Tag Archives: Canada

News

How far have Canadian public schools gone to push leftist ideology?

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Map of Canada
Map of Canada

From the National Post.

Excerpt:

In the quest to instill healthy eating habits, schools in Ontario have banned bottled water, but not decaffeinated soft drinks. Fries are out, but pizza is in, as long as it has whole-wheat crust, low-fat cheese and no pepperoni. In Alberta, Dunstable School south of Slave Lake instituted a “Character Education and Virtues Program” that involved rewarding students who did good deeds by putting their names on a wall, giving them a free pizza lunch and a chance to win money for a bike. But the program was also used to monitor the number of good deeds each student performed and then investigate those who didn’t do enough.

A New Brunswick school was met with outrage when it tried to impart moral values to its Grade 4 students by asking them to decide in 10 minutes or less who they would save if the Earth was about to explode: an Acadian francophone, a Chinese person, a black African, an English person or an Aboriginal person. The problem came when a parent, whose daughter was adopted from Ethiopia and was the only visible minority in the class, felt the project promoted stereotypes, prompting the province’s education minister to condemn the assignment.

Such morality-based assignments are part of a growing emphasis on cross-curriculum teaching, which encourages teachers to find lessons that draw links between a variety of academic subjects, said Doretta Wilson, executive director of the Society for Quality Education.

The organization conducted a study to look for errors and “unsubstantiated dogmatic statements” in Canadian science curriculum. It found a Manitoba science manual that urged teachers to promote the message that historic Aboriginal cultures “exemplified the qualities of good stewardship in their interactions with the environment,” and a New Brunswick Grade 5 science class policy that promoted the belief that sauna whirlpools and other alternatives to conventional medicine “prevent or cure illnesses.” In Quebec, it found a physics curriculum that advocated that science could be used to help advance Quebec nationalism because “a society can express its cultural identity only in conjunction with some form of scientific and technological autonomy.”

Increasingly, value-based teachings have come in the guise of environmental activism, which school have been promoting with varying degrees of commitment and sometimes conflicting messages.

As part of the Toronto District School Board’s climate change action plan, an elementary school had every student write a letter to the Prime Minister to crack down on idling vehicles and held a contest to find the student who could design the best “eco-ticket” to be slapped on the windshield of an offending car.

Meanwhile in natural gas and oil sands communities in northern Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan, the petroleum industry has banded together to create its own environmental awareness program for elementary schools. As part of the program, students don a chef’s hat and have a “fossil fuel bake” and then put on a “petroleum play.” The program donates $5,000 to the school to help create an outdoor education project.

Global warming alarmism is nothing but socialism – i.e. – government-controlled redistribution of wealth. So what we have here is the taxpayer-funded indoctrination of children so that the children will believe in government control of the free market (production and consumption).

I find it very annoying that Christians often want to provide these public schools with more and more money. I often have discussions with Christians who are in favor of public schools and single-payer health care who nevertheless want to get married and have families. Do they not realize where the money for all of these government programs comes from? The money comes from families and from the companies who employ parents. So the very people who support social programs, poverty programs, environmental programs, education programs, etc. are the ones who are working to undermine civil society by transferring wealth from families and the businesses who hire parents to government.

What I find the most perturbing is how Christians bash businesses and capitalism and then complain that men won’t marry. What sort of man wants to pay half his income to secular-leftists so that his children can be indoctrinated by public schools? (And you can’t opt out of paying for them) When Christians talk about “taxing the rich” so that government can “help the poor” and “protect the environment”, then they should NOT expect that there will be any money left over for marriages and child-raising. If you think it’s a good idea for parents to pay government to teach the children their worldview and values, then why are parents and families needed? People should just work and have babies, and then the government should take their money and decide what children will believe, right?

UPDATE: I noticed that California gay activists have introduced a bill to push their agenda in the schools as well.

News

Canada created twice the number of jobs as the United States in January

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U.S. Labor Force Participation
U.S. Labor Force Participation

By now, everyone has heard that Marxist Obama has failed to create jobs again, so that the underemployment rate is at 19.2%. (Underemployment is even higher than employment because it takes into account people working part-time who want to work full-time but can’t). That means that 20% of the population either cannot find work, or cannot find full-time work. The labor force participation under Obama’s socialist regime is now at a 26-year low.

