The Proletariat Congress

People are easily offended with the most harmless comments these days. Politicians often find themselves walking on egg shells in an attempt to soothe the most fragile egos. They find themselves unable to speak their minds without someone crying foul.

Consider this statement from Premier Dalton McGuinty on the subject of faith-based school funding:

If you want the kind of Ontario where we invite children of different faiths to leave the publicly funded system and become sequestered and segregated in their own private schools, then they should vote for Mr. Tory. If they think it’s important that we continue to bring our kids together, so that they grow together and learn from one another, then you should vote for me.

He is advocating that the public system doesn’t discriminate and brings students of different faiths and cultures together for a common purpose: to learn in an academic environment that prizes knowledge and achievement over petty differences. The system has students put those differences aside to work together towards a common goal of achieving academic/practical knowledge. In the process, they even learn something about another religion or culture they might not have known if they were in a school that was for a single faith.

So, what’s the problem?

According to the United Jewish Appeal and the Canadian Jewish Congress the comments were ‘hurtful’ and ‘offensive’ because the faith-based schools teach about tolerance and acceptance. But how can we have tolerance and acceptance when we are segregated along religious lines?

This doesn’t fit into the modern frame of secular Canadian society in which we need to spend more time coming together to learn that our differences should be celebrated. Religion is a divisive subject and as a nation we don’t need anything else to divide us up. We have plenty to keep up divided and feuding.

There is nothing offensive about what Premier McGuinty has says. It’s brutally honest and some people cannot take that level of honesty and prefer to live in their rose-coloured glass world; in their protective bubble.

But the religious groups expressing offence have demanded an apology and have offered flimsey excuses.

UJA Federation of Greater Toronto chair David Engel has come out saying:

The remark is deeply offensive to our community and all faith communities. We just want him to take back the comment that was offensive to our schools. Our schools teach respect for all members of Ontario society – not the opposite – and we encourage our students to strengthen the society around us through their volunteer work and their careers.

You can teach respect just as you can lead a horse to water. You cannot force someone to respect anyone else just as you cannot force a horse to drink. People learn respect when they are around others who are different.

You can give students the skills they need to do their jobs but you cannot teach respect; you cannot force anyone to learn respect; they learn it through personal experience.

Apologize, Jewish groups tell McGuinty

Recently there has been an upswing in the number of condo developers taking over parts of Toronto where I live. They have knocked down old buildings which had been here for many years in order to make room for large high-rise condominium complexes in order to meet the demand for more housing in a city that is stretched to the limits, threatening to encroach on valuable farm land and sensitive ecological systems that surround the GTA. Some people embrace the change, some are indifferent and others find that this development is taking away precious land that could be used for other projects such as parks and schools.

Condo developers don’t see eye to eye with the people; they see only the profit and they ignore the cost to society in the pursuit of the all-mighty dollar in the name of free market exploitative capitalism. Developers such as Tridal, who had recently, took part of a high school’s property to build a sales building. The building may not be large but it encroaches on property that should otherwise be for the use of the school.

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From the front, it doesn’t look out of place. It’s right on the street and at the front of the back end of the school, taking over part of the large field that could be used for various recreational activities. The same swath of land could have been used to build an extension for the school to facilitate higher learning. Not some condo retail office.

As if to add insult to injury, the same condo developer has decided that it doesn’t like some of the old trees in this area and wants to take down size very large, attractive silver maples in the name of “progress”. In an era where we have to worry about climate change, global warming and the eradication of trees, which supply us with shade and the much needed oxygen are we are overwhelmed by the noxious green house emissions from various buildings and cards that clog our streets, developers don’t see the need to be green. Being green gets in the way of progress. Or that is what most majority development industries would like you to think, that green initiatives will destroy our economy because they are costly.

What’s costly is taking down large trees that protect us from the sun.

In the city, there are many large trees providing canopy cover; many shading the sidewalks and properties that they’re near.

This area of the city has been around for many decades; longer than any of these upstart condo developers who think that they can just bring in their industrial machine and plough through the towering wooden beauties that provide a home to the birds and little critters that have every right to live in the city that humans do.

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They can promise to replant trees but it won’t save the trees that are threatened now. These trees were around before my parents were born. This school is the same area that was lucky enough to see the first subway lines in Toronto in 1954; these trees were here when the allies defeated the Nazis in WWII. The developers were not around. The trees were here first and they will protect help to protect our planet.

Tridel can do the right thing and leave the trees and school property, thus respecting the neighbourhood as the other condo developers had the decency to at least build on a property already occupied by an older building, or they can do the corporate thing and destroy the planet and take away something that benefits all and replace it with something that benefits few.

But we can’t trust developers to do the right thing but we can pressure the people who have granted the permits.

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The above is the sign posted on the school property and a thoughtful soul has taken the time to highlight a few elements on it, including that it would be a 4-floor condo built by Tridel, under the guise of building a new secondary school sports field and track.

We can put pressure on councillor Michael Walker and Minister of Education Kathleen Wynne. We cannot let them think they can’t be held accountable for this travesty. We need to put pressure on them. If you want to get in contact with either, you can reach Walker at 416-392-7906 and Wynne at 416-425-6777. Let them know how you really feel about a condo developer encroaching on a school property you pay taxes to maintain.