Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid: she's baaaaack

The revolving door of BC's education ministers continues to swirl faster than ever as our three-week-old education minister, George Abbott, jumps from the education portfolio into the BC Liberal leadership race. With that, former Minister of Education Margaret MacDiarmid makes an inauspicious return to her job.

It's disappointing enough that this controversial minister now resumes a position that she has been widely noted for "having lost interest in,” but she also makes her return while carrying with her the new job as minister of Tourism, Trade and Investment.

Susan Lambert, head of the BCTF, has every reason to be troubled by MacDiarmid’s return. MacDiarmid comes with two ministries in her pocket, representing a government that is literally on hold until early March when a new leader takes over.

It is a measure of the low priority that the BC Liberals accord a K-12 public school system in crisis that they have presided over this head-spinning turnover of four education ministers in less than a year: Bond, MacDiarmid, Abbott and back to MacDiarmid.

All of these ministers, so far, sing from the same song book about “protecting public education" with the bogus claim about “the greatest ever" per pupil funding allocation. It remains to be seen whether the Liberals' one-size-fits-all dysfunctional formula holds up under the pressure of a leadership campaign.