Excerpt:

At 64.2%, the labor force participation rate (as a percentage of the total civilian noninstitutional population) is now at a fresh 26 year low, the lowest since March 1984, and is the only reason why the unemployment rate dropped to 9% (labor force declined from 153,690 to 153,186). Those not in the Labor Force has increased from 83.9 million to 86.2 million, or 2.2 million in one year! As for the numerator in the fraction, the number of unemployed, it has plunged from 15 million to 13.9 million in two months! The only reason for this is due to the increasing disenchantment of those who completely fall off the BLS rolls and no longer even try to look for a job. Lastly, we won’t even show what the labor force is as a percentage of total population. It is a vertical plunge.

But these kinds of failures are not unavoidable. For example, look at Canada’s latest unemployment numbers.

Excerpt:

Canada’s job creation in January was more than four times the median forecast, pushing the Canadian dollar to its strongest level since May 2008 and adding to evidence the country’s economic recovery may be accelerating.

Employment rose by 69,200 and the labor force increased by 106,400, Statistics Canada said today in Ottawa. The jobless rate rose to 7.8 percent from December’s 7.6 percent, as more people sought work. Economists forecast 7.6 percent unemployment and job growth of 15,000, according to the median estimates of 25 and 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

“This adds confidence to the notion we are headed for a better year for growth and growth in the job market,” said Mark Chandler, head of Canadian currency and rates strategy at Royal Bank of Canada’s RBC Capital Markets unit in Toronto. “There isn’t a lot of slack in the labor market in Canada, certainly on a relative basis to other countries.”

Canadian policy makers have been dealing with the impact of a strong currency and a slowdown in growth of household and government spending that crimped the economic recovery in the second half of last year. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney stopped raising interest rates after September and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty scaled back plans to exit stimulus.

“It’s one of these reports that’s strong through and through – it’s hard to find any weakness,” said David Tulk, chief Canada macro strategist at Toronto-Dominion Bank’s TD Securities unit.

“The Bank of Canada would likely just see this as a step towards a stronger recovery, but not a point where they would need to respond,” he said. He predicts a July rate increase.

[…]The report restores Canada’s status as having regained all the jobs lost in the recession, after a Jan. 28 revision based on updated census data reduced Statistics Canada’s estimate of total employment.

The Canadian dollar gained 0.4 percent to 98.75 cents per U.S. dollar at 4:30 p.m. in New York from 99.11 cents yesterday, after earlier touching 98.32 cents, the strongest level since May 2008. The benchmark 10-year Canadian government bond yield increased four basis points to 3.46 percent, the highest since May.

[…]“Too many Canadians are still looking for work, the economic recovery is fragile,” Flaherty said today in response to a question in the House of Commons. “We need to continue with our job-creating, low-tax plan.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said reductions in corporate taxes are the best way to boost employment.

[…]Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, said Jan. 26 it will open 40 “supercenters” in Canada by the end of January 2012, creating 9,200 construction and store jobs.

Basically, the Canadians listened to Obama’s speeches, and then decided to do the EXACT OPPOSITE of what he said. They are drilling for more oil, lowering corporate taxes below 20%, (ours is 36%), cutting spending and raising interest rates to encourage people to spend less and invest more, which supports job creation. This is what Hayek would recommend. In order to create jobs, you need to cut corporate taxes to provide businesses with a profit motive. And you need to make sure that there is capital to borrow for risk-taking, which happens when interest rates are higher because people save more money by giving it to banks to lend to businesses. When a business sees that it can keep profits that it makes then that’s what they’ll do. That’s when they start expanding their businesses and taking risks – when there is money to be made. If you keep banning drilling, imposing health care costs and demonizing businesses in speeches, like Obama does, then they WON’T hire anyone.

I hope that all the young people who voted for the first MTV President are happy with their 18% youth unemployment rate. Ideas have consequences.

