… Drummond did not recommend eliminating Ontario’s wasteful and discriminatory duplicate education system?

Anybody?

As well, it was good to hear the Chair of the OCDSB note on CBC this morning that the Board is still in support of 1 school system in Ontario.

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

…one school system in Ontario?

One can only hope. It will likely fail, but will expose the farcical inequities in our education system to those Ontarians who are, at present, blissfully unaware.

But you can bet that I and the many others who want to see the end of faith-based education funding in Ontario will be watching this case with interest.

The Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled that Sect. 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which guarantees Catholic school funding in Ontario, is immune from Charter challenges. (The Charter specifically exempts from review all rights guaranteed in the constitution.)

But Landau (the Plaintiff) contends that the obvious inequality that results must, by law, be narrowly defined.

To that end, she contends that Catholic school funding should be based today on the 1867 model, one that strictly limited government support.

In her application, filed in the Superior Court of Justice, Landau asks for an order that eliminates all government aid for Catholic schools from Grades 9 to 12.

She also seeks an order that limits the funding of Grades 1 to 8 to “only that aid available in 1867, that is, only property taxes from Catholics who declare themselves to be separate school supporters and who live within three miles of a separate school, and property taxes from wholly Catholic-owned businesses.”

She argues the current funding system unjustly forces her, through the tax system, to support Catholic schools.

“It means I’m being forced to fund a system that has sectarian views of which I do not approve,” she said. “I’m therefore being discriminated against because a Catholic is not being forced to fund a system of which they do not approve.”

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… snowy December day edition…

Good article in the Citizen{yes, I used good and Citizen in the same phrase} yesterday about the ridiculousness of our quad education system in Ontario.

The issue of the wastefulness of our quadruplicated system of education seems to pop its head above the water twice a year or so. An article is written, get’s picked up on Twitter, arguments are made for and against the current system, then it fades back into the background.

But with the news that the provincial deficit is poised to be ONE BILLION smackeroos higher than anticipated due to slow economic growth, I think that the time is ripe to take a serious and sober look at our current model of 4 systems.

Education and health are the two giants in the provincial budget, consuming a large majority of all spending. This year, roughly $20 billion flowed from Queen’s Park to the province’s school boards.

That money was divided among 72 school boards. They don’t duplicate services. They quadruplicate them. Everywhere you go, from Windsor to Wawa, four separate education administrations oversee four separate school systems.

$20 billion. Surely hundreds of millions could be saved by amalgamating the public and separate Boards. There would be millions saved in bussing alone, one would think. Overcrowding issues might not go away, but there would be more flexibility because there would be more schools run by one Board!  I can see a case for a French language public Board, where numbers warrant it. But faith-based education is costly and discriminatory.

Publicly-funded sectarian school systems were terminated in Manitoba in 1890, Newfoundland in 1997 and Quebec in 1998. Why not Ontario? The Ontario Legislature could send a request to the federal Parliament in Ottawa to end this at any time. No other province would stand in the way of a Constitutional amendment allowing Ontario to move forward.

Yeah, I know that in reality that it is unlikely that any politician will take the risk of alienating a good segment of the voting population by championing this. But I can hope…

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Picture of  hot air balloon trying to kill itself after realising that it had a giant Sun logo splashed across it. I would do likewise.

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Gee. What a surprise. Another Con Minister caught in a lie.

Of course, it won’t matter. The Minister won’t answer any questions posed to him in the House. Excuses will be given. The media will get blamed. Blah, blah, blah… same old…

And oh yeah… the Cons are playing dirty pool in Montréal too…

OTTAWA — The Conservatives have confirmed they are behind a rash of phone calls to Liberal MP Irwin Cotler’s Montreal-riding over the past couple of weeks in which constituents allegedly were told of Cotler’s resignation and a pending byelection.

But while the party says it was not breaking any rules, political analysts say the tactic crosses a line and will harm not only voters’ trust in the system, but perhaps even the Conservatives themselves.

“It’s disgusting,” said Queen’s University professor Ned Franks. “Politics is a blood sport but that doesn’t mean you have to resort to dirty blows.”

Numerous constituents in Cotler’s Mount Royal riding have complained of receiving calls in recent weeks from a marketing research company insinuating he has resigned and asking them to support the Conservatives in an upcoming byelection.

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So maybe we Canadians aren’t as stupid as I thought re: the “love affair” with Don “Blowhard Mouth Breather” Cherry.

The Brioux Report, a blog on Toronto.com, trumpeted: “Cherry continues to be ratings gold at CBC, with Hockey Night in Canada storming back to 2.4 million viewers last Saturday night.” One of the voices promulgating the idea of Cherry as must-see TV has occasionally been Mr. Cherry himself.

