

“Basically, it will be in its time and penny, without help from the provincial government,” Caldararu said.

“And obviously, the bigger you are, the more money you will have for that. But it is unfair to put that in an institution just because one is bigger than the other.

“This is a provincial responsibility.”

MacDonald does not expect any direct response to the letter from the minister of advanced education, but hopes that he will defend teachers’ associations in government.

“I hope you reach out to the institutions and reopen some conversations and see what kind of support they need,” he said.

Members of the teachers’ associations have a wide variety of opinions, and that was recognized by the presidents that Global News spoke with.

“It’s not about whether or not someone should get the vaccine, but is this a safe workplace? Because safety is paramount, ”Howes said.

“It doesn’t matter if you are a staff member or a student, you have the right to be safe in your place of study or in your workplace.”
Official Request for Enhanced Public Health Measures for Alberta’s Postsecondary Sector