Discovering our World

"Things don't change themselves, you have to be active to mould the environment in which you are going to practice," Ginette Lemire Rodger. To me, this is what a citizen means and making changes starts with us being aware of the issues in our society. Throughout this course, I will be posting newsarticles in which I hope that you will encounter issues that will inspire you to make a difference. Remember to feel free to leave any comments or questions that you have.

Brief Overview of the article:

In this article, Malcolm Gladwell, an author, addresses the new policy that Premier Dalton McGuinty wants to implement: to have smaller classes in schools. Though Dalton McGuinty believes that having smaller classes will enhance a student’s success, Malcolm Gladwell disagrees by stating the importance of teachers and how their role has an overpowering impact in student’s lives. He believes that having quality teachers is more effective than having smaller classes.

The ‘Big Think:'
‘Class size is the biggest dead end in the world,’ writer tells provincial Liberal think-tank

May 16, 2010

Tanya Talaga

COLLINGWOOD, ONT.—Smaller class sizes are ludicrous” and a waste of money, according to bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell in a keynote address to the provincial Liberal party faithful at a “big think” conference.

Gladwell, who was raised in southwestern Ontario, spoke at the “Imaging Ontario's Future” conference at the Blue Mountain resort here.

“I was very grateful this invitation came from you and not the Tories,” he joked. “Otherwise my mother would have disowned me.”

Gladwell, whose books include The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers, is a graduate of the University of Toronto's Trinity College.

He spoke of making the case for a “new kind of liberalism”and the importance of a proactive government with a clear message and agenda.

Everything the world has learned about education shows that the quality of the teacher is the most important factor in a student's success, Gladwell said.

“I know that from time to time there is a lot of interest in the power and importance of reducing class size but the data shows class size is the biggest dead end in the world,” Gladwell said.

Sitting in the front row listening to Gladwell was Premier Dalton McGuinty, whose key election promise in 2003 was reducing class sizes for elementary students.

“Even if you were to cut every class in Ontario in half, you'd improve the performance of Ontario's schoolchildren by about 5 percentile points,” Gladwell said.

But changing teacher quality has a “massive impact” on student outcome, he said.

“If a child is unlucky enough to have a bad teacher three years in a row they will fall three years behind a child lucky enough to have a good teacher three years in a row.”

The question is how do you improve the quality of teachers, Gladwell said. Raising academic requirements isn't the simple answer. Teaching is complicated in this modern world, he said.

“We are asking them to play six, seven, eight different roles in the classroom. The best thing we can do for teachers is to simply let them teach. That requires a government that is activist ... that is not afraid to try something radically new,” he said.

On Saturday, McGuinty told reporters he wasn't bothered by Gladwell's opinion on class sizes. The party invited a slew of different academics, consultants and speakers to challenge Liberal minds as they hunt for new ideas ahead of next year's provincial election, he said.

Economist Jeff Rubin is an example of someone who has fundamentally different thoughts than most Ontario Liberals, McGuinty said.

“We are trying to provoke ourselves with new kinds of thinking,” he said. “Jeff Rubin this morning (Saturday) said we shouldn't have bailed out the auto sector, and Malcolm Gladwell last night said he didn't like our smaller class sizes. That is great; we are open to that.

“Provoke us. Help us better understand the consequences of the decisions we make so we can plan better for the future,” he said.

http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/article/810122--class-size-is-the-biggest-dead-end-in-the-world-writer-tells-provincial-liberal-think-tank

Brief overview of this article

In this article, "Summit costs hit $1.1 billion, it is revealed that the G8 and G20 conference has now reached a cost of 1.1 billion dollars. As a result of the large amount of money the Conservatives are spending, they are being criticized highly. In the Liberals perspective, the government is overspending; however, the Conservatives argue that it is necessary to spend this much in order to provide protection and hospitality for our world’s leaders.




Summit Costs Hit $1.1 B



The cost of hosting the G8 and G20 summits next month in Ontario now stands at $1.1 billion and further outlays are likely, federal documents show.

The price tag includes $160 million for hospitality, infrastructure, food safety and extra staffing. That amount is in addition to the $933-million security bill the Tories revealed earlier this week.

"This might be the most expensive 72 hours in Canadian history," Liberal MP Mark Holland said.

