B.C. New Democrats demand answers after scathing court ruling on teachers

VANCOUVER – B.C.’s Opposition New Democrats are demanding to know if Premier Christy Clark played a role in teacher negotiations that a judge says were designed to provoke a strike.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge issued a scathing ruling last week that awarded the teachers’ union $2 million because of legislation that removed issues related to class size and composition from bargaining.

A similar law was struck down in 2011, but the recent ruling says the province then introduced near-identical legislation and bargained in bad faith in an attempt to provoke a strike by teachers.

The New Democrats are now calling on the government to release cabinet documents that were examined during the court case but never released to the public.

NDP education critic Rob Fleming says the premier needs to release the documents to show whether the government had attempted to deliberately undermine the process.

Clark suggested last week that her government will likely appeal the court ruling.