FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, May 4, 2024
EDMONTON – The UCP’s attacks on public education are motivated by a partisan plan to use schooling to turn children into Conservative voters, charged NDP leadership candidate Gil McGowan in a presentation to party members Thursday night.
“The UCP is trying to bring religion into education and deliberately trying to politicize education to make future generations of Albertans more likely to vote conservative,” said McGowan, adding this strategy is being borrowed from some US state Republicans.
“Helping Albertans understand what the UCP is really up to needs to be a top priority for the NDP in opposition – and reversing their approach needs to be a top priority for the NDP once we form government,” McGowan said in his online discussion.
McGowan’s campaign is focused on adding the “missing piece to a winning coalition,” the support of working Alberta families. The NDP must squarely direct their policy offers to working people to defeat the UCP in 2027, McGowan argues.
“Working Albertans understand high-quality, public education is key to their success and the success of their children,” a view sharply different than the UCP’s views of schooling as an ideological and partisan tool for conservatives, McGowan believes.
As Alberta’s NDP premier, McGowan would eliminate funding to private schools and use savings to cut public school class sizes, take curriculum development our of the hands of UCP politicians and put it back with qualified educators, and build “wrap-around” services to ensure high quality education for all, including those with higher needs.
In the question and answer session following, McGowan praised the Alberta Distance Learning Centre. As someone raised in rural Alberta, McGowan said he values how the ADLC brought educational opportunities to small centres and remote areas of the province.
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