TORONTO — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she is "so disappointed" by the province-wide teachers' strike, calling it "a lose, lose, lose situation" that's hurting students, parents and teachers. Her remarks come in an upcoming episode of Can't Be Censored, airing later this fall.

The strike, which began on October 6, has closed more than 2,500 schools and left about 700,000 students out of class — Alberta's largest education walkout in decades.

Smith told hosts Travis Dhanraj and Karman Wong she believed a deal was close before talks broke down. "We were making great progress at the table," she said. "Need a wage increase? Yes. Need more teachers? Yes, we'll hire 3,000 more. Need more education assistants? Yes, we proactively put that on the table, too."

She said she was frustrated when teachers rejected two tentative agreements. "Both times that the ATA took their negotiated settlement back to the teachers, the teachers said no," she said. "We want a fair deal and a reasonable deal."

Smith blamed rapid population growth for overcrowded classrooms. "Normally we'd get about 50,000 newcomers into Alberta each year. We got 150,000 a year — 450,000 over three years — of which about 80,000 were students," she said. "That's why we also put on the table an $8.6-billion school build. But it takes some time. We're not going to have that until 2030."

Asked about criticism of a pilot project allowing private construction of new schools, Smith defended the move. "Parents who send their kids to independent schools are taxpayers, too," she said. "If they have a portion of their tax dollars flowing through to them, that just seems fair to me. It costs us less money, puts less pressure on an already overburdened public school system."

The Alberta Teachers' Association, representing about 51,000 teachers, says the government's offer — a 12-per-cent raise over four years and funding for 3,000 new positions — doesn't fix conditions in classrooms. ATA President Jason Schilling said in a briefing with reporters on Monday that "promises to hire more teachers years from now don't help students sitting in overcrowded classrooms today," adding that teachers are "exhausted and under-resourced."

When asked if she might legislate teachers back to work, Smith said she prefers a negotiated deal but acknowledged the toll. "It's a shame we're right now in a lose, lose, lose situation," she said. "Parents are inconvenienced, and the kids are disrupted too."

The full interview — which also covers Smith's upbringing, political journey and views on free speech — will be released later this fall on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.