But Public Safety Minister Vic Toews defended the costs for security, saying Canada has an obligation to make sure world leaders are safe while visiting Toronto and Huntsville, Ont.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff blamed the Conservative government's "poor management" for the ballooning cost estimates.

Ignatieff said Wednesday that Canadians can't understand how the government's initial earmarking of $179 million for security has multiplied in the space of a couple months.

"These numbers are off the scale with other G8s and G20s," Ignatieff told reporters outside his party's weekly caucus meeting in Ottawa.

"We're three weeks away from the event where Canada will be on the world stage, and I want to be proud of Canada. For now, I'm embarrassed."

Not a cost overrun: Toews

In an interview with CBC News earlier in the day, Toews defended the security estimate as the "most efficient and effective" use of public money for Canada's "unprecedented" hosting of back-to-back international summits. He also insisted the estimate was not a cost overrun.

"This has been budgeted for, and the money is released as it is required," Toews said.

The estimated cost for security over the course of seven days in June dwarfs the amount spent at previous international summits and is expected to surpass the $898 million spent during the Vancouver Olympics — which spanned 14 days.

The official price tag for security at last year's G20 summit in Pittsburgh was listed at $18 million US, according to municipal and U.S. federal officials.

But Toews said comparing the costs for security at this year's summits with the amount spent at the Olympics is like comparing "apples and oranges" because the G8 and G20 meetings, with so many heads of countries visiting at once, require a very "different type" of security.

"Granted there were some heads of nations at the Olympics, but nowhere in the configuration or the numbers that are going to be here," Toews said. "I don't think you can say, 'Well, because it's seven days instead of 14 days, it should be half the price.' It simply doesn't work that way."

The face-to-face meetings, Toews said, allow leaders to deal with issues that simply can't be handled over the phone or by video-conference.

When asked by the Liberals during Wednesday's question period to explain the costs, Toews said the government believes the experts when they say such a level of security is necessary.
"I understand that the Liberals don't believe in securing Canadians or the visitors here," Toews told the House. "We're different."

NDP Leader Jack Layton said the Conservatives have "quadrupled" funding for security, and some of that money could have gone to the government's G8 maternal health initiative. Layton then chastised the Conservatives for refusing to include abortion in its maternal health plan.

"You can do a lot of things with a billion dollars," Layton told the House.

In response, Prime Minister Stephen Harper repeated the government's position that Canadians do not want a debate on this matter.

Single venue would have saved money: Liberals

G8 leaders will gather in Huntsville, Ont., late next month, then join other world leaders for the G20 summit in the heart of downtown Toronto. The security money will be used for planning, accommodation, information technology and working with security partners to protect leaders and their delegations.

The additional $160 million in costs includes about $100 million for office and meeting spaces and pre-summit meetings. Another $1.2 million is to ensure the food served to dignitaries is safe and healthy, while $10 million has been spent on infrastructure and about $50 million has been paid to spruce up the Huntsville area.

Ignatieff ridiculed the Conservatives for the G20 meeting venue from Huntsville to Toronto months into the planning stage.

"At first they said Huntsville, then they said, 'Oops, Huntsville is too small and too many flies. Let's high-tail it down to Toronto,'" he said. "This is the confusion we're talking about."

Holland said the government could have reduced security by hosting both summits at a single location, instead of the "logistical nightmare" of two separate venues hundreds of kilometres apart. But Toews said the dates of the summits were actually moved closer together to save money.

Holland said security for the summits is critical, but the government shouldn't be handed a blank cheque.

"We're not talking about cutting corners; we're talking about proper planning," Holland told CBC News on Wednesday. "They tried to force a round peg into a square hole."

Security plans for the G20 meeting in Toronto feature two fenced areas — an outside fence that will close off a large section of the downtown and disrupt access to homes and workplaces, and an inner fence that will control access to hotels and the convention centre.

Later Wednesday, Chris McCluskey, a spokesman for Toews, accused Ignatieff of failing to understand the cost of the summits.

"His comments indicate he has no understanding of the parliamentary budget process, no understanding of the reality of providing security to world leaders, and no understanding of what it takes to have Canada take its rightful place on the world stage," he said in an email.

"The only embarrassment here is Mr. Ignatieff’s ill-informed commentary on an event he should be supporting."

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/05/26/g8-g20-security-summit-toews.html#ixzz0p5iBh05C

Brief Overview of this Article:
In this article, it is revealed that the regulations in Canada for offshore drilling are poorer than the ones in the United States. As a result, Canada runs into a huge risk of experiencing the same environmental disaster occuring in the Gulf of Mexico.

Walkom: Threat of oil spill disaster worse in Canada
By: Thomas Walkom
National Affairs Columnist

For Canada, the lessons from the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster are bleak.

The United States may have stumbled into the worst ecological disaster in its history. But we have deliberately chosen to head in the same direction.

American regulation of the offshore oil industry has been revealed as a sham. Our regulation of drilling in the far harsher North Atlantic and Arctic is said by experts to be even weaker.

And thanks to what is in effect a conspiracy between the governing Conservatives and opposition Liberals to avoid an early election, Canada’s environmental rules are about to be further gutted.

No one is innocent. The Newfoundland government strongly supports Chevron’s drilling in the stormy Orphan basin, some 450 kilometres into the North Atlantic, even though a spill there would be almost impossible to contain. The reason? Premier Danny Williams thirsts after the tax revenues that big oil generates.

A review panel of the Inuit-dominated government of Nunavut supports seismic testing to locate offshore oil in the Eastern Arctic for the same reason.

A Liberal government under Paul Martin relaxed the rules for Arctic oil exploration. A Conservative government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper is easing the rules even more.

There is no mystery as to what drives this. Oil is the new gold; the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea is the new El Dorado. Harper’s much vaunted northern initiative, which has seen the entire cabinet travelling to Baffin Island, is not about abstract issues of sovereignty; it is about oil.

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the Gulf spill is what it has revealed about the relative clout of governments and big oil. In spite of U.S. President Barack Obama’s bluster, British Petroleum is still in charge of handling the oil leak it helped to create.

That’s not because BP is doing a good job; rather, it is because the U.S. government — BP’s ostensible regulator — has so little expertise in offshore drilling that it would do even worse.

The tendency of regulators to become captives of the firms they oversee is well-known. Think of the CRTC’s willingness to approve virtually every fee increase the telephone and cable firms demand.

But oil regulators make the CRTC seem fiercely independent. Until the Gulf spill occurred, Ottawa’s National Energy Board appeared poised to give Arctic drillers – including BP – an exemption from crucial environmental safety rules, simply because they found them inconvenient.

But with oil washing up on the Louisiana coastline, politicians across North America are ducking for cover. Obama has declared a moratorium on Arctic oil exploration. Canada’s NEB has launched what it calls a full review of Arctic drilling. Harper insists that his government is putting the environment first.

None of this is expected to last long. Obama’s moratorium is due to be lifted next year. Canada’s federal government is quietly pushing ahead with plans to give the oil industry a double boost — first by giving the more pliant NEB sole responsibility for the environmental assessment of Arctic oil proposals; second by letting the cabinet exempt some projects from scrutiny altogether.

The opposition Liberals, desperate to avoid an election they might lose, are refusing to block either.

The politicians and their oil friends calculate — probably correctly — that a year from now the Gulf spill will be forgotten, the media will again be focused on Tiger Woods’ sex life and few will be paying attention to who regulates what in the Beaufort Sea.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/arctic/article/816083--walkom-threat-of-oil-spill-disaster-worse-in-canada

Brief Overview of this Article:

Urban Affairs Reporter

If you are old, have a medical condition or are religious you have a good chance of beating a parking ticket in Toronto.

The excuses that work with bureaucrats were made public Tuesday night when city council voted to release the holy grail of how-tos: the Parking Ticket Cancellation Guidelines.

According to the previously confidential report, city staff can cancel tickets for drivers on compassionate grounds, especially if they live more than 100 kilometres from Toronto.

Other potentially acceptable excuses are that the driver was attending worship, confused over which side of the street to park, or got multiple tickets for the same offence in a 3-hour window.

The 18-page report details exemptions for fast-food delivery, nursing agencies, tour buses, taxicabs, disabled drivers and delivery vehicles, among others.

Like police, fire and ambulance services, city councillors on “city business” can have tickets cancelled for virtually any infraction.

So why did city council make public some of its deepest secrets?

“Myself and Councillor Moscoe have been trying to get it released for a long time, and staff have constantly been saying ‘It’s confidential, it’s confidential, it’s confidential,” said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong.

He asked city solicitor Anna Kinastowski to explain why.

The rationale, she said, was that the guidelines “were drafted in a manner that makes them perhaps not quite understandable to average members of the public. And they can be used against the city.” Kinastowski said there could be litigation and revenue concerns.

Minnan-Wong said these arguments were “very weak.”

“Here a group of bureaucrats have set up these secret rules that nobody knows about,” he said. “I think that there is a risk that once some of these rules get out that they may be open to abuse, and if that’s the case there has to be some consideration whether those rules should be applied.”

Bureaucrats are encouraged to use “sound judgment and problem solving skills” when evaluating excuses. A driver’s previous ticket history is almost always a factor when deciding whether to cancel a ticket.

Ignorance can be bliss when it comes to parking tickets.

You can escape a fine if you can convince staff you were unaware of the parking rules, or “unusual circumstances” kept you from putting cash in the meter.

Council voted 23-8 in favour of releasing the document and having the issue guidelines reviewed by committee. In the meantime, the full list is online at the City of Toronto website.

During the council meeting, Moscoe said the current system wastes time and money.

“Taking a ticket to court that is going to lose automatically puts the whole system in a bad light and it wastes a whole lot of police officer time, staff time and prosecution time,” he said.

“It makes no sense to allow all the tickets that are automatically written for whatever reason to go to court when you know there’s a whole block of them that are going to lose.”

Brief Overview of this Article: This article tells the story of a temporary immigrant, Rawat, who came to work under the Skilled Worker Class Program in hopes of having permanent residency in Canada. Though Rawat’s and his employer’s relationship started out as very intimate, it began to shatter. Rawat argues that the reason their relationship began to fall apart was because of his employer’s determination to keep him from being a permanent residency because it meant that he didn’t have to work for him anymore. Rawat’s argument questions whether the Skilled Worker Class Program in our immigration system is morally right.



Immigrant dreams clash in an Etobicoke restaurant
The cook and the boss were once allies. The federal temporary foreign worker program may have driven them apart.


Sandro Contenta
Feature Writer


Jagmohan Singh Rawat came to Toronto to chase the immigrant dream — work hard, get permanent residency and bring his wife and daughter from India.

“The future is here,” says Rawat, a 38-year-old chef.

Starting him out on that dream was a man who achieved it.

Pyare Lal Gour arrived in 1997. The first two restaurants he opened failed. He made a go of it with his third in Etobicoke’s Kingsway neighbourhood. In April 2007, he needed a chef and hired Rawat through a federal program that lets employers bring foreign workers here on a temporary basis.

“I treated him like a son,” Gour says.

Last week, Rawat threw his apron on the restaurant floor and quit in disgust. He accused Gour of using the controversial migrant worker program to sabotage his bid for permanent residency. His future in Canada is now uncertain.

Gour denies the charge. But he notes in frustration that when his chefs get approval to stay in Canada, it is usually to his detriment.

“If they become permanent residents, then they don’t want to work (for me). They want to open their own business,” says Gour, adding that Rawat is the third chef on a temporary work permit to walk out on him in six years.

The dispute highlights a rule in the federal program that prevents “guest workers” from toiling for anyone other than the employers who get government permission to recruit and hire them. (In 2009, 178,640 people entered Canada on temporary work permits — from labourers making beds in hotels or gutting pigs in meat plants to accountants and engineers.)

Critics say the regulation turns would-be immigrants into indentured servants.

A Star series last fall found migrants paying thousands of dollars in recruitment fees for jobs that didn’t exist when they arrived. Others suffered poor working conditions in silence — including less pay and more hours than promised — fearful of losing jobs and temporary legal status in Canada.

A scathing report by Auditor General Sheila Fraser last November blamed poor government monitoring for widespread employer abuse.

Lower-skilled migrants are largely barred from becoming permanent residents, except in Manitoba. But skilled workers like Rawat can. If successful, they are then free to work for anyone they like.

Rawat is the sole breadwinner for his family in New Delhi — his mother, his wife and their 3-year-old daughter. There, he was making $672 a year cooking in a “fancy” restaurant. When a co-worker, Gour’s nephew, mentioned his uncle in Canada was looking for a chef, Rawat jumped at the opportunity.

