When did the erosion of Ontario’s universities and colleges start?
Friday, November 17th, 2023
In 2019 Ford cut tuition fees by 10 per cent and kept them frozen… It was destructive. Ontario’s per-student funding for universities was only 57 per cent of that in all other provinces while its colleges were at 44 per cent…This funding gap is causing such hardship that eight of 23 universities, including Queen’s University and Waterloo, are running deficits. Some may crumble or break, as did Laurentian University.
Tags: budget, ideology, immigration, jurisdiction
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
With half measures like these, Canada is clearly not interested in gun control
Sunday, February 21st, 2021
… the scattershot handgun ban makes no sense. Legal handguns have grown like mushrooms in the dark, so much so that there are now more than one million, almost three times as many as there were in 2006. If Ottawa allows provinces to block municipalities from regulating handguns, it could mean some provinces will do it and others won’t. This is lacework regulation, and it is not the Canadian way.
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, jurisdiction
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Unions shouldn’t defend the indefensible
Thursday, October 29th, 2020
… we need more unionization. When you encounter trouble at work — which will happen at badly managed workplaces — someone has to have your back, and that’s the union. But perhaps unions have to shift their frames a little. Some have fallen into a ludicrous Trumpish trap that everything is either black or white. Not true. There are shades of grey. Unions shouldn’t defend the indefensible.
Tags: crime prevention, economy, ideology
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Don’t grandfather machine guns, eliminate them
Wednesday, May 6th, 2020
Trudeau’s subsequent reference to “grandfathering” rules after a post-ban two-year transition period is alarming… A ban means no guns; it doesn’t mean keep the ones you have. It shouldn’t mean large payouts to gun owners…
Tags: budget, crime prevention, ideology, rights, women, youth
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
McGuinty government’s planned education overhaul will be catastrophic
Saturday, September 8th, 2012
September 07, 2012
McGuinty seeks education on the cheap, credentialism (more students get a degree of decreasing value) and, frankly, the shrinking size and pay of the post-secondary workforce… It’s easy to set up an online university… The problem is, it isn’t a university, it’s another way to destroy the essence of a university… Someone has to call for high standards. For if a shortened BA is going to mean less, Ontario universities will fall into a class system.
Tags: budget, globalization, ideology, standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Policy Context | 2 Comments »
Disastrous… report suggests three-year university degrees and online classes
Monday, July 2nd, 2012
July 01, 2012
I oppose cutting degrees to three years, not just because other provinces and countries won’t accept this, but because fourth year is when you come into your own intellectually… The greatest danger is the report’s warm welcome to online study… You learn from the hard slog of long afternoons spent in classrooms with brilliant people. You learn to read and understand and read further. You learn to evaluate and criticize and think for yourself. You won’t get this fast, alone and on the cheap, but that is precisely what the government is planning…
Tags: budget, ideology, youth
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Economist Paul Krugman writes a repair manual for this depression
Monday, June 25th, 2012
Jun 24 2012
Keynes, who believed in government spending to kick-start stalled economies, is out of fashion right now. Milton Friedman is still in, the wisdom of the markets and all that. Look at us now. Clever little markets! … Here’s the essence: National economies aren’t like a household budget… when 10,000 teachers, scientists and food inspectors are laid off, that’s 10,000 salaries that don’t shop, buy a house, pay federal, provincial and local taxes and generally make the world go round.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Jungle medicine for drug addiction
Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
Nov 08 2011
Made from two plants mashed, cooked and juiced, ayahuasca looks deceptive, a watery spinach soup in a cup. But its effect is extraordinary, hyperactivating the parts of the brain where emotional memory is stored and processed. Rather than revisiting the same old neural connections, it forms new ones, letting people look at a painful event they could not normally contemplate without agony and altering the way they see it.
Tags: Health, mental Health
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
The era of permanent unemployment
Friday, August 26th, 2011
Aug 23 2011
Permanent unemployment (as North American manufacturing erodes, never to repair itself) is known in economic terms as “hysteresis.” It kills health, marriages, stability and parents’ ability to send a child to university. It destroys cities and neighbourhoods, and sends young people into the workplace with mortgage-level debt. Those children, raised with self-esteem, will lose it in the most painful way possible… Relations between the sexes sour, between everyone. Status anxiety rules. So we lash out — against workers with pensions, for instance — and vote against our own long-term interests. Irrational thinking prevails.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, poverty, standard of living, youth
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
A healthy choice: funding in-vitro fertilization
Monday, August 15th, 2011
Aug 14 2011
This is why the Quebec government’s decision to fund in-vitro fertilization for women having trouble conceiving was wise. It not only acknowledged a deep human need, it took a stand for infant health… Families without free medical care frantically try for multiple embryos, hoping to improve their odds. But twins and triplets “are 17 times more likely to be premature and often require neonatal treatment and special care throughout their lives, taxing the health care system,”
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, privatization, rights, women
Posted in Child & Family Debates | 1 Comment »
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