The Editor:
It appears the trustees of School District 43 have a problem learning from experience. And they are also short on ethics.
Just over three years ago in a letter to The Tri-City News, I commented on how the board of education chair at the time, along with other two trustees (one of them from Anmore/Belcarra) had received trips to China — at no cost to the taxpayer. This time around, it’s the new chair, Anmore/Belcarra Trustee Kerri Palmer Isaac, and three other trustees along with a “large contingent of administrators [and] teachers.”
SD43 is now even more beholden to its paymaster, the Chinese government, where President Xi exercises an authority unrivalled by all, save for Mao, with whom he is on equal footing, constitutionally speaking.
Trouble is, we poor British Columbians are saddled by something called democracy, unlike Communist Party China, and here elected officials are bound by ethics, which include conflict of interest rules. For the B.C. legislature, it is written that “a member must not accept a fee, gift, or personal benefit.”
Our public school trustees appear as if this sort of legislation does not apply to them, maybe because ethics is not germane to their worldview — anything goes just as long as it pays the bills.
In their courting of the Chinese state and in its unflagging endorsement of Coquitlam’s own Confucius Institute (which draws the students here and yields the money), SD43 demonstrates a striking naiveté.
Before the next trip to China, how about an education for the educators? For something of a different view, may I suggest that each trustee read, for example, the book God is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China by Liao Yiwu, who now lives in exile. But be sure not to bring it along — it’s not allowed in mainland China, or in any Confucius Institute library.
Joerge Dyrkton, Anmore
