The Proletariat Congress

Once again, the NDP are the champion of the average Canadian.

Cell phone carriers Telus and Bell are going to be, next month charging their users for every incoming text message, spam or not. Each of these messages will cost 15-cents. The problem with this is that the person receiving has no control over the messages that he or she will receive and the person sending it likely already has a plan to cover it or they don’t mind stomaching the cost of sending a single message.

By this logic, spammers will already be paying for a plan and it would likely cover the process of sending an unlimited number of messages. The receiver doesn’t want spam. We hate it in our mail, we hate it in our blogs, we hate it in our email. We hate it period. So why should we have to pay for this? I’ll tell you why; some poor CEO is only able to afford one luxury vacation this year instead of two.

Fortunately for Canadians, despite our very closed market, we do have two options, Rogers (the least of the three evils) and my preferred carrier Virgin (who I am currently with an enjoying an incredible cell phone plan because they don’t feel the need to gauge me at every turn).

Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that we as Canadians are being just plain fucked over because the Conservatives don’t want to open up the market to foreign competition, which would drastically reduce our dependence on these large oligopolies.

Even if we don’t open our market, we as consumers deserve protection from unscrupulous corporations out to make an easy buck.

Even if you don’t fundamentally agree with the NDP on most issues, I believe this is one time when you will want to. Do yourself a favour and visit the link at the top of this entry. Click on the nice picture. You know you want to.

Today I was asked by my father who is out of town to go check on his plants and water them, as well as pick up any mail that would be on the floor. Two of the pieces of mail on the floor caught my eye. Both were propaganda leaflets from the Conservative Party, attempting to brainwash the voting public into buying their line.

The first one challenged voters to pick whether or not they wanted to keep the ‘Child Tax Benefit‘. The two options were yes, represented by Harper and no, represented by Dion, who had voted against it in the first place. What this little piece of paper fails to inform you of is that this Child Tax “Benefit” that Harper is pimping out really doesn’t cover the true cost of child care and that in created this “benefit”, he scraped the federal childcare programme, which despite its flaws helped more people than this paltry hand out would. Mere peanuts and we’re expected to jump for joy because the government is pretending it understands what it means to make ends meet every week and the burden of sacrifice in order to put hot food on the table.

The child tax benefit is a mere $1200 per annum, which barely covers one month of child care in any Canadian city. It does nothing for those who need it, and those who can afford it, it’s just peanuts for those citizens anyway. It is nothing more than an insult to the tax paying public.

The second leaflet was more general, targeting Dion’s poverty elimination programme, which would involve spending and raising taxes. Again, the public was presented with options, either accept the tax and/or debt or neither if they go with Harper. The thing is however, that in order to reduce poverty, there needs to be money spent. Money needs to be raised to reduce the total deficit that may be acquired during this campaign to raise Canadians above the national poverty line.

The federal government is touting a 10 billion, yes, that’s BILLION, dollar surplus in this year’s budget; 10 billion going towards the federal debt, with Flaherty saying that the government needs to spend less. And the public… we get just peanuts. Of course, what the government isn’t telling the people is that it inherited this carefully managed surplus from the Liberals; that this budget is a product of the Chretien era, when Paul Martin was Minister of Finance.

The budget, being touted as prudent does nothing to aid the crumbling infrastructure of Canadian cities nor to alleviates the crippling poverty that has some Canadians struggling to survive. Nothing for child care.

The two flyers in question do nothing to shake my immense hatred of the Harper administration and its pandering to the Bush administration and it’s failing war on terror, as well as other failed policies. It merely reaffirms what I have always believed.

And “Hon” (nothing honourable though) Peter van Loan, MP (c/o CRG Government Caucus Services, 131 Queen Street Suite 8-02, House of Commons, Ottawa ON, K1A 0A6)… it’s obvious you are in line with the party on the environment because your little flyers are nothing more than a waste of paper and yet more garbage to add to our ever growing landfills. Of course, there are some environmentally minded Canadians out there who will merely toss this tripe into their black boxes or use it to line their bird cages…

In a Brampton Court today, Justice Fragomeni handed down the verdict in the case against Allison Cox, a woman guilty in a case of criminal negligence, in which she is charged with manslaughter, causing the death of her autistic adopted sister, Tiffany Pinckney, who died from malnutrition in the basement of her sister’s Mississauga home.

The evidence clearly indicates that Allison Cox did not provide Tiffany Pinckney with the necessities of life, including adequate food, water and medical attention to sustain her life.

This is the general consensus across the board. The woman was deprived of the basic necessities of life and as a result of it, died in Cox’s basement on April 2, 2005. She had died in conditioned labelled as appalling.

It’s amazing that the Crown prosecutor, John Raftery, got this ruling and not because Cox is innocent in any way but because of this little snippet:

“People treat their pets better than Tiffany Pinckney was treated,” Raftery said in his closing arguments in November. “The level of care, or more precisely the neglect she received was not suitable for a human being.”