But recent TV numbers don’t seem to support the notion that Cherry is leading HNIC’s ratings anywhere. There is a considerable drop in viewers the instant game action ends and the theme music for Coach’s Corner begins. For example, ratings during the first period of last Saturday’s HNIC peaked at about 2.2 million viewers at 7:45 p.m. ET. But ratings show that by 7:58, that figure had plummeted by almost 800,000 to about 1.4 million during the first intermission of the show, precisely when Cherry is in mid-jeremiad.

The week before, first-period numbers peaked around 2.5 million viewers. By the time Cherry was on, almost a million people had found something else to do, as the number dipped to around 1.5 million. The numbers from this season have consistently shown such peaks during the action to more modest figures during the first intermission.

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The snow is on its way, sooner or later. If fact, it’s snowing right now. And O-dot will once again claim its throne as the world’s second coldest Capital city in the world. But this wonderfully unseasonably warm and dry weather has me giddy! Every day without snow and minus 20 temps is one day less that I have to bundle up.

And skiers? Quit complaining and fly out to B.C. or something! I’m a-talking to YOU, Hai!

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Speaking of giddy, Ottawa is primed for the opening of the new IKEA store out in the west end… Canada’s largest! And man, it IS huge! From the Queensway, it looks the size of the Oakville GM plant!

I think I’ll avoid it until after the holidays (and Barbados). And, as the O-dot reports, this IKEA has some new features:

Ottawa- When the nation’s largest Ikea store opens next Wednesday December 7th, customers will have the unique option to assemble their furniture while they wait in the massive check-out line ups. With the usual wait times in a typical Ikea check out line being approximately 38 minutes, shoppers can now use that lengthy time to assemble the furniture they have in their carts.

Good thinking! THAT is why the stores are so popular! Innovative thinking, man. Innovative thinking.

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It has been a week of bans!

First - bullying has been banned by the Ontario government – good thing.

Second - Lululemon pants have been banned by an Ottawa Catholic school – stupid thing.

Third – Christmas has been banned by an Ottawa area school. – WTF were they thinking thing.

Fourth – I have been banned from eating hot peppers and pickled eggs before bed – patently UNFAIR thing!

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Finally… in honour of Harper’s pledge to dump Kyoto…

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

This is getting insane!

The Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board has effectively banned the use of rainbows at school functions because, get this, of the association of rainbows with gays!

I read this for a while thinking it was satire! Why would or could something this silly happen in the 21st century!

I am not making this up!

Leanne Iskander, 16, tells Xtra that the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board prevented her group from displaying any rainbows at their information booth during an anti-homophobia event last week.

Iskander is the founder of the unofficial gay-straight alliance at St. Joseph Catholic School in Mississauga.

“We brought signs and posters with rainbows, and we were told we can’t put them up,” says Iskander to Xtra. “They said rainbows are associated with Pride. There’s so many other things that a rainbow could be. It’s ridiculous.”

But this did not stop the group from showing a rainbow. They baked cupcakes with different colour icing and displayed them on the table so it resembled a rainbow. Better yet, when people bit into the cupcake, there was a rainbow of colours inside.

By selling the cupcakes at 50 cents each, the group raised $200 for charity. However the school would not allow the group to donate the money to the charity of their choice, which was the LGBT Youth Line.

Seriously? C’mon.

So, given the limited knowledge of Christianity that this sinnin’ ol’ atheist has, lemme get this straight (hee- get it?). Noah. The flood dude. Saw a rainbow in the sky at the end of that whole Mother of all storms thing. This was interpreted as a covenant from God that the big all-mighty wouldn’t pull that shit again. The rainbow – big Christian symbol.

But. Because gay folks use it as a symbol as well, dogma trumps common sense – and their own tradition – and pictures of rainbows – or cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles – are from now on taboo.

Remind me again: why am I as a taxpayer in this fair province forced to support this asinine crap. Why is this “school” system publicly funded? if Catholics want to support this kind of nonsense – go for it – but not on my dime!!!!

BANNED!!!

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

This great letter appearing in the North Bay Nugget popped up in my news feed this morning.

This particular paragraph caught my attention:

One-third of the permanent, publicly funded teaching positions in Ontario are effectively closed to two-thirds of the population. Current discriminatory hiring practices by the Separate board preclude the hiring of non-Catholic teachers within their schools.

Question – why hasn’t the public school teacher’s union been vociferously opposing the existence of the Catholic school system. It would seem to be in their best interest, no? Maybe they have – but I haven’t seen anything.

And as one of the commenters correctly notes:

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

La belle province is soooo far ahead of Ontario in soooo many ways.

