Where will P.E.I. Muslims go to pray?

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 50 Comments

Call it Little Mosque on the Island. Last week, the CBC ran a news story about a Muslim doctor whose efforts to build the first mosque in P.E.I. have thus far come to naught. The “disappointed” doctor asked the province for financial assistance, only to be “turned down.”

The CBC story also suggested that there was reason to believe the city might step in. It quoted Charlottetown Coun. David MacDonald as saying he would be willing to meet with Muslims and “see if the city can assist in building a mosque.” But when Maclean’s spoke to MacDonald, he said, “We wouldn’t give any assistance to a religious group any more than we would to anybody else. We don’t provide financial assistance to any kind of developer.” The meeting, MacDonald says, will be little more than an “information session.” Continue…

Forget an A, here’s $20

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 7 Comments

There are a lot of explanations out there for why Canada’s First Nations students are still so far behind. With on-reserve graduation rates hovering around 30 per cent, according to the Assembly of First Nations, Aboriginals are less than half as likely as other Canadians to crown their teenage years with a high school degree. Many say the crux of the problem is chronic underfunding of First Nations schools—rooted in a federal funding formula that dates back to the 1980s. Others admonish lousy on-reserve teaching and poor communication with provincial schools. Still more find blame in dated technology, or ethnically biased curriculum, or cultural attitudes on reserves that undervalue formal education.

But while the ideological debate rages, some First Nations have taken matters into their own hands. Their solution: pay students to go school. Honey Powless, of Ontario’s Six Nations, graduated in 2007 and recalls cashing in every semester at Hagersville Secondary. Her school’s incentive scheme operated on a sliding scale; First Nations students were rewarded different amounts of money, depending on how good their attendance was. “Kids were really looking at that,” she says. “It really helped us through.” The 19-year-old says she usually earned the maximum payment: $150 a semester—money she spent on her cellphone bill. Continue…

Conservatives v. The Arts

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 1:19 PM - 5 Comments

David Akin has a go at sorting out to what degree Stephen Harper truly despises theatregoers.

Therein, he wonders where a partisan twitterer has sourced a separate claim that a distinction must be made between funding for arts and funding for culture. James Bradshaw sorted through that question 11 months ago.

CBC Ya Later

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 5:09 PM - 0 Comments

The latest on the CBC’s budget problems can be found here. Hubert Lacroix, the head of the CBC, said yesterday that they’re abandoning (for now) the idea of adding more U.S. TV programming or radio commercials, and trying to make up the shortfall by cutting salaries/bonuses and selling assets.

The big question about the CBC’s current plight is what the Harper government sees as the endgame — where it wants the network to end up. (Shutting it down is not really an option; the Republicans couldn’t de-fund NPR, either.) There have been suggestions that, in addition to not wanting to bail the network out, Harper “couldn’t be happier” about the current situation, since it creates the crisitunity to “starve the television and radio network, which receive more than $1-billion per year from the public purse, into a reinvention revolution.” Which, if true, might explain why the CBC is trying to avoid changes in its format at the moment. Adding commercials on the radio or even more U.S. programming might not be a disastrous thing in and of itself, but in tough times, the network has an interest in keeping its format as intact as possible; any changes will open the door for demands that they re-orient themselves even more.

Debt, Bankruptcy, and Cutbacks

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 4:17 PM - 5 Comments

Vancouver’s 2010 Games are starting to look more red than green.

Nortel Networks filed for bankruptcy in the United States and Canada on Wednesday, earning it the dubious distinction of being the first official 2010 sponsor to go mams up. (GM can’t win anything these days it seems.)

The company, which has limped along since mid-2000, enduring 16 rounds of layoffs, had accumulated US $6.3 billion in debt as of the end of last Sept. and has almost twice that amount in liabilities. It was also suppose to be Vancouver 2010′s official supplier of network telecommunications equipment.

The “in-kind” sponsorship deal, signed in May 2007, called for the company to supply somewhere between $3 million and $15 million in hardware so that Bell—the official telecommunications service provider—could create a secure video, voice and data sharing network.

In a statement, Ward Chapin Vanoc’s chief information officer, shrugged off the news, saying the company kept organizers apprised of their troubles, and remains “committed” to the Games

“Today, Nortel reaffirmed its commitment to its Vancouver 2010 sponsorship. Much of Nortel’s commitments to the Games have been delivered and will be in place by May,” said Chapin.

But it’s yet more negative publicity for what is threatening to become the bad news Olympics. Continue…

And we thought he was great in "Away From Her"

By John Geddes - Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 1:34 PM - 4 Comments

Gordon Pinsent’s phrasing, in his plea for artists to be heard in the campaign debate about cultural funding, sounds like a tip of his hat to recent Maclean’s cover lines. “We know about Mr. Harper’s master plan, we know about Mr. Dion’s big idea,” said the iconic actor, echoing our three-cover election package last week. “But it would be hugely comfortable to know that we have a seat at that table – not just in the children’s section, not just below the salt, but right there, smack dab in the middle of the big meal.”