The Commons: When photo ops go wrong

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 6, 2012 at 7:40 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. “Louder!” called a voice, possibly from the Conservative side of the House.

Peter Julian, already speaking at a certain volume, attempted to oblige, punctuating his question with exclamation points.

“When(!) is the government going to show leadership? When is it going to work on a jobs plan so that Canadians(!) can get back to work?

The subject here was the recent closure of Electro-Motive Diesel in London, Ontario—a closure notable not only for the 450 individuals it put out of work, but because the plant was once selected as an ideal scene to demonstrate the Prime Minister’s economic stewardship. And so a silly picture of Mr. Harper pretending to conduct a train is now a symbol of some kind. And so Mr. Julian was yelling this afternoon in the general direction of the Finance Minister. Continue…

Rallying the cause

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 23, 2012 at 9:26 AM - 0 Comments

Peggy Nash speaks to demonstrators after a rally for workers at Electro-Motive diesel in London this weekend.

Who pays for what?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 16, 2012 at 4:41 PM - 0 Comments

In an interview with the CBC—to be broadcast this evening—the Prime Minister rejects the idea of a health care innovation fund (as proposed by Brad Wall and endorsed by Dalton McGuinty).

“What I think we all want to see now from the premiers who have the primary responsibility here, is what their plan and their vision really is to innovate and to reform and to make sure the health-care system’s going to be there for all of us,” Harper said, according to an excerpt from the interview. “So I hope that we can put the funding issue aside, and they can concentrate on actually talking about health care, because that’s the discussion we’ll be having.”

The idea of a separate fund for the provinces to use for innovation in the delivery of health care got no support from the prime minister. ”I’m not looking to spend more money. I think we’ve been clear what we think is within the capacity of the federal government over a long period of time.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with CTV yesterday, Mr. McGuinty mused intriguingly of “disentanglement.”

The feds do jails and we do jails. The feds do training and we do training. The feds inspect meat and we inspect meat. Why don’t one of us, alone, take responsibility for some of those areas. I think that introduces more efficiencies, it introduces more transparency, accountability is more easily evident. I think those are the kinds of conversations that we need to have going forward in an era of fiscal restraint.

The Ontario premier arrived at this point in response to a question about the Harper government’s crime policies and the burden they will place on the provinces, so perhaps this seems tangential to the health care debate. But maybe it’s all part of the same discussion. Consider the analysis of Scott Clark and Peter DeVries that I noted this morning. Continue…

‘What the federal government campaigned on’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 6:05 PM - 0 Comments

Ontario is unimpressed.

Moments after Mr. Flaherty announced the new five-year funding commitment, Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan issued a statement, accusing the federal government of reneging on a promise made during the election campaign to support health care … “All we were looking to do was implement what the federal government campaigned on – 6 per cent a year growth in the Canada Health Transfer for the duration of the next health accord,” he said. “Today they backed away from that.”

The Globe counts Quebec, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, PEI and Manitoba as standing, quite literally, in the general vicinity of the Ontario finance minister. Quebec is definitely displeased. Canadian Press counts Manitoba among the visibly angry.

Canada’s most dangerous cities: the good news

By Ken MacQueen, Patricia Treble and Alex Ballingall - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 5:58 AM - 0 Comments

Longest without a murder: Lévis, Que.

The last time anyone was murdered in this city of 137,000, which sits just across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City, was 2002. That’s the longest stretch of any big metropolitan area. Fortunately, there are many other places in Canada where homicide detectives are also as underemployed as the proverbial Maytag repairman. Some 38 of Canada’s 100 largest cities—from Windsor, Ont. (pop. 221,000) to West Vancouver (pop. 50,000)—recorded a homicide-free year. Canada even has a homicide-free province. In 2010, Prince Edward Island recorded not a single murder among its 142, 000 residents, for the second year in a row. Continue…

These days, no news is good. Period.

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 25, 2011 at 7:30 AM - 0 Comments

Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP

The other day, Martin Scorsese screened his new 3-D children’s movie, Hugo, for his daughter Francesca, who was turning 12, and 50 of her friends. Two thoughts occur:

It’s probably a good thing Scorsese didn’t have a daughter turning 12 the year he made Taxi Driver.

It’s official: you’re an inadequate parent.

“What? A pinata?! Daddy, I wanted 3-D Jude Law! Francesca’s dad gave her 3-D Jude Law!”

