Perhaps He Should Try Thinking Before Speaking?

Last week I wrote a post on two inane ideas uttered by young Tim Hudak, the hapless leader of Ontario's Progressive Conservative Party. He proposed tying post-secondary funding to rates of employment upon graduation, along with the idea that only those who achieve a certain mark shuld be elegible for student financial assistance.

Two letters in today's Star help to put his 'ideas' into the perspective they deserve:

Re: Hudak cracks whip on students, Feb. 13

Once again, Tim Hudak is turning into the greatest boon for the Ontario Liberals. His policy paper on post-secondary education will benefit absolutely no one and will negatively affect students who are in most need of financial aid.

I was once an undergraduate student and needed OSAP to fund my education. I was also working two jobs to provide for other expenses during the school year. In the process, my academic performance wasn’t the greatest, but the learning experience was unparalleled. I eventually earned two degrees from my alma mater, worked for a few years and went back to school to get a graduate degree on scholarship.

If Hudak had his way, people like me would never get a degree. His proposal is also redundant as there are already scholarships, grants, bursaries and loan-forgiveness tied to various prerequisites including academic performance.

During the 2011 provincial elections, the Hudak PCs managed to fumble a double digit lead over the Liberals. It doesn’t look like they have learnt their lesson.

Aditya Iyer, Ottawa

Let’s grade Tim Hudak’s efforts with this plan: as a retired college professor and dean, I’m aware, as are thousands of students, of the continuing efforts to link college and university programs.

A three-year degree? Reminds me of an old joke where a conservative emperor standing on his balcony proclaims to this constituents, “Everyone in my kingdom shall be educated. To that end I give each of you a degree.”

What is missing here is a little item called relevant curriculum.

I’m certainly interested in Mr. Hudak’s thinking about how his plan addresses the TBSB survey about student stress and anxiety about the future. But let’s find the kernel of wisdom in this proposal: what about grading the quality of political ideas to the money we pay our politicians? A six-month trial on that one could well erase the provincial debt.

Don Graves, Burlington

My mother always taught me to think before I spoke. Apparently Tim Hudak did not have the benefit of such maternal counsel.

On Corporate Propaganda and Tax Avoidance

It is the fashion among our corporate overlords and their rabid right-wing courtesans to utter a trite phrase that, because it is repeated so frequently, is taken as truth by many: We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. Like the magician who relies upon misdirection to perform the seemingly miraculous, the corporate cabal purports to prove, through both its rhetoric and 'studies' done by its think tanks (think The Fraser Institute in Canada, The Cato Institute in the U.S. as examples), that taxes are 'job killers' and that the key to robust economies and solid employment numbers is low taxation.

Of course, the falsity of such assertions has been amply demonstrated, most recently by Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, who has weighed in on more than one occasion about the abysmal rate of business investment in new machinery and equipment — considered vital to boosting growth, creating jobs and making the economy perform more efficiently. This sad state despite the fact that Canada has one of the lowest corporate tax regimes in the world.

While there will always be the true believers who subscribe to the myth of the efficacy of marketplace discipline and an ultra-low tax regime, I suspect more and more are starting to realize that the corporate agenda has nothing to do with the betterment of society or the support of democracy, and everything to do with its own self-aggrandizement. As reported last week in The Toronto Star, The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), consisting of 34 countries, issued a report condemning the practice of corporation, including giants such as Google, who are shifting profits to places where they pay little or no tax, places such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Barbados.

As the report points out, not only is this costing the countries in which these corporations do business billions of dollars in lost revenue, it is also encouraging a perception that the domestic and international rules on the taxation of cross-border profits are now broken and that taxes are only paid by the naive, and if nothing is done about the situation ordinary taxpayers might refuse to pay their share of taxes on the grounds that the system is unfair.

So there you have it: corporations with a patent disdain for the countries who make their businesses both possible and viable, without conscience or concern for the massive damage their schemes do to the social and economic fabric of those countries, beholden only to their own bottom lines and their shareholders.

If such misbehaviour is not an indictment of unfettered capitalism, then I don't know what is.

The Synchronous Decline of Peter Mansbridge and The CBC

I admit that I stopped being a regular viewer of the CBC years ago; I think the catalyst for my disaffection was its transparent policy of appeasement (under the pretext of balanced reporting) of the Harper regime which, of course, holds its funding strings. Especially evident in its flagship news program, The National, hosted by that one-time icon of journalistic integrity, Peter Mansbridge, the Corporation has become a parody of itself. And as I have written in past posts, Mansbridge himself has to take the bulk of the blame for its sad decline.

On February 8, The Star's Rick Salutin wrote a piece entitled CBC’s Peter Mansbridge coulda bin a contender. Somewhat dirgelike in tone, Salutin asserts that Mansbridge just seems to have given up on doing any substantive journalism, contrasting him with the redoubtable Walter Cronkite, who he describes as ... ready to stand up against the state and the flow and was solid as the bronze statue of the American revolutionary minuteman who stood “by the rude bridge that spanned the flood/ His flag to April’s breeze unfurled.”

Mansbridge, on the other hand, has happily gone with the flow — and the pressure. CBC has become numero uno for crime stories, weather coverage (today’s snow), product launches, celebrities and awards gossip. None of this is new, or news, and CBC itself doesn’t contest the point.

