Re: Letter from Education Minister
I just loved reading the letter in Saturday's paper from the education minister. Her spinning of the statistics while trying to assert that her government has supported public education and particularly rural education was hilarious. She may, in fact, still think that people believe words that come from the mouths of Liberal ministers. Lies, damn lies and statistics. Perhaps it might be worthy to have printed a few of the more embarrassing funding truths the minister omitted. Since her government took over in 2001 their effort to make B.C. "The Most Literate Jurisdiction in North America" has been accompanied by a loss of 235 librarians in our public schools. K-12 funding has dropped from 19.67 per cent of B.C. spending to 15.34 per cent. In 2001 B.C. spent 3.6 per cent of the GDP on public education, above the Canadian average of 3.5 per cent. We are now down to 3.1 per cent and our drop has been twice that of the rest of Canada whom we now trail. In fact, in most measures B.C. now trails most of Canada in our investment in our children. Small wonder the minister neglected those statistics and cherry picked her own.
Philip Rice
Prince George