Continue…

Let the people decide how they want to decide

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 2:30 PM - 0 Comments

Jonathan McLeod rips the idea of asking the courts to rule against first-past-the-post.

A judgement in favour of pro-PR side would likely spell the doom of the current voting system for not just Quebec, but every province. Here in Upper Canada, we rejected electoral reform by a direct vote. If you’re trying to enhance democracy, you shouldn’t do things that will that will directly thwart the will of the people. If you want PR, get it back on the ballot. Don’t turn to the courts.

Voters in Ontario rejected proportional representation in 2007. Voters in British Columbia rejected similar reform two years later.

The real federalism problem with crime legislation

By Brendan van Niejenhuis - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 2:18 PM - 0 Comments

Pawel Dwulit/Canadian Press

In November 1983, Elijah Askov and three others were charged in connection with a plot to extort money from a man who ran a business supplying exotic dancers to Ontario strip clubs. Their case was plagued by delays from the start; nearly three years after the men’s arrest, and two years after their preliminary hearing, Askov and his co-defendants had not yet had their day in court. The Supreme Court of Canada was eventually asked to interpret the Charter guarantee to “be tried within a reasonable time.” And in its then-controversial Askov decision, the Court put a stop to the proceedings, giving birth to the modern and frequently employed practice of throwing out criminal charges based on unreasonable delay.

That Askov didn’t mean an end to unreasonable delays makes it hard for the provinces to mount a credible case against the federal government as it proposes sweeping changes to the Criminal Code. The Conservatives’ controversial omnibus crime bill has sparked a flurry of attacks for its substance, including its introduction of American-style mandatory-minimum sentencing. Quebec, Ontario and now Newfoundland have also introduced a new ground of opposition—the impact the federal government’s “tough new measures” will have on provincial balance sheets. It’s not clear, though, why voters should believe Ottawa is doing anything worse than adding to a problem the provinces had a hand in creating. Continue…

Don’t go building firewalls

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 7, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister responds to the complaints of Ontario and Quebec about his government’s crime policies.

Look, it’s – there’s constitutional responsibilities of all governments to enforce laws and protect people, and I’ve seen the data. I think the people of Ontario and Quebec expect that their government will work with the federal government to make sure we have safe streets and safe communities. 

Ontario and Quebec have been joined by Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.

The Commons: A salute to cognitive dissonance

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 5:52 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. Shortly before the start of Question Period this afternoon, Conservative backbencher Patrick Brown rose to repeat his side’s line that the NDP is too “disunited” to govern. A moment later, Conservative backbencher Greg Rickford rose to lament that the NDP, in punishing two MPs who defied the party’s decision to whip a vote on the gun registry, was also too committed to enforcing unity.

Presumably this was Mr. Rickford’s way of protesting his own government’s decision to whip this week’s vote on asbestos exports. Hopefully his caucus leadership won’t too severely punish him for so bravely asserting the independence of individual MPs.

Immediately thereafter, the Speaker then called for oral questions and the official opposition sent up Joe Comartin, Mr. Comartin having apparently discovered an example of irony that he was eager to share with everyone. Continue…

Who pays the bill?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 10:03 AM - 0 Comments

Matching Quebec’s demand, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says the Harper government should pick up the tab for its crime legislation. Peter Russell considers the possibilities.

More likely, added Russell, provinces objecting to the cost or content of the legislation will ignore certain aspects of it — trafficking or possession of small amounts of marijuana, for example. “They will say to police who are out looking, ‘If you get a call give it a low priority’,” he said. “I don’t think they would actually say, ‘We’re not going to enforce the law.’ They would say to the provincial police, ‘Give people who grow pot a low priority’. They can certainly do that. You just don’t put the resources into it. It’s a matter of discretion.”

Politically, Canada is headed into a situation where the provinces are shaping up as the official opposition, added Russell. “They are taking over that role,” he said, “and have a constitutional right to do so.”

The newest math

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 11:24 AM - 0 Comments

After one version last week and another last night, the official House of Commons math now adds 15 new seats for Ontario, six for British Columbia, six for Alberta and three for Quebec.

The provinces thus break down as so.

Ontario 38.8% of the population and 35.8% of the seats
Quebec 23.1% and 23.1%
British Columbia 13.3% and 12.4%
Alberta 11.0% and 10.1%
Manitoba 3.6% and 4.1%
Saskatchewan 3.1% and 4.1%
Nova Scotia 2.7% and 3.3%
New Brunswick 2.2% and 3.0%
Newfoundland 1.5% and 2.1%
PEI 0.4% and 1.2%

The Internet can’t fix democracy—only citizens can

By From the editors - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Carlo Allegri

The technology of voting has changed substantially since ancient Athenians tossed coloured stones in jars and scratched names on pottery shards. Today it’s paper ballots that seem ancient and outdated.

Poor turnout by voters in Manitoba and Ontario this month has prompted renewed calls for online voting. “We have to do something,” vowed Greg Selinger, recently elected premier of Manitoba, referring to his province’s depressing turnout numbers. “We’re going to take a look at e-voting.” Elections Canada plans to test electronic balloting in a federal by-election by 2013 sometime after 2013. Many municipalities across the country are already using the new technology.

The appeal of online voting is obvious. Voter turnout is poor across the board, but particularly dismal among the youngest cohort of voters. Since this generation has grown up immersed in online communications, its members might be enticed to vote in greater numbers if the ballot was in a format familiar and convenient to them. Voting at home via a smartphone certainly seems more attractive than walking down the street to a public school or community hall, standing behind a cardboard screen and putting an X on a piece of paper.

And yet it is not clear online voting actually has the power to draw more people to the polls, whatever their age. From the municipal election evidence in Canada, it appears online voting may boost the number of people who vote in advance polls, but does little to change overall voter turnout. A large-scale experiment in Britain was abandoned in 2007 after numerous technical glitches and no appreciable improvement in turnout. All of which suggests online voting provides already-committed voters with a more convenient means of voting, but fails to address the underlying apathy of those who don’t.

This makes intuitive sense. Declining voter turnout is unlikely to stem from the physical requirements of voting—it is no more difficult to vote than to go to the grocery store, something most Canadians of all ages manage to do on a regular basis. Rather, what is crucial to the decision to vote is the time invested before that walk.

Casting an informed vote requires a mental effort that far outweighs the physical act. Thinking about the election, learning about the candidates and their platforms, getting involved in politics in general; it is social failure in these areas that has produced the poor voter turnout. Any real solution to the voter turnout question thus lies not in new technology but old-school effort. Parties and candidates need to stir greater excitement among the voting public. And voters themselves need to take the time to understand how politics affects them personally.

One of the great ironies of the Internet age is that while it has made it far easier for voters to inform themselves about elections, it has done little to increase the interest that people show for democracy in general. If there is a role for the Internet to play in reducing the democracy deficit, it should come in improving the level of public engagement and altering voter behaviour prior to election day, through the use of forums, blogs and various other online tools. This is where the innovation ought to occur.

A further note of caution arises from the impersonal and impulsive nature of electronic voting, often with grimly humorous results. In 1999, Time magazine’s Person of the Century global online poll was hijacked by Turks eager to express their admiration for Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Ataturk became the top vote-getter in all categories, including Entertainer, Scientist and Warrior of the Century. Time instead gave Albert Einstein the top honour. Similarly in 2009, an online vote to name a new NASA space module was swamped by fans of television comedian Stephen Colbert; “Colbert” outpolled “Serenity” by 40,000 votes but NASA ignored this result as well. The same goes for a poll organized by the Northwest Territories in which “Bob” appeared as a top pick among potential new names for the jurisdiction. While such results are obviously meant as a bit of fun, the flippancy encouraged by online polling ought to give all voters pause for thought.

Online voting may indeed hold the promise of greater convenience for many voters. And for this reason alone Elections Canada and other electoral authorities should continue their experiments. Every little bit helps. But it is impractical and naive to expect electronic ballots to reverse the long-standing trend of voter disinterest. That responsibility lies with all Canadians. Democracy is no easy job. And it’s time for everyone to get to work.

House of Commons math

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 3:48 PM - 40 Comments

If the Star’s sources are correct, the Harper government’s plan to rebalance the House of Commons will see 13 seats added in Ontario, six in Alberta, five to British Columbia and two to Quebec.

The NDP has tabled its own bill on seat distribution which generally uses a formula based on the results of the 2011 census. On the question of Quebec, it would ensure that Quebec maintain the same proportion of seats as it had on Nov. 27, 2006: the day the House adopted the Prime Minister’s motion that the Quebecois form a nation within a united Canada.

At that point, Quebec had 75 of 308 seats, or 24.35%.

Under the government’s changes, Quebec would have 77 of 334 seats, or 23.05%.

Update 4:03pm. Using the government’s seat numbers, you would have to give Quebec a total of eight more seats (83 of 340) to get to 24.41%. Seven more seats, or 82 of 339, equals 24.19%.

Why Ontario is poised to become Canada’s Greece

By the editors - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:50 AM - 99 Comments

Frank Gunn/CP

October has been an unusually busy month for provincial politics.

Prince Edward Island, the Northwest Territories, Manitoba, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Yukon have all had elections in the past two weeks. Alberta’s ruling Progressive Conservatives recently picked a new premier in Alison Redford. And next month Saskatchewan will head to the polls. While every election is important, one in particular should give all Canadians pause for thought.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s re-election last week, albeit with a minority, was an impressive display of campaigning. And yet what makes McGuinty’s return significant is not his politicking skill but his responsibility for Ontario’s ever-expanding debt. Traditionally known as the engine that drives Canada, Ontario is in danger of becoming the Greece of Confederation—if Greece happened to account for more than a third of Europe’s economy.

Continue…

Starting… now

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 9:32 AM - 66 Comments

Stephen Harper, August 2. Harper didn’t stop there, putting in a campaign plug for Ontario’s provincial Conservatives in this fall’s election. ”We started cleaning up the left-wing mess federally in this area. Rob’s doing it municipally. And now we’ve got to complete the hat trick and do it provincially as well.”

Stephen Harper, last Friday. You know I don’t analyse elections, and I don’t get involved in provincial elections. Obviously we congratulate Premier McGuinty on his win. Our governments have worked well during the challenges of the past two or three years, and I look forward to continuing to work with Premier McGuinty’s government.

Reality will bite back in Ontario

By Richard Warnica - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 2:34 PM - 8 Comments

Blair Gable/Maclean's

The Twitterati in my home province of Alberta made a lot of hay this week over a headline in The Globe and Mail that presented the election of Alison Redford, a centrist former justice minister and now provincial premier, as an evolutionary step forward for the knuckle draggers of the Prairie politic. “Alberta steps into the present,” the headline read, to which the easily offended replied, “So where were we before, the past?” Albertans have an almost reflexive sensitivity to criticism from the East. It’s a bit like what the rest of Canada feels for the U.S., a mix of smug superiority and desperation to be noticed. But Albertans should relax. Ontarians seem to think worse of each other than of anybody else. And their politics, well, they’re nothing to brag about.

Take last night’s election. It was, in many ways, an odd campaign. In a province where health care eats up $46 billion a year, more ink was spilled on cross-dressing than on doctors’ salaries. Indeed, it seemed at times as if the parties had made a pact to avoid dealing with most of what a provincial government actually does. Health care? Untouchable. Education? Just keep the kissing booths out and we’re fine. Continue…

Ontarians: voting with their butts for Nobody

By Colby Cosh - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 7:08 AM - 95 Comments

Get ready for the Voter Turnout Nerds: you’ll be hearing from them today. Oh yes. It would not be like them to stay silent after an Ontario election in which fewer than half of technically eligible voters appear to have cast a ballot. The Turnout Nerds don’t care who won or who lost: they care about the mathematical purity of the electoral exercise. They’ll be everywhere you look in the media, ready with their diagnoses and their nostrums and, most of all, their disapproval.

It’s not the people who have let us down, they’ll tell us; it’s the government that has let the people down, fostering apathy (most heinous of all political sins) by failing to implement Brilliant Idea X or Salutary Scheme Y. But at what point do the people, apparently so deaf to the allure of electoral reforms and renovations, stop believing the Turnout Nerd’s comforting assurances of goodwill? Nothing seems to raise the holy quantity of Turnout very effectively. Any momentary rise seems to be followed by a more precipitate plunge. Are the electorate and the Turnout Nerds headed toward a frightful mutual collision with terrible truths about democracy?

Seven provinces, including Ontario, have adopted fixed election dates, partly as a response to the Turnout Problem. When the Harper government introduced fixed dates in 2006—we all remember how well that turned out, don’t we?—this was one of the stated goals: “One objective of setting fixed election dates is maximizing voter turnout.” Dozens of experts and quasi-experts made this argument, and we now have data from enough fixed-date elections to venture a conclusion on this noble experiment:

 Prov    Elxn           Change in Turnout
 BC      May 17 2005    +2.8%
 PE      May 28 2007    +0.5%
 NL      Oct 9 2007     -9.5%
 ON      Oct 10 2007    -4.1%
 BC      May 12 2009    -7.2%
 NB      Sept 27 2010   +4.0%
 PE      Oct 3 2011     -7.4%
 MB      Oct 4 2011     +0.7%
 ON      Oct 6 2011     -5.2%*
 NL      Oct 11 2011    ?
 SK      Nov 7 2011     ?
 *early estimate

[Points thumb downward, blows raspberry]

As provinces scrambled pell-mell to adopt fixed election dates, a few sociologists and political scientists pointed out that our municipal governments already have them—and that turnouts in Canadian municipal elections, possibly as a consequence, are feeble. Fixed election dates are also a characteristic of American electoral systems, as are pathetic turnouts at every level.

And what else do Canadian municipal elections and U.S. federal and state elections have in common? Huge incumbency advantages. Fixed dates are supposed to relieve a crucial advantage of incumbents in traditional Canadian elections, yet it’s the damnedest thing—if my math is right, incumbents won seven of the nine fixed-date elections in that table, and are extremely likely to be 9-for-11 a month from now. (I wouldn’t recommend establishing any crazy expectations about increased turnout in Newfoundland and Saskatchewan, either.)

Did we make a boo-boo? Did our democracy slip on a banana peel? Turnout Nerds sought fixed-date elections in the name of their obsession with voting as a simplistic moral imperative: it is starting to appear not only as if they failed on their own terms, but that their tonic for democracy may have had unanticipated, or at least undisclosed, side-effects. The Nerds’ next crusade will probably be for electronic voting, and if you think citizens are cynical about electoral politics now, wait until the apparatus falls into the hands of the people who gave the world golden hits like PC LOAD LETTER and PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA.

It is not that the Turnout Nerds have some vast constituency of voters who share their concern. Voter turnout is the kind of imaginary issue that spurs people to parrot pieties to pollsters, but the turnout itself is a perfect revealed-preference measure of how much people actually care. Aside from a few unfortunates who slip and fall or get hit by buses on their way to the polls, there can be almost no such thing as a person who is really concerned about turnout, but who stays home on Election Day. We all have near-total control over whether we turn out or not. The cost of going to the polls is pretty much zero. So the issue, if there is an issue, must be that a lot of people think that voting isn’t even worth the zero—that they personally accomplish nothing or less than nothing by voting: not even the reinforcement of a useful social norm or the cultivation of a private sense of satisfaction. Some of them are surely right about this.

The true place of the Turnout Nerd in the media ecosystem is to fill space—to give us something to talk and worry and argue about in the absence of authentic information about what stirrings and yearnings lie behind the raw vote totals. But the Nerd, with his worrywart ways focused on one principle of political health, may be having the same destructive effects on our political life as any other fundamentalist or monomaniac. These people are the orthorexics of politics. Ask Kenneth Arrow: the creation of a political system is always a balancing act between virtues, a compromise, a kludge. Greater political “engagement” and “involvement” are vague virtues at best; and more “excitement” is, if you ask me, an indubitable positive vice.

So can we start politely ignoring the Turnout Nerd? Heck, I won’t even insist on the “politely” part.

Election night in Ontario

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 9:40 PM - 15 Comments

With Dalton McGuinty’s side on the cusp of a majority, the TV networks are projecting a reelected Liberal government in Ontario. Results are here.

Depending on your level of interest, it could be a long night.

12:07am. So that was interesting. I spent the evening pretending to know what I was talking about by arguing that no one knows what they’re talking about.

12:24am. Paul Wells, who knows what he’s talking about and has spoken with someone who knows even better, files from the Chateau Laurier.

Politics and reality

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 4:50 PM - 4 Comments

This Agenda panel was convened to consider the Ontario election, but the discussion is relevant to the federal situation as well.

Third-party advertisers take the spotlight in the Ontario election

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 3 Comments

Andrew Tolson/Maclean's

Outsiders have never been terribly welcome in Canadian election campaigns. In federal votes, the 95 per cent of us who don’t belong to registered parties face a bulwark of laws restricting third-party campaign spending—rules rooted in the fear that, left unguarded, democracy will be sold off to the highest bidder. This theory has been an article of faith among left-wingers since the early 2000s, when a conservative activist named Stephen Harper waged a court battle against the limits, to the delight of Bay Street’s heavy hitters.