• You do not have to go to a designated store to buy booze – just stop at the local dépanneur
• In general, they have better tastes in food and in clothes
• One word: bagels
• In general, Quebecois are much more relaxed and less anal retentive than their neighbours to the west.

And finally, they have only one – secular – school system. They abandoned the wasteful discriminatory and anachronistic catholic system in 1997.

And now, the government of Quebec has gone a step further by banning religious teaching in publicly-funded daycares!

Quebec, which has grappled with efforts to limit the place of religion in its public institutions, has decided to bring secularization to the tot-and-toddler set. Starting in June, publicly funded daycares that teach a particular faith to their young charges risk losing their government funding.

Yup. Soooooo far ahead! Congrats to the Charest government (and the Bouchard government in 1998) for showing the cojones that successive governments at Queen’s Park have lacked!

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

Alberta parents will soon be able to cherry-pick what their kids can and cannot be taught in the province’s schools.

Think that gays and lesbians are hell-bound monstrosities sent to earth by Satan?

No worries!  You can pull your kid out of the class that teaches about sexual orientation (and I guess tolerance and human rights might be taught in these classes too!)

Think that humans were created by a big bearded guy who lives in the sky?

Piece of cake! That Grade 9 biology class where they teach that pesky little “theory” called evolution is NO place for little Johnny!

School boards will have to give parents written advance notice any time classes deal “primarily or explicitly” with religion, human sexuality and sexual orientation, or risk facing a human rights complaint as punishment..

This is obviously a move designed to keep the christian wackos happy and the back wood rednecks from reachin’ for their guns.

I have no problem at all with parents choosing how they want little Johnny or Jane taught. That’s what private schools are for.  But if you want to suck at the teat of publicly-funded education, then accept the curriculum as designed by the educators!

Next thing you know, they’ll have separate but publicly-funded school baords and schools based on religion or language!

Wait a minute, that’s Ontario!

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

This past weekend, a young guy came to my door selling introductory subscriptions to the Ottawa Citizen. It was a good deal and I’m not committed for more than a few months at a rate of a few bucks per week.  So, I said yes to give it another chance.

I did previously have a subscription and kept it for several years till one day I decided that the rag wasn’t good enough to line my green compost bin!

And I wonder how long it will take me to reach this same decision. Every now and again, I am reminded why, a couple of years back, I cancelled my subscription to the Ottawa Citizen.

At the time, I was angry at and tired of the editorial board’s über-Christian, David Warren and his constant rantings about his born-again-ness and how Christians were fighting along the side of Dubya for morality, the free market and the American way… all being interchangeable in the mind of “Father” Warren.

It’s not that I mind a good theological debate. My views on the subject are pretty well-defined and have been honed over the years. I grew up in a decidedly non-Christian household that to a large degree shaped how I think today. Later in my teens, I performed a thorough and critical examination of the world’s major religions to see if I had missed something and that perhaps I could find a path that would enhance and complete my life experience.

Nope – what I found was a good basis upon which to launch many arguments against religiosity and for secularism. And I remain of the same mind to this day.

It’s also not that I think that having a system of religious beliefs is a bad thing at all. Indeed, if it gets you though life and it’s many pitfalls, by all means – believe! But don’t impose your system on me or my kids. And DEFINITELY do not make me subsidise religious institutions… although taxpayers most sickeningly do so. Witness the tax-free status of churches and the utterly wasteful duplication in Ontario’s Catholic / secular school boards!

Nevertheless, a system of spiritual beliefs works for some. I am reminded of my favourite episode of the West Wing where President Bartlett, after his lifelong assistant and confidante is killed in a car accident, stands in a church wailing in Latin against the absurdity of the death and how a righteous and kind god could ever allow such a tragedy. In the end, though, he finds strength in his beliefs and this helps him through the loss.

However, I digress.

My point is this: The Ottawa Typo-Master is a private enterprise that is free to write as they wish within certain parameters of decency and acceptable behaviour. But they go overboard when opening and unashamedly advance their evangelical Christian beliefs in the guise of “reporting”.  Their flagrant support for the Conservative Reform party is one issue – after all, they are not the only rag to do this – but issues of spirituality and the touting of one weltanschunng over another is completely out of order in our diverse, and yes, highly secular country.  The other side of an issue should always be addressed by a major Canadian newspaper in the name of balanced reporting and addressed not just as an afterthought but in a thorough and fair manner. There are atheists, humanist and agnostics in their readership who couldn’t care less about the Pope’s views on abortions.

Truth be told, I have been buying the Saturday paper for the New York Times crossword – cheaper than buying the New York Times.

So we’ll go with this for a while and see how fast it takes me to tire of the evangelising!

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario