In one of the bluntest decisions to hit the parchment in a long time, this week a Supreme Court justice struck down a provincial law that had twice tried to do an end-run around teacher's collective bargaining rights in name of political expediency.
It started over a decade ago, when the province decided it could unilaterally ignore terms of work written into teachers contracts. After teachers challenged that in court and won, the province reproduced the same provisions in the guise of new legislation.
Essentially, the province decided it was above the law.
That's a scary position for any government to take.
Even more dumbfounding, the justice ruled that the province was never interested in reaching a negotiated deal with teachers. Its strategy was to push the teachers into a strike so it could legislate a settlement. Rarely have such Machiavellian machinations been laid quite so bare in a legal document.
The province had the hammer. And they planned to use it.
As the justice wrote, "Any student of history. .. recognizes that a natural tendency and desire of any political force is to attempt to consolidate and gather more power and to seek to diminish any restraint on that power."
This week, the courts acted as the "safeguard against tyranny" and put the brakes on that. But not before the government spent most of the past decade pummeling the teachers.
That's an unnerving reminder of the long game that's involved in seeking justice for a wrong.
Now we will all pay mightily for the government's hubris.