…so, you’re telling us that there is an acceptable level of negligence and that Cox went one step too far? And that if she had stayed within certain boundaries then there wouldn’t have been a problem, would there, Mr Prosecutor?

Given such a statement, it’s surprising that the judge didn’t catch on to that. That the prosecutor wasn’t called out for implying that there are acceptable; suitable levels of neglect that are all right for human beings. Perhaps it’s good that justice can be blind, otherwise it can’t be served in light of such statements.

Guilty verdict in woman’s starvation death

The vote was 11-9 in favour of black-focused schools. This opened the door for a new policy to be put in place.

For the last couple of years now, the Toronto Board of Education has been grappling with the idea of piloting black focused schools, that would have an education system styled online the lines of what is used in the Caribbean and Africa in order to tackle the issue of the drop out rate that is prevalent amongst teens of colour, namely those of African and Caribbean descent.

The concerns about the current system included thoughts that the classrooms are suffering from over-crowding and struggling black students aren’t able to get the attention they need from teachers and hence are feeling defeated, For that reason, they drop out. There are other concerns, but the main concern was to address the higher rate of drop out compared to other students. There are other factors involved such as the home environment that these students come from. The students may come from an impoverish home and may lack the resources to succeed academically. There are many reasons.

Some parents wanted change because as many of 40% of black students are dropping out of high school, never going on to achieve a post-secondary education, which is needed in order to get anywhere in today’s world regardless of one’s background. Without that diploma, even the brightest are stuck in a dead-end or worse.

However, there are still parents who are oppose to it, like Loreen Small, the mother of Jordan Manners, a teen who was fatally shot at his school, C.W. Jefferey’s last May. She had come out stating that instead of developing a black-focused school that she would rather see teachers receive help in teaching in a multi-racial classroom. She had even gone as far as to label the move as ’segregationist’.

“This black school thing … it ain’t right,” she told trustees, saying teachers need more help to engage with students in multi-racial classrooms.

“Don’t propose it – Martin Luther King thought we could sit at the front of the bus together,” pleaded Loreen Small, whose son was shot dead last spring at his school in northwest Toronto.

“My son died at C.W. Jefferys in 2007. If we can all just come together and be as one,” said an emotional Small, who broke down in tears in the hall after her presentation.

“If black kids need to graduate, let’s get teachers in there and learn how to interact with black kids,” she said.

Despite the pleas and warnings issued by some, the motion was still passed. Those who had favoured the motioned hailed it as the start of a new era. The motion included a plan to:

• Open an Africentric alternative school in 2009.
• Start a three-year pilot program in three other high schools.
• Work with York University to improve school achievement.
• Develop a plan to help failing students.

While in theory is sounds like it might work, the concerns about segregation isn’t completely unfounded. It would reduce the exposure of students to other students of unique backgrounds. It wouldn’t be do any favours for a society that prides itself on being a multi-cultural patchwork of rich cultures brought together to progress as humans.

“I just feel being with a mixed group of people is better, you know, you get to learn different cultures, different aspects of different people, the way they live,” said Grade 10 student Terrin Smith-Williams.

Strange, that despite opposition during the Ontario General Election last October in which John Tory’s Progressive Conservatives suffered an overwhelming defeat, with Tory not even gaining a seat despite being party leader because of the proposal to increase public funding for religious schools that this motion for black-focused schools would go through. Especially when there were many cries about how the funding of religious schools would increase segregation along religious lines, that this was given the go-ahead.

To go ahead with such a measure appears to be contrary to the general opinion of the voting and tax-paying public who’s sentiments seem to point toward a singular system where there is no one excluded for any reason.

There are other ways of dealing with a system that is failing certain students, and it starts with eliminating funding for the Catholic school board. They are permitted to exclude students because of religion despite being publicly funded and that in itself is just wrong in this day in age.

With the funding that would be reclaimed from privatizing this board of education the public school board would be able to effectively lower the number of students per classroom, increase resources and hire more teachers and be able to address the needs of students who are struggling. It would allow the public school board to address a key point of the plan for the black-focused schools, which is to help students who are failing by developing a plan to give them a fighting chance.

The same funding would be better spent allowing students to choose an academic education or one that is focused on developing skills through a vocational programme that would see them eventually placed in apprenticeships.

Some students will still drop out but at least more will stay in school and will be in a culturally rich environment where they aren’t isolated from their peers unless their behaviour is a danger to their peers.

Of course, not everyone sees it this way. So, they need to experiment to learn that some times just because something seems like a good idea in theory and looks workable on paper that in practise it is doom to fail. On the other hand, it could very well work, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t change one fact, that on the surface, this appears to be segregationist.

Toronto trustees vote in favour of black-focused schools
Board okays black-focused school