Alberta’s government is holding the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) accountable after years of failing to protect the safety of its students. Shockingly, the union didn’t inform the province of sexual assault charges against a Calgary teacher spanning 20 years.
The ATA revealed it knew about Michael Gregory, a Calgary teacher charged with sexually assaulting six girls at John Ware junior high between 1986 to 2006. Upon hearing the disturbing revelations, Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said the lapse in judgement would not happen again.
“Like many Albertans, I was horrified when I first read the details of allegations brought forward regarding a former Calgary Board of Education teacher. I was also appalled that the Alberta Teachers’ Association did not believe they had an obligation to report its disciplinary findings to [the] police,” said LaGrange in a government release.
She continued: “They chose to solely rely on a disciplinary process that recommended only a two-year suspension for admitted child abuse. We will never know what the results of a full, timely criminal investigation could have been. Unfortunately, this episode clearly demonstrates the ATA failed to protect students from a predatory teacher.”
According to the Alberta government website, the province legislated Bill 85, the Students First Act, to mandate improvements to student safety and parent confidence by addressing gaps, issues, and inconsistencies in Alberta’s system of oversight and discipline for teachers and teacher leaders. The bill received Royal Assent on December 2.
The Students First Act updates three pieces of legislation to ensure disciplinary matters are responded to quicker while bringing the teaching profession in line with practices in other provinces and disciplines. Now, it requires creating an online database of Alberta teacher and teacher leader certification information.
The Students First Act amends the Teaching Profession Act, Education Act, and the College of Alberta School Superintendents’ Act to, among other improvements, mandate criminal record and vulnerable sector checks by school authorities. The mandatory measure ensures the latter when hiring a new teacher or teacher leader and every five years throughout their employment.
The minister added she would issue an order-in-council to require the ATA to notify Alberta Education’s registrar of all complaints about their members immediately when they are received.
“Currently, the ATA is only required to notify Alberta Education at the end of their disciplinary process if a matter goes to a hearing, including cases where recommendations are made to the minister to suspend or cancel a certificate,” she said.
The province says these updates put ‘students first’ by balancing individual teachers’ rights to privacy and procedural fairness with the public’s right to know when a teacher has been disciplined for a serious matter.
LaGrange also pledged to introduce legislation next session to separate the teacher disciplinary process from the ATA’s mandate and functions. “It is now abundantly clear [that] the ATA can no longer act as the investigator and the prosecutor for complaints against its members,” she said.
The minister claims the “obvious conflict of interest” on teacher discipline makes Alberta an outlier, as all other provinces and territories follow either an arm’s-length or government-operated model for teacher discipline.
“I cannot change the past, nor can I take away the pain survivors live with every single day,” said LaGrange. “However, as the minister of Education, I consider it my moral obligation to do everything in my power to fix the broken system that has let our children and their families down for so long.”
Gregory committed suicide after the alleged victims laid the charges against him. They have since filed a $40-million lawsuit against the Calgary Board of Education over the incident.
