What a recent Supreme Court ruling could mean for Nova Scotia teacher legislation

A recent decision from the Supreme Court of Canada that backed the rights of teachers to negotiate workplace issues like class sizes could impact proposed legislation to impose a contract on Nova Scotia teachers, according to Dalhousie University law professor Wayne MacKay.

The country's highest court in November settled a long-running fight between the provincial government in British Columbia and its teachers union.

It's a dispute that somewhat mirrors what's happening in Nova Scotia. Teachers have been without a contract for 18 months and talks between the Nova Scotia Teachers Union and the province have broken down.

The union has said the government does not want to deal with workplace concerns. It wants class-size caps on higher grades, restrictions on the number of students with individual program plans in one class, and less administrative workload.

Teachers are now taking work-to-rule job action where they only arrive 20 minutes before class and stay 20 minutes after class. They will also not supervise any extracurricular activities.

'Supreme Court rulings have effect across the land'

The provincial government in British Columbia decided teachers concerns over class sizes and class composition had no place at the collective bargaining table and refused to negotiate them, said MacKay.

Teachers disagreed. The British Columbia Teachers Federation took the province to court to fight to have those classroom issues negotiated. After 14 years in different levels of court the case finally landed with the Supreme Court of Canada, which sided with the teachers.

"Obviously there's differences on some context but a lot of similarities in terms of the issue of bargaining about working conditions," said MacKay. "They did take off the table bargaining working conditions including class size … also an issue I think in Nova Scotia.

"It is the Supreme Court of the land, so Supreme Court rulings have effect across the land."

Courts 'protective' of collective bargaining

On Monday the Nova Scotia government said it would put through legislation to force a contract on teachers. Later in the day Education Minister Karen Casey backed away from the bill and said it would not move ahead at this point.

The teachers in British Columbia won their case because the Supreme Court found that the government's actions violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"That was found to be contrary to the Charter's guarantee, which is what all this was about — freedom of association and right to collective bargaining," said MacKay.

"It's in the context of a whole series of Supreme Court decisions where the courts have been much more protective and expansive about collective bargaining, "

It is a costly loss for the B.C. government, according to MacKay. He said B.C. will now have to hire 3,500 teachers to get back to 2002 staffing levels. The British Columbia Teachers Federation said that could cost up to $300 million a year.

No laws changed

But Brian Johnston, a labour and employment lawyer with Stewart McKelvey in Halifax, said he doesn't believe the Supreme Court ruling will have any impact here in Nova Scotia.

He said the ruling didn't actually change any laws. When the B.C. case started making its way through the courts in 2002, Johnson said, the widely held interpretation of the constitutional right to associate did not have any implications for union and management relations or collective bargaining.

Since that time there have been numerous decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada that have changed the interpretation of the law.

The court is now more protective of collective bargaining, said Johnston. He said the Nova Scotia government knows that, so any legislation it creates to impose a contract would conform with the law.

"The government in Nova Scotia may say, 'Look we knew what the high standard was when we introduced our legislation,'" he said. "The B.C. Federation of Teachers case didn't change the law, it was all about the facts."

The government "will say we negotiated in good faith and we consulted and we went through a process and we didn't do anything wrong, and we applied the new law."