He arrived at Chutneys Fine Indian Cuisine on Bloor Street West, which Gour has been running since 2004. It has four employees, 15 tables and the online reviews are mostly good.

“People do not realize how much of a struggle it is for a small businessman,” says Gour, 54, an Indian who came to Canada as a landed immigrant, after years in Dubai, with his wife and two sons. “I work 24 hours in the restaurant — me, my son, my wife — just to establish this place.”

Gour, who is now a Canadian citizen, paid Rawat $37,295 last year to work six long days a week.

Last June, Gour supported Rawat’s application for permanent residency in a letter to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

“Mr. Rawat’s skills and experience are difficult to find in Canada and his services are essential to the operation of our business,” Gour wrote.

In September, Gour changed his mind in a second letter to immigration officials.

“I would like to inform you that Mr. Jagmohan Singh Rawat is not working with us any more and I am canceling the letter which (was) given to support his immigration. As per his status in Canada he is suppose (sic) to work with Chutneys Fine Indian Cuisine only and is not allowed to work any where else,” he wrote.

Without a job, Rawat’s chances of permanent residency under the federal Skilled Worker Class program are significantly reduced. But Rawat insists he never stopped working for Gour, and the salary deposits in his bank account — seen by the Star — show no interruption and no docks in pay.

Rawat adds he had no idea Gour sent the September letter. Gour insists he knew. Both say immigration officials never called them about it.

Gour says he sent the letter, written by his lawyer, in a fit of anger when Rawat went AWOL for two days. Rawat insists he never left. In any event, in Gour’s version of the story, he concedes he never notified immigration that Rawat returned.

By then, the relationship had deteriorated. Gour claims Rawat became a difficult employee after the June letter and plotted to open his own restaurant with a former employee; Rawat accuses Gour of being a tyrant. Each denies the other’s allegations.

“I warned him so many times, I will cancel the (June) letter — three times I warned him,” Gour says.

“I work very hard for him,” Rawat insists in halting English. “All the time he shout (at me) . . . He telling me, ‘If you say something I go to immigration and send you back.’”

What’s clear is that after the September letter, Gour renewed the government permit — known as a Labour Market Opinion (LMO) — to keep Rawat as a temporary foreign worker. And in February, Gour backed Rawat’s application for an extension of his temporary work permit, due to expire in April.

In March, the Toronto lawyer helping Rawat with his residency application, Elizabeth Long, received a package of material from immigration officials that included the September letter. She says she and Rawat became aware of it for the first time.

She accuses Gour of wanting to “screw up my client’s permanent resident application because he was afraid my client would stop working for him.” Renewing his LMO and temporary work permit would ensure Rawat remained solely tied to Gour.

Gour insists that wasn’t his plan.

“If I was thinking like that, why would I give him the (June) letter in the first place?” he says.

Last week, Rawat got a call from officials considering his work permit extension. He was given until Monday to hand in a letter of employment. Rawat demanded one from Gour. It turned into a standoff: Rawat says he no longer trusted Gour and demanded a letter immediately; Gour says he wanted to speak with immigration officials and then have his lawyer write one. Rawat quit in a fury.

Rawat’s future in Canada now depends on navigating a labyrinth of regulations and options. If his work permit is denied, Long will file a request to reconsider his status, which gives him a 90-day reprieve before having to leave the country. By then, Rawat hopes an employer poised to open an Indian restaurant in Brampton will get government permission to hire him on a new work permit.

In the meantime, he still has a shot at becoming a permanent resident. To do so, he needs to score at least 67 points under the federal program for skilled workers. Not having a job means he loses out on 10 points. Long says he’ll still pass if he scores at least 10 points on his language test. He’s waiting for the results.

Prior to Rawat leaving, Gour hired another cook from India on a temporary work permit to ease the workload in the kitchen. The new hire has replaced Rawat as head chef.

Gour has applied to hire another chef on a temporary permit, and is bracing for the costs and bureaucratic hurdles of the process.

“We have to change the system,” he says.

Immigration point system for skilled workers
Education: up to 25 points
Ability in English and or French: 24 points
Experience: 21 points
Age: Maximum 10 points
Arranged employment in Canada: 10 points
Adaptability: 10 points
Total maximum: 100 points
Pass mark: 67 points
Source: Immigration Canada



http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/819452--immigrant-dreams-clash-in-an-etobicoke-restaurant