From the teachers鈥� strike to the municipal elections, 2014 was a year of surprising changes 鈥� and those changes will be felt in 2015 and beyond. For parents, children, teachers and just about everyone else, the teachers鈥� strike ratcheted up the tension across the province. After two weeks of strike action in June, the dispute went on vacation for the summer while pundits and voters assumed the two sides would use the hiatus to reach a settlement. Instead, they did nothing, and the picket lines reared up again in September, with most people expecting the government to use its heavy hand to legislate an end to the strike.
After three more weeks, the teachers, their strike fund long gone, settled for a six-year deal that seemed to gain them little. The long-simmering issue of whether teachers can negotiate class size and composition is still before the courts.
While the six-year contract provides longed-for stability, the provincial government sent an important message by refusing to legislate the teachers back to work. That break with past practice changed the game dramatically and teachers will spend the next several years trying to figure out if and how they should alter their strategy.
Change was in the air as municipal voters went to the polls in November because several mayors had decided not to run again. But when the votes were counted, the changes turned out to be bigger than anyone expected.
In Victoria, two-term mayor Dean Fortin was defeated by council member Lisa Helps. In Saanich, Frank Leonard, who had been mayor since 1996, was defeated by Richard Atwell, a political newcomer.
The post-mortems suggested that Fortin had been hurt by the rising cost of the Johnson Street Bridge replacement, an issue that will continue to cause headaches for council. Leonard鈥檚 downfall might have been a failure of his previously unerring sense of the mood of Saanich voters. Atwell offered a platform of change, and the voters said: 鈥淵es, please.鈥�
They got more change than some might have bargained for when Atwell pushed chief administrative officer Paul Murray out of his job, which will cost taxpayers almost $500,000 and led the rest of council to censure the new mayor.
New mayors were not the only fallout from the election, however.
After decades of argument, most Greater Victoria residents finally got a chance to vote on the question of municipal amalgamation. Sort of. The group Amalgamation Yes pressured eight of the 13 councils to put amalgamation questions on their ballots.
As one might expect in this region, everybody voted on different questions, including one in Saanich that was so tortured it cried out for physiotherapy. Despite the politicians鈥� efforts to muddy the waters, the voters clearly knew what was on the table. Seven of the eight voted in favour of at least studying the pros and cons of amalgamation. Only Oak Bay voted no.
The province still refuses to force amalgamation on unwilling municipalities, but residents have shown that they want information they can use to make a decision on the issue that refuses to die. Perhaps one day, we can all vote on a clear, uniform question so we can put this argument behind us and start on a whole new bunch of arguments.
While the changes in teachers鈥� negotiations, mayors and amalgamation will resonate into the new year, they are only a fraction of the issues that will enthrall us in 2015. And we haven鈥檛 even mentioned sewage treatment.
