April 10th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Getting past the petty
We can’t make peace our foreign policy till pols stop political blood sport
By Andrew Cash
Loath as I am to admit it, music alone won’t change our war-making ways.
That’s why the April 4 all-party (except the governing one) panel kicking off a conference the next day promoting the idea of a Canadian Department of Peace at Friends House on Lowther is such a tonic.
Not only do the 250 mostly veteran anti-war types in the pews at the Church of the Holy Trinity hear the Greens’ Elizabeth May, the NDP’s Olivia Chow and the Libs’ Borys Wrzesnewskyj sing from the same peace page, but the non-partisan collegiality of the event underscores the idea that, if peace-building is ever mainstreamed, humanity will make an evolutionary jump.
Speaking of neanderthals, politics is a blood sport. But when you see Wrzesnewskyj applauding Chow’s moving description of what NDPer Alexa McDonough could do if she were minister of peace, Chow praising May’s support for a federal conflict resolution department, and both May and Chow clearly sympathizing with Wrzesnewskyj as he guardedly describes tensions in the Liberal party over Afghanistan, it tends to stand out.
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February 7th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Mr. Premier, butt out
McGuinty feeds black schools fracas so we’ll forget Libs created the mess
By Andrew Cash
Local democracy is making a comeback, folks, and Big Daddy Dalton don’t like it much.
Nope, our paternalistic preem has wagged his finger at all those irresponsible trustees on the Toronto District School Board who had the audacity – after listening to their constituents and their conscience – to vote in favour of creating an Africentric alternative school.
In calling for residents to lobby their trustees and “put a stop to this,’’ Premier Dalton McGuinty is fanning the flames of an already heated debate that has, up until his meddling, been a model of public participation. There have been forums, committees struck, kilos of newsprint and stacks of reports going back over a decade.
The January 29 board meeting was a gleaming example of local control in action, and not just because trustees voted the right way. The chambers were packed to the rafters with parents, teachers and students, both for and against, sitting side by side.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Education, Now Magazine, Ontario, Politics, Race Relations, Youth Issues | No Comments »
January 31st, 2008 Andrew Cash
A Class act, finally
Board does the right thing and votes for black-focused school
By Andrew Cash
When the “s word,” segregation, gets uttered again, there’s an audible groan from those sitting around me.
I’ve ducked out to the overflow section at TDSB headquarters on north Yonge Tuesday night, and am watching the debate leading up to the board’s historic vote on creating the first Africentric school in Toronto on closed-circuit TV.
About 70 others are here, too, and the main chamber’s jammed to the rafters. They’re all black. I’m the only white, and I find myself wondering how many of those whacking this issue with the “s’’ word ever actually mix with those not of their own kind.
The folks here – young parents with little kids, students, elders, professionals, punks – have been waiting for three hours. They’re good at waiting. I’ve seen many of them before at different public meetings in the north end. Waiting. Waiting for the city, the province or in this case the school board to finally listen.
Their patience is humbling. What many (not all, for sure, but many) have been saying is that an Africentric school is part of what they desperately need if they have any hope of rescuing their mostly male at-risk youth.
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January 17th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Matter of trust
School safety tome shockingly calls for a narrowing of trustees’ role
By Andrew Cash
If you’re a mandarin at the Toronto District School Board, the temperature may be a bit too hot this week. Julian Falconer’s exhaustive report on school safety, dropped January 10, left no stone unturned. But among all the details about sexual harassment and intimidation, the tome goes somewhat silent on one striking fact: if you’re a concerned parent and want to talk to your elected school board rep, good luck.
Fact is, our harried and elusive crew of trustees are busy doing something else a lot of the time. Why wouldn’t they be? They’re earning a poverty-line wage to oversee a multi-billion-dollar public institution – one critical to your child’s future.
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December 12th, 2007 Andrew Cash
Build it, they will come
That the board now has to ponder Africentric school is an indictment of its complacency
By ANDREW CASH
If faith-based funding is the third rail of Ontario politics, then this isn’t a good time for anyone to be planning a publicly funded separate school.
