Why This Matters (Even If You Don’t Live There)
A public education system is the scaffolding of any democracy. It’s where young citizens learn not only arithmetic and grammar, but curiosity, empathy, and the habits of coexistence. Undermine it, and you don’t simply erode a talent pipeline, you corrode the social fabric itself.
The economic case alone should make even the most hard-nosed fiscal conservative pause. Every additional high-school graduate saves a government thousands annually in health care, social assistance, and criminal-justice costs. It is estimated that each dollar spent on public education returns about $1.30 in economic benefit. Cutting education funding isn’t “saving money”; it’s burning the seed corn.
The Myth of “Money Doesn’t Matter”
Here at the Office for Science and Society, our mission is to separate sense from nonsense, to take a scalpel to sloppy reasoning and pseudoscientific cherry-picking. And when it comes to conservative discourse around public education funding, there’s plenty to dissect.
Enter Michael Zwaagstra of the Fraser Institute, who insists that “in developed countries such as Canada, there’s little evidence that more spending leads to improved student achievement.” Ah yes, the classic “we’re rich enough” defense; the comforting fiction that once a country reaches a certain GDP, it graduates from the need to invest in its people.
To back this claim, Zwaagstra cites a single cross-sectional study by his colleague Derek Allison, also of the Fraser Institute. That’s not research, that’s a feedback loop. It’s like citing your roommate’s Substack as evidence you’re both geniuses. The study he mentioned compared 2018 PISA scores (standardized tests written by 15-year-olds) with 2018 spending levels, implying that the outcome of a decade of education could be explained by a single year of spending.
This type of analysis, a cross-sectional study, can only show correlation, not causation. It’s a snapshot, not a story. Yet somehow, this is the cornerstone of the Fraser Institute’s argument. In the hierarchy of evidence, cross-sectional studies rank just above anecdotes and well below the kind of systematic meta-analyses that should (at least in theory) move policy. And the meta-analytic evidence is clear. Of 31 credibly causal studies on education spending in the U.S., 28 found positive impacts. Sustained $1,000 increases per student raised graduation rates by 1.9 percent and college attendance by 2.65 percent, with no evidence of diminishing returns. Translation: money matters.
Zwaagstra’s reasoning collapses under its own contradictions. He condescendingly states that “instead of pushing for unsustainable spending increases, teacher unions would be far wiser to demand more realistic changes…. adopt a science-based approach to reading instruction so all students learn how to read”. However, he fails to acknowledge the full picture of the study he cites; The Ontario Human Rights Commission concluded that the province failed students with reading disabilities by not providing evidence-based instruction and adequate resources. Its top four recommendations? Curriculum reform, better teacher training, improved support frameworks... and funding to make all that possible. In other words, the very thing Zwaagstra argues against.
He also invokes “evidence-based practice” while ignoring the robust findings detailed in the social science literature: smaller class sizes improve outcomes. Across dozens of studies, reduced class sizes have been shown to increase student engagement, improve behavior, enhance teachers’ morale, and boost performance, especially for students with disabilities. Fewer students mean more attention, more instructional time, and more belonging. Alberta, notably, has no legally mandated classroom size cap. If Zwaagstra truly cared about literacy, he’d advocate for more teachers, not less funding.
So, let’s separate the sense from the nonsense. Money matters. Class size matters. Teacher training, resources, and working conditions matter. The data are clear. The Fraser Institute’s talking points aren’t “fiscal responsibility”, they’re denialism with a (broken) calculator.
Education Cuts in Action
Walk into any Alberta classroom today and you’ll find it: the quiet hum of chaos that only 38 students, one exhausted teacher, and a government seemingly allergic to increasing funding can produce. The desks are packed, the textbooks are outdated, and the teachers—those apparently disposable “public servants”—are burning out faster than a campaign promise.
On October 6, 2025, Alberta’s 51,000 public, Catholic, and francophone teachers walked off the job in the province’s first-ever province-wide strike. It wasn’t a tantrum. It was an act of last-ditch self-preservation. Over ninety-four percent voted in favour of the strike. Over ninety-four percent. That’s not a vote, that’s a reckoning.
And who’s on the receiving end of that reckoning? That would be Premier Marlaina Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party (UCP), which has spent years treating public education like an expense, not an investment. Smith herself once mused that maybe Alberta should defund public schools. Because why invest in success when you can double down on failure?
Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
Let’s start with the math, since the UCP seems to have forgotten it from their own school days! Alberta spends the least per student of any province in Canada, 16 percent below the national average. In 2025 alone, the province’s education budget fell a billion dollars short of what would have been needed to bring per student funding up to the national average, all while private schools received a more significant increase to their budgets than public schools did.
That shortfall has been spun as fiscal responsibility, but the ideological sleight of hand is pure American import. Amid the strike, Alberta’s government appears to be using the chaos to push further privatization by offering parents subsidies to enroll their children in distance-learning programs run by private schools, or to homeschool them under private supervision. It’s a soft launch of an American-style school voucher scheme; one that has already proven financially and educationally ruinous in several U.S. states. As school voucher expert Josh Cowen put it: “expert analysis, independent and investigative journalism, and a handful of transparent state and federal accountability audits show that policies diverting public funds for private school tuition have some of the worst outcomes in the education research record to date.”
Bureaucratic Cruelty 101
Teachers aren’t just underpaid; they’re under attack. Over the last decade, Alberta’s government has forced teachers’ pensions into the hands of politically friendly investment managers, gutted their professional autonomy, and sidelined them from curriculum reform. They’ve slashed funding for school councils, stripped local boards of authority, and handed the power to remove trustees to random citizens with a grudge and a clipboard.
And now, while classrooms overflow and pay stagnates, the government has decided it’s the perfect time to wage a culture war. New “pronoun policies” have forced teachers to out trans students to their parents. Lessons on gender identity require parental opt-ins and ministerial pre-approval. It’s a bureaucratic straitjacket dressed up as “parental rights,” designed to make every queer or questioning kid feel alone in the UCP’s Alberta
The Alberta Teachers’ Association put it bluntly: these policies “stifle teachers’ ability to provide safe, welcoming spaces for students.”
How to Undermine a Democracy for Dummies
When teachers struck, Smith’s government responded not with dialogue, but with legislation. Bill 2, termed the “Back to School Act”, forced teachers back to work under threat of massive fines. To ram it through, they invoked the notwithstanding clause, a constitutional loophole that allows governments to override fundamental freedoms “notwithstanding” the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of association? Freedom of expression? Not if you’re a teacher in Alberta.
This is how democracies erode: not in one dramatic coup, but through the slow normalization of contempt for public institutions.
The Final Lesson
A society that underpays its teachers and claims greed when they ask for appropriate compensation doesn’t have a budget problem; it has a values problem. Alberta’s teachers aren’t radicals—they’re canaries in the coal mine that have been raising alarm bells for years. Their strike is a warning about what happens when a government confuses privatization with progress, austerity with efficiency, and cruelty with courage.
Because when we stop investing in education, we stop investing in ourselves. And once the lights go out in the classroom, it’s only a matter of time before the rest of society starts dimming too.
Sophie Tseng Pellar recently graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in the physiology program. She will be continuing her graduate studies in the Surgical and Interventional Sciences program at McGill. Her research interests include exercise physiology, biomechanics and sports nutrition.
Part of the OSS mandate is to foster science communication and critical thinking in our students and the public. We hope you enjoy these pieces from our Student Contributors and welcome any feedback you may have!
