Tag Archives: Canada

News

MUST-READ: How government-run day care impacts families

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Using your money to limit your choices

Here’s a good editorial from Andrea Mrozek in the Ottawa Citizen, explaining how the bloated Liberal government that I blogged about recently is using a “public option” to stamp out stay-at-home moms and private child care options.

Excerpt:

Lisa MacLeod, MPP for Nepean-Carleton, found out the hard way that Ontario’s new all-day kindergarten will be somewhat less flexible than families were led to believe.

Her five-year-old was denied the opportunity to remain in half-day programming, because the school was chosen for full-day kindergarten. Alarming, yes, but not surprising. Province-wide, taxpayer-funded early learning programs spell the end of choice in child care.

You may remember Lisa MacLeod from this post in which I talked about her defending free speech in Canada.

More from the editorial:

[…]So how exactly is the Ontario Ministry of Education legislating choice out of existence?

For starters, simply by introducing a monolithic taxpayer funded plan — legitimate and regulated child care providers can’t compete. When the government subsidizes a service, it means others are put out of business.

All-day kindergarten also takes five-year-olds out of existing centres. These children are a day-care’s bread and butter. Care of five-year-olds is substantially cheaper than infant care, which runs into the tens of thousands of dollars annually. Since no child-care centre could possibly charge parents the true infant price, they have balanced their businesses by charging less than the real cost for younger kids and more for older ones. The older ones who will now enter the “free” state centres.

Families with a spouse who stays home are, as usual, totally pooched. Their taxes will rise for a service they don’t ever choose to use.

And she concludes:

Families understand budgets in a manner that governments clearly do not. When your money runs out, you understand that it’s not the time to book a vacation or add a latté a day. But in the last budget, McGuinty revealed a deficit of $19.7 billion and introduced new program funding of a billion dollars over five years for all-day kindergarten. Let the deficit rise, especially considering the real cost of all-day kindergarten should see that billion dollars almost double for one year alone.

In the end, the government will be the monopoly provider, giving you one solo choice. They don’t delicately tailor programs to meet personal needs. The Disneyland imagery of a better world courtesy of universal early learning programs has got to go — it’s not true in the research, and it’s not true in the reality on the ground. The truth is that government is substantially curtailing your choices while spending your money like a drunken sailor, for little to no proven returns.

They call that “equality”. Everyone has the same outcome, regardless of their personal choices.

You can find the PDF of her editorial at the Institute for Marriage and Family Canada’s web site.

News

University of Calgary denies legal counsel to accused accused students

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This week, the fascist administrators of the University of Calgary decided to hold kangaroo court hearings behind closed doors.

Excerpt:

The University of Calgary is proceeding with individual non-academic misconduct hearings, which include the possibility of expulsion, for eight members of the Campus Pro-Life (CPL) student group regarding a pro-life display held earlier this month.

The University administration notified students that “legal representatives are not suitable Advisors and are not welcome” at the individual, closed-door hearings, scheduled for April 28th and April 30th.

“This feels like a show trial where they’ve already convicted us unjustly and now want to punish us unjustly,” said Alanna Campbell, CPL President.

Earlier this month, after having set up a pro-life display on campus for the ninth time since 2006, members of the group were notified that they were being charged with a ‘Major Violation’ under Section 4.10 of the University of Calgary’s Non-Academic Misconduct Policy for “failure to comply with a Campus Security officer or University official in legitimate pursuit of his/her duties.” In 2006 and 2007, during the first four displays of the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) on campus, the University defended the students’ right to expression under the Charter, but in 2008 the University reversed its policy without explanation.

Two hearings will be held on April 28th, at 1:00pm and 1:30pm. The remaining six are scheduled throughout the day on Friday, April 30th, with the first at 9:30am.

“We’ve never received an explanation for why the University reversed their position, nor have we received any explanation as to what a security official’s legitimate duties actually include,” stated Vice-President (Internal) Peter Csillag.

The University of Calgary receives a massive amount of funding from taxpayers. The working parents of those pro-life students are funding the very institution that is intimidating their children.

Here is an excellent post about pro-lifers’ use of visual aids from Neil Simpson’s latest round-up.

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News

Ontario Liberals abandon plan to sexualize children in schools

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McGuinty wants children prepared for anal sex in school

First some background from LifeSiteNews.

Excerpt:

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced Wednesday that the Ontario government will be requiring Catholic schools to teach the new provincial, explicit sex ed curriculum that been slammed not only by Catholic leaders but the Progressive Conservative party and secular columnists.

“They’re part of the publicly funded school system here in Ontario and this is part of our curriculum,” said McGuinty, who says he is himself Catholic.  “If parents are uncomfortable with certain aspects of this new curriculum, they can and they are free to withdraw their children from the classroom.”

[…]The curriculum is designed to align with the Ministry’s equity and inclusive education strategy, which is seeking, among other things, to promote homosexualism and transgenderism in Ontario’s schools.

Sex ed is now set to begin as early as grade 1, where students will learn about their body parts, including genitalia.  In grade 3, they begin exploring “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”  In grade 6, students are taught that masturbation is “common” and “not harmful,” and by grade 7 they are to learn about oral and anal intercourse and how to use condoms.

Leona Dombrowsky, Ontario’s new Minister of Education, also insisted Wednesday that Catholic schools must teach the new program.  “This is the Ontario curriculum, and it’s the curriculum for all schools and all students,” said the former Catholic school board trustee.

So Catholic-educated politicians were behind this initiative.

I think that Christians need to do a better job of integrating rigorous Bible reading, theology and ESPECIALLY apologetics into our church life. There should be debates and lectures by practicing scientists, economists, social scientists, philosophers and historians. If we insist on 5-minute homilies and praise hymns, then our own children will grow up to be tools of the secular left. Church should be about truth, not feelings.

You can see how different groups of Christians vote in this graph. I think we have a serious problem in the church where Christians who are solid on socially conservative issues think that corporations are bad, taxes are good and that we need to have government control carbon emissions and health care. Fiscal liberalism means sexualization of children in the schools. Lots of naive Christians vote to “help” the poor via big government.

Thankfully, in Ontario there was a happy ending – for now.

From the National Post. (H/T 1RedThread)

Excerpt:

Just days after defending a new sex education program that would include mention of homosexuality in Grade 3 and anal intercourse in Grade 7, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has backed down in the face of a public backlash.

[…]He insisted the new curriculum applied to “all students in publicly funded schools, including Catholic schools.”

His education minister, Leona Dombrowsky, also said the Catholic Church supported the new curriculum.

But Catholic officials made it clear they were not prepared to implement any of the more controversial elements, including talk of homosexuality and masturbation in Grades 3 and 6 respectively.

[…]Mr. McGuinty was squarely behind the new curriculum when he was first asked about it Tuesday morning.

“They are going to get this information,” he said moments after a Christian family values group alerted the media to the changes. “If we can provide [it] in a format and in a venue over which we have some control or they can just get it entirely on their own and be informed by potentially uninformed sources, like their friends at school.

No mention of parents, who are too buy wasting their money on “beer and popcorn”, as Liberals have said in the past. No, it’s the government’s job to prepare children for sex early on so that feminists and gay rights activists can be appeased that the next generation will think that sex outside of marriage is normal. Because schools are about undermining the naive, outdated values of religious taxpaying parents.