In this morning's Star, the majority of readers appear to agree with Salutin's assessment. I am taking the liberty of reproducing some of them below:

Leave Mansbridge alone. After his last interview with Stephen Harper, it seems obvious he’s angling for a Senate appointment a la Mike Duffy. Calling attention to his soft-shoe journalism will only make his task that much harder.

Mike Sampat, Toronto

I watch CBC’s The National mostly for entertainment. For real news I watch Aljazeera English and BBC World.

Entertainment, news.

Raja Khouri, Toronto

.... How can one explain that in every half-hour broadcast the “weather person” comes on three times. I suppose it is easier to kill time having the weather person on than to go out an find some news. If we want to dwell on weather there is always the Weather Channel. We can surely do better.

Bob Joakim, Oakville

.... Yes, he is rather apolitical and borderline fawning at times, such as his interview with Stephen Harper before the last federal election, but I can forgive him for that. At least he hasn’t pulled a Mike Duffy and obtained a sinecure in the seniors club we call the Senate. He could have gone to New York a few years ago, but decided to stay, to his and our benefit.

Sigmund Roseth, Mississauga

Expect nothing to change in the near future.

Because

... I just couldn't resist reposting this morning's Star editorial cartoon.

"His Most Preposterous Policy Statement Yet"

As noted here the other day, young Tim Hudak, in another move that shows the caliber of his leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, announced that student loans should be tied to student marks. This morning's Star describes his proposal as silly and his most preposterous policy statement yet (although I do suspect there will be some more headshakers coming from his office down the road.)

You can read the full editorial below, although I suspect its position will fork little lightning with Hudak, who tends to think only in very broad strokes:

American president Harry S. Truman once observed that “the C students run the world.” If Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak gets his way, they won’t even obtain a post-secondary education — at least one funded by government loans.

In his most preposterous policy position yet, Hudak says university and college students should receive loans only if they reach a certain — undefined — level of academic success.

It’s an absurd idea, tucked into an otherwise innocuous 27-page plan detailing Hudak’s vision for higher learning. As Truman (a Democrat) noted, it’s not just academic marks that propel people to success: character, drive and ingenuity are even better predictors of future triumph. But Hudak wants bureaucrats to create an academic cut-off point, blocking students with middling grades from getting student loans. “We feel it prudent to inject the student financial aide system with more market discipline,” his report says.

It’s worth noting that a political leader who preaches the merits of smaller government now wants bureaucrats to decide the academic future of our youth. Did he give any thought to this?

Many middle- or lower middle-class students rely on loans — which they pay back, with interest — to get an education. Curiously, wealthy students who don’t need to borrow will be free to explore academic mediocrity with no government slap-down.

It is true that many graduates struggle to find jobs in these challenging economic times. But the new reality is that most need more than one degree to find a viable career. Blocking education will not create economic growth.

While it’s not a new idea, Hudak’s plan rightly focuses attention on Ontario’s desperate need to train youth in the skilled trades. But not all young people should, or even could, become electricians or plumbers.

It’s already hard enough for young people to get ahead, and the government should not add more restrictions. Before an Ontario election is called, Hudak should drop this silly plan.

Perhaps Hudak needs inspiration from the words of Republican President George W. Bush in a speech to the 2001 graduating class at his alma mater, Yale: “To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students, I say, you, too, can be President of the United States.” In other words — with a little financial help — you never know what a student might become.

The Scourge of the Undead

While there was much talk in the House of Commons yesterday about how to prevent a 'zombie apocalypse,' in Canada, Bob Hepburn has his own solution on how to deal with the scourge of the undead: hold a referendum on abolishing the Senate.

Noting that it costs well over $100 million a year to operate the Senate, including the $132,000 annual salary for the 105 senators, their staffs and expenses and the fact that senators need to show up for work barely 70 days a year, Hepburn suggests that Ontario Premiere Kathleen Wynne include a sentence in her throne speech calling for the referendum.

Given the unholy and voracious appetites of Senators Duffy, Brazeau, Harb and Wallin, dealing with the living dead in a decisive manner would unquestionably make Canada a safer place for that much-threatened ideal known as democracy and finally bury the careers of the party hacks who currently inhabit the upper chamber.

Mike Harris Redux

In his ongoing attempt to resurrect the 'glory' days of his close friend and mentor, former Ontario Premier Mike 'the knife' Harris, young Ontario Conservative Tim Hudak has a not-so-new-idea. A man, I deduce, not given to a great deal of introspection or critical thought, young Tim has apparently come to the conclusion it is time to recycle an idea first proposed by Harris when he led the province, an idea even that ruthless leader somehow realized was going too far: tying funding of post-secondary programmes to the rate of employment after graduation. That, of course, is not to downplay the damage he did to post-secondary education, which saw funding fall by 21% during his regime.

But Harris' acolyte seems intent now to pick up where his idol left off and go him one better. In concert with the above-mentioned funding model, another part of Hudak's vision to 'improve' education is to tie student loans to the marks learners achieve in their course:

Financial aid for students should be tied to how well they do in their courses as a way of instilling “market discipline” and incentives to succeed, said Tory MPP Rob Leone (Cambridge), his party’s higher education critic and a former university professor with a doctorate in political science.

“We want a return on our investment,” Leone said, proposing that individual colleges and universities would be encouraged to decide how to structure student aid rules.

Market discipline and return on investment. Principles that have done so much for (to) our economy. And of course, with such a utilitarian approach to policy-making, the fact that the cultivation of critical thinking skills will be a casualty works all to the advantage of the reactionary right-wing that Mr. Hudak embraces and cultivates so fiercely.