So perhaps it isn’t surprising that the Toronto District School Board’s ruminations on creating an Africentric alternative school are kicking up so much dust.
But here we are. Between 40 and 50 per cent of Caribbean-born students (most of them males) are in danger of not finishing school or have already dropped out.
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October 4th, 2007 Andrew Cash
To topple a leader
Tory’s faith flub makes Don Valley Wynne’s to lose
By Andrew Cash
Click on the icon to begin playback of the audio clip. The icon will then change. To pause the audio, click on the changed icon. Click again to resume play.
Kathleen Wynne is supposed to do a quick blitz for votes in this Thorncliffe Park high-rise, but instead, on the 15th floor, she stops at the door of a young construction worker.
“If your age group doesn’t vote, that means someone old will vote in your place,” she says as her handlers pry her away.
Wynne’s daughter rolls her eyes, amused. “Oh no, Mom, were you lecturing that guy?” Mother and daughter banter humorously back and forth as they sprint down the stairs.
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September 27th, 2007 Andrew Cash
McGuinty’s taxing courage
Preem’s stirring defence of health tax shows tax rebellion has faded
By Andrew Cash
What’s worse, a government that breaks a dumb promise or a government that implements one? I would have been happy if Stephen Harper had broken his very dumb promise to cut 1 per cent of the GST. I’m okay with Dalton McGuinty breaking his promise not to raise taxes after the Mike Harris wrecking crew saddled the Libs with a $5 billion deficit.
Tax has always been the four-letter word politicians don’t use in polite company. But after last week’s leaders debate, that may be changing. During the televised showdown, we heard McGuinty not once but several times refuse to say that he would repeal a tax. That’s new.
Most pols are only too happy to out-slash the other guy, but it has always been a head-scratcher when political parties say they can both cut taxes and improve services. Neo-cons used this canard throughout the 90s, but today it’s only John Tory and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation who believe it. The rest of us aren’t buying.
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July 19th, 2007 Andrew Cash
PORTLANDS power play
Residents walk out of consulting committee charging Energy Centre kept them in the dark
By Andrew Cash
Laundry isn’t the only thing being hung out to dry this summer in Smogtown. Take Toronto’s east-end neighbourhoods, which have always been our industrial ashtray.
In the bad old 80s, residential backyards in south Riverdale had to have their lead-laced soil removed, and the Commissioner Street incinerator was blithely burning garbage.
And while we can’t be sure that the dust on Riverdalian stereo speakers isn’t still laced with lead, locals also have to deal with the Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant to the southeast, a grand contributor to the generally crappy local air quality.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Environment, Now Magazine, Ontario, Politics, Toronto | No Comments »
July 5th, 2007 Andrew Cash
In knots over ribbons
Mayor’s decal flip-flop shows contempt for his backers
By Andrew Cash
Who knew the broom David Miller famously held aloft in 2003 as a symbol of his mayoral mission, would be made not of sturdy wood but of something much more pliable.
It’s an issue that urgently needs addressing, given the mayor’s shocking flip-flop June 20 in which he defended support-our-troops decals on emergency vehicles only 24 hours after urging their removal in September.
If Miller can crack so publicly on a symbolic issue like this, what kind of stuff does he bend to in the back rooms?
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June 28th, 2007 Andrew Cash
Indian in us all
The elephant in the room of my family history is same one haunting the Canadian family
By Andrew Cash
There must be an aboriginal guy out there with the same name as me.
That’s my initial reaction to an invitation I receive in the mail to participate in a Statistics Canada survey on the living standards of native Canadians.
And in fact there is an Aboriginal guy with my name. Me. But it takes the disembodied voice of the StatsCan official to convince me of the fact. “Why are you sending this to me?” I ask the polished voice on the other end of the phone line.
After all, I’ve never identified myself as Aboriginal. Sure, my paternal grandmother was half Mohawk, born on Tyendinaga near Deseronto. But what am I doing on this list?
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