An Embargo On Ideas In The Offing?

One of the pleasures of my retired life is getting together for coffee on a regular basis with my friend Ray, a retired vice-principal and one of the rare 'good-guys' of administration that I encountered in my life as a teacher.

When we meet, we discuss a range of topics, many of them political, but also others that could be classified as philosophical, social, and metaphysical. On our most recent meeting, I told him how much I enjoy our exchanges, providing as they do not only an opportunity for the clarification of my own thoughts, but also an expansion of their scope and range.

In many ways, our discussions are what I used to enjoy most about university, back in the days of small classes, small tutorials, and small seminars. I attribute whatever critical thinking skills I possess largely to that education.

Unfortunately, over the years the notion of a post-secondary education as a means of cultivating one's ability to think has fallen into disfavour, devolving in Ontario to its nadir when that master of division and dissension, Mike Harris was our premier. He floated but never actually implemented the idea of funding universities based on the percentage of people who were able to get jobs six months after graduation, a notion perhaps not surprising coming from the man who showed such disdain for nuanced and complex thought.

While not quite so blatant, the neo-liberal reactionary agenda is again at work in Ontario under Dalton McGuinty's 'leadership.' Glen Murray, the minister of training, colleges and universities has proposed sweeping changes in how the province conducts the business of education, most, it seems to me, prompted by cost-cutting considerations.

Two of the most insidious proposals involve making the basic undergraduate degree a three-year-pursuit, and establishing an online-university that would require no real contact with one's professor and classmates, thereby eliminating the opportunity for the dynamic exchanges that are the key to achieving new ideas and perspectives. The fact that these proposals do not serve the cultivation of critical thinking skills, I can't help but consider in my more paranoid moments, are quite consistent with a corporate agenda that seems to value only compliant, unquestioning employees, not independent thinkers capable of seeing a broader picture.

In any event, Heather Mallick has written a thought-provoking piece in today's Star which suggests that nothing good can come out of these proposed changes.

An Apt Contrast

There is the Energizer rabbit, brought to you by Everready:

Then there is the Never-ready rabbit, brought to you by Ontario's Conservative Party:

Political Contempt For The Electorate Continues

Reiterating one of his favorite themes of late, Tim Hudak, the never-ready-for-prime-time-politcal leader of the Ontario Tories, blamed the 'union-bosses' for denying him victory in last night's Kitchener-Waterloo by-election.

Blaming a “tsunami” of public sector union bosses who bought votes in a riding held by his party for two decades, the hapless Hudak proffered the following wisdom for the benighted electorate who thought they were exercising their own discretion in voting the NDP candidate, Catherine Fife, to victory:

“I think it’s dangerous and ominous for the province to see that power on display,” an embittered sounding Mr. Hudak said at a news conference Friday morning.

Just one more open display of contempt for the will of the people. But then again, I guess Tim would characterize anyone challenging his worldview as a mere union dupe, wouldn't he?

Uncommon Wisdom From The 'Common' People

That is the best way to assess the fact that last night, despite all of his gerrymandering, Dalton NcGuinty was decisively thwarted in his ruthless drive for the majority government he had been denied in the last general provincial election.

Thanks to the people of Kitchener-Waterloo, both he and the leader of the Official Opposition, young Tim Hudak of the Conservatives, are looking decidedly vulnerable today. A good analysis of that vulnerability can be found in Martin Regg Cohn's column in this morning's Star.

And just before I leave the topic of politicians who forget who they are elected to serve, I am reproducing a letter I came across yesterday in The Spectator. The observations made by the writer, Mark Kikot of Burlington, are ones that our arrogant political 'masters' would be wise to bear in mind the next time they contemplate the bald pursuit of power at the expense of the electorate.

McGuinty scapegoats public-sector workers

Premier Dalton McGuinty is demonstrating through his current strategy for dealing with the deficit that behaving like a conservative government is easier than being a liberal government, and that behaving like a corporation is easier than being a government.

Those Ontarians who have accepted the corporate mindset as the controlling metaphor in their lives, and the corporate structure as an inescapable reality, would argue that any responsible government should function like a business. Costs that cannot be sustained must be offset by cuts in order to produce a supposedly more efficient, hopefully more effective, and clearly more profit-driven organization; in other words, the ideal model for governance is the lean mean machine.

While any sensible person should acknowledge that we cannot continue to live beyond our means, any sensible person should also recognize that the debt incurred by a government must be shared by all the sectors of the society that that government represents.

By targeting primarily the public sector, and the educational sector in particular, in its attempt to balance the books, the McGuinty government has made scapegoats of those public sector workers who provide social services that improve the quality of life for all Ontarians. In adopting this politically convenient strategy, McGuinty has created the impression that the deficit is entirely an in-house problem, instead of a problem for which the private sector is also responsible. It is unreasonable and unjust to expect the deficit to be reduced almost exclusively at the expense of public sector employees who make on average much less than $100,000 a year, while private sector employees who make between $100,000 and $500,000 a year pay taxes at pre-deficit rates, and corporations continue to be granted privileged tax status in the hope that they will create jobs.

The McGuinty government in its bull-headed idiocy is moving forward with legislation that ignores the collective bargaining process and imposes working conditions, not negotiated contracts, on teachers and other educational workers. There can be no social contract without contractual agreements.

Mark Kikot, Burlington

McGuinty's Gambit Fails

At least I can sleep well tonight.

The Latest on Lucene Charles

While I have written about her a couple of time in the past, the ordeal of Lucene Charles is not yet over.

Because she failed to complete the paperwork to achieve permanent residency status when she married a Canadian 15 years ago, the St. Vincent native, the mother of four children, three of whom were born in Canada, still faces deportation.

Charles is the kind of person we would hope to have in the neighborhood, a productive person who works for the betterment of her community. Employed full time as an assistant to an administrator at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, she was recently honoured as a YWCA Woman of Distinction in May for her extensive volunteer work.

Despite the fact that she would be an obvious asset to Canada, because of an oversight in paperwork, she faces being sent back to St. Vincent, an impoverished Caribbean island where three of her children, born in Canada, will go to for the first time if she cannot find adequate placement for them.

You can read the complete story here, and I will only offer the following observation:

I have come to the point in my life where I strongly believe that so many of the so-called rules (immigration-refugee rules, for example) should only be treated as broad guidelines, and that each situation has to be judged on its own merits, and by that I mean excluding considerations like whether a decision may set an undesirable precedent.

Decency and humanity, two of the surest criteria one can embrace, should and must be the only criteria.

Advice From the World's Richest Woman

Wow! Sounds like this Australian lady really made it 'the hard way'.