Statement

Filipino-Canadians express support for BC teachers, the rights of workers and the right to education

October 17, 2005

As members of the Filipino community, we express our full support and solidarity for BC teachers as they rally today in Victoria to defend the rights of workers to assert their democratic rights. We also support and assert the fundamental right of all to education.

We are women, youth and students and migrant workers of the third largest visible minority community in B.C. We are parents of children in the public education system. We are teachers and support workers in that system. We care deeply about and will fight for the right to education, as it is critical to the future of our youth and of our community. As Philippine Congress Member Satur Ocampo puts it, “At its most basic [education] provides the literary and numeracy from which our labors can become ever more productive. But there is also its liberating potential. Education is absolutely vital in cultivating our understanding of freedom, equality and justice.”

Like you, we criticize the deterioration of the public education system and other social programs suffering from severe cutbacks. We view these cutbacks in a political and global context, dictated by the neo-liberal agenda and its pillars of liberalization, privatization and deregulation. The creeping commodification and privatization of education at all levels threatens to compromise our right to education.

In B.C., excessive class sizes, understaffing and low wages for teachers and workers are plainly visible. What may be harder to see are the impacts of this deteriorating system on marginalized communities such as ours. For our youth, particularly those newcomers to Canada, the full support and services needed for them to realize their potential within the school system and in the community are sorely lacking. Systemic racism and the cutbacks are resulting in Filipino youth having one of the highest high-school drop-out rates in Vancouver.

Coming from a Third World country, like the Philippines, we know how destructive imperialist globalization is when it attacks such fundamental rights as education. The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) in the Philippines states that teachers’ salaries have been frozen since 2001. An entry-level teacher only earns the equivalent of $210 Canadian per month. Given this low salary, many teachers are forced to leave the country and work as domestic workers in Canada and Hong Kong. Even the Philippine government admits that one in four barangays (villages) have no elementary schools, which affects 1.6 million Filipino children. Poverty forces others to drop-out of the school system altogether. Yet, the Philippine government, at the behest of the IMF-WB-WTO, spends more on the military and national defence than education and other social programs.

Thus, we call on all workers and progressive individuals and organizations in British Columbia to stand in solidarity with you as you exercise your democratic rights to organize, strike and engage in political protest. We firmly believe that through such militant action we assert our human rights and contribute towards the building of genuine development, equality and peace for our communities.

Statement of:

Philippine Women Centre of B.C.
Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada / Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance
SIKLAB (Filipino migrant workers’ organization)
Filipino Nurses Support Group