But the differences between Canada are even more pronounced. Recall that Canada is ONE TENTH the size of the United States, with one-tenth the population, one-tenth the GDP, and one-twentieth the national debt. A 700,000 increase in the number of jobs is really like a 700,000 increase when projected proportionally to the United States. Canada didn’t spend massive amounts of money on “stimulus” spending, because the prime minister is NOT a Keynesian. He’s a Hayekian, like me. He’s not following the socialist, academic playbook – he’s following the capitalist, real-world playbook. He doesn’t believe that lowering interest rates and wasting money of government public works projects is a way out of a recession. And he’s right.

News

The best short article on the state of marriage

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Map of Canada
Map of Canada

One of the things that bothers me most about many women is that they think that planning for marriage means getting a degree in liberal arts, reading romance novels, looking at their friend’s wedding photos and holding other people’s babies. I am not convinced that many women understand anything about why a man would want to marry, what he’ll need in the marriage, and how children should be raised so that they will be effective, public Christians.

But then I read articles like this one in the National Post and I realize that some people do get it. (H/T Andrea)

Excerpt:

But, paradoxically, for those who do go through with a real marriage, the introduction of no-fault divorce in 1968 means it is easy to end the commitment. No-fault divorce made it simple for one spouse to give up on their vows when the going gets tough (or a better-looking/higher-earning/ less-nagging partner appears on the scene).

The result has been a fivefold spike in the divorce rate. The courts are now filled with family-law cases, helping ex-spouses and lawyers sort through the minutiae of domestic life. Courts pick through the unsavoury business of marital breakdown, deciding who gets what, including the children themselves.

Speaking of children, when it comes to their safety, there isn’t much the government won’t regulate. From secondhand smoke in cars, to the plastics in toys, to the design of playground equipment, no sandbox is left unturned in a quest to protect our kids.

Yet at the same time, high tax rates make it nearly impossible for one parent to stay home and care for their families. But children don’t raise themselves. This has led some to call for national state-run daycare programs — adding a new, more literal meaning to the words “nanny state.”

Since successive federal governments have failed to implement national daycare, the push for institutional care for toddlers has gone provincial. In Ontario, draft plans given to Premier Dalton McGuinty in June 2009 included a recommendation for the Ministry of Education to establish an “Early Years Division” to create programs for kids age “zero through eight.” The vision? A seamless day of state-provided care, including care before and after work. Under the proposal, some three-yearolds would log longer hours in school than many grown-ups do at work, healthy lunch and snacks included. All at taxpayer expense, of course.

[…]Often, when it comes to raising kids, daycare and schooling, we hear talk from qualified experts and smart people with degrees — as if parents aren’t quite up to snuff. Today’s smaller families mean we seldom learn from parents or grandparents who successfully raised large broods, so it’s easy to assume the experts have a better handle on our kids.

But it’s gone too far. The public school curriculum is now devised largely without parental input, yet attempts to usurp some of the most important family responsibilities, including teaching ethics, values and sex education. On that front, studies suggest that parents are still the number-one influence in teen sexual decision making. Good news perhaps, since but for rare cases, teachers aren’t exactly jumping over couches in staff rooms to grab the sex ed curriculum.

I have probably never read so much useful information about what men are thinking about when they think about marriage in such a small space. We are thinking about fiscal conservatism, parental autonomy, stay-at-home mothers, and vouchers for private schools. The irony is that most young unmarried women are opposed to ALL of those things, and they VOTE AGAINST all of those things. And so, naturally, men want nothing to do with marrying them. Men may be interested in sex, but they certainly won’t be interested in marriage.

No one ever asks men what they want – everyone just assumes that men will keep acting chivalrously and keep marrying when all the incentives to marry are taken away! Ridiculous! If marriage doesn’t involve keeping what you earn, respect from the wife, family autonomy and social prestige, then men will not marry. Men like to do hard things ALONE – we don’t want to pay the government to “help” us, especially when the “help” means using our earnings to subsidize single motherhood with welfare and state-run education.

Women: if you want a man to think about marriage, this article shows the way you need to talk about marriage with men. Reading Dr. Laura’s “The Proper Care of Marriage”, Dr. Stephen Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody”, George Gilder’s “Men and Marriage”, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s “Love and Economics”, and James Dobson’s “Bringing Up Boys” would also be a good start. Probably the best two things to learn to impress a man are economics and Christian apologetics, with an emphasis on science and history.