The Supreme Court of Canada ultimately upheld federal third-party spending limits. But few provinces have strong limits of their own. And if Ontario’s current election campaign is any guide, fears of big business stealing elections for conservative parties may have been laughably misplaced. As of last week, all six third-party advertisers registered with the province’s election watchdog were either labour organizations or coalitions who have in the past run attack ads against Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak. Meantime, an array of environmentalists, NGOs and green entrepreneurs have joined forces in hopes of saving the province’s two-year-old Green Energy Act, with plans for unprecedented forays into the ground-level campaign. Leaders of the ad hoc group deny they are acting for or against specific candidates or parties. But Hudak is the only leader committed to undoing the act’s key provisions.

The Tories might have seen this coming. Four years ago, they felt the full force of a labour-funded coalition called Working Families, which took advantage of Ontario’s loose laws on third-party advertisers by unleashing more than $1 million worth of anti-Conservative attack ads that helped propel Premier Dalton McGuinty to victory. The Tories later complained to the province’s chief electoral officer, claiming the group was a front for the Liberals. An investigation indeed revealed ties between Working Families and Grit campaign director Don Guy. But the probe found no evidence that the group was outright controlled by the party.

Continue…

Election time and hyperbole is in the air

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, September 19, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 6 Comments

Aaron Vincent Elkaim/CP

Every now and then the province of Ontario takes leave of its collective senses. Grown men jump at shadows. House cats are conjured into dragons. For a time it seems as if the only thought on anyone’s mind is the length of their own toenails. We call these periods “elections.”

Just now this province of 13 million souls is preoccupied with a vast and far-reaching proposal on the part of the governing Liberals to give every new job that comes up to a foreign worker. You read that right: if the Liberals are re-elected, they will make the province’s unemployed sit at home—I believe the slogan is “Ontarians need not apply”—presumably until the supply of foreign workers is exhausted. Indeed, so determined are the Liberals to see these itinerant labourers take over the province that they are actually paying employers to hire them: $10,000 a job.

Quite why the Liberals should wish to do this is unclear, but I have it on no less authority than the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. The party has been blanketing the province with advertisements to that effect, while its leader, Tim Hudak, hammers the point home at every opportunity.

Continue…

Bullying victims are taking schools to court

By Stephanie Findlay - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 14 Comments

Ward Perrin/PNG/Vancouver Sun

In 2009, Daniela Cervini, a Toronto-based lawyer, was approached by a group of parents whose children were bullied at an elementary school in Owen Sound, Ont. For years, the parents claim they had been trying the prescribed channels—meetings with vice-principals, principals, police, board superintendents—with what they perceived as no results. They turned to litigation, “just because they weren’t being heard,” says Cervini. This year, four claims were filed in Ontario Superior Court against the Bluewater District School Board involving three schools, five teachers, three principals and one vice-principal. All are for gross negligence—the failure to protect students from bullies. Each lawsuit is for $8.5 million, well above the $1-million standard in personal injury claims. Together, at $34 million, the Bluewater suits are the biggest of their kind in Canada. As Cervini puts it: “You hear so much of this talk in the media and current culture of zero tolerance and bullying. It would seem that the schools have this under control. They don’t.” She expects them to deny the allegations; so far they have filed only a notice of intent to defend.

Bullying lawsuits have appeared in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Waterloo, Ont., as parents turn to the civil courts for justice. And while policies may be consistent in some school districts or provinces, how effective those policies are remains open to debate.

Bullying may have found its way into Ontario courts because the province’s approach has been more focused on discipline. “The easy fix to school boards seems to be you just suspend a kid that did the bullying, which doesn’t fix anything,” says Martha Mackinnon, executive director of Justice for Children and Youth, a Toronto-based legal-aid clinic for children. In Ontario’s initial anti-bullying legislation, the Safe Schools Act, vice-principals and principals were recast as police, required to conduct formal investigations of bullying complaints and penalize offenders according to a gradated system. It’s also known as the “zero tolerance” act.

Continue…

‘Foreign workers’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 10:01 AM - 47 Comments

Adam Radwanski watches Jason Kenney watching Tim Hudak.

On Thursday, federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney – the point man for federal Conservative efforts to reach out to new Canadians – used much milder language than Mr. Hudak in expressing concern about Mr. McGuinty’s promise. The previous night, at a rally, Mr. Kenney applauded Mr. Hudak’s line about “foreign workers.” But glancing around him, he looked slightly uncomfortable as he did so.

Dalton McGuinty thinks Tim Hudak should apologize for his language.