BC Rules - Political Indoctrination In Schools OK

From the Vancouver Sun

In a judgment released Wednesday, three judges upheld by a two-to-one margin a labour arbitrator's finding that ordering teachers to stop talking politics in the schools was a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"Their [teachers'] political expression benefits society as a whole even where the concerns arise out of a labour relations dispute," Justice Carol Huddart wrote in the majority decision.
.....
Hugh Finlayson, chief executive officer of the B.C. Public School Employers' Association, the government body that launched the appeal, said teachers' rights as individual citizens were never in dispute. Rather, he said, the question was, did that right extend to the public school classroom?

The employers believed that answer was no, Finlayson said.

"We're saying that teachers hold a special trust and that school meetings, school events, school grounds ought not to be places for political discussion when we're really dealing with education matters.
......
"If teachers are permitted to use public schools as forums to advance particular political agendas, they will undermine an open and supportive education environment and, ultimately, that will detract from the fundamental objective of the school system," Justice Peter Lowry wrote in his dissenting decision.

However, your political expression only "benefits society as a whole" if it's the right one as Terry O'Neill points out at The Shotgun Blog/Western Standard

So, let's see if I understand this correctly. On the one hand, the B.C. courts have just ruled that B.C. teachers have the right to post politically charged notices in school because "their political expression benefits society as a whole."

But on the other hand, the B.C. courts have also ruled that one particular B.C. teacher, Christopher Kempling, has no right whatsoever to express his opinions about about homosexuality, even in letters to the editor written on his own time, because his political expression might be seen to be discriminatory. Seems like a perfectly Canadian position on free speech to me.

While the case in question relates to posting anti-school board notices and ranting at parents in parent-teacher conferences, you can be sure that the wording of the ruling will be used to push the socialist, pro-union agenda in the classroom.