Tag Archives: Ontario

News

Quebec judge orders three-year-old into daycare for “socialization”

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Map of Canada
Map of Canada

From Life Site News. (H/T Mary, Eleanor)

Excerpt:

A Quebec judge has ordered a three-year-old and a five-year-old to attend state-funded day care following claims that the children lacked proper “socialization.”

The parents of the Notre-Dame-des-Bois family were also ordered to place their two elder homeschooled children in public schools, and accused of failing to act quickly to correct learning disabilities, despite their doctor’s testimony to the contrary.

“This is a shocking decision,” said Paul Faris of the Canadian branch of the Home School Legal Defense Association, who have backed the family’s case. He told LifeSiteNews this is the latest in the Quebec government’s ongoing effort to “clamp down on choice in education.”

He said the most concerning part is the judge’s decision to “order the younger children who were not of compulsory school age into day care for socialization.”

The family, who have homeschooled for four years, were reported to the province’s Youth Protection Services in November 2009 after a run-in with the local school board.  The elder children were ordered into school in April 2010 after court proceedings began in February 2010.  There was a four-day trial in November, and Judge Nicole Bernier issued her ruling in March.

Faris said the court refused to hear the parents’ expert witness and dismissed the testimony of the family doctor, who has been fully supportive of their medical decisions.  In her ruling, Judge Bernier claimed the family doctor’s testimony lacked objectivity and was “full of bias” owing to his relationship with the parents.

Faris said the judge gave “excess weight” to the government’s experts, who he says “found that one child’s hearing impairment ‘indicated’ that the parents could not be trusted and therefore all the children should be enrolled in public school programs.” Judge Bernier determined that the security and development of the children was compromised by parental negligence.

In her ruling, Judge Bernier called the mother’s teaching approach “outdated,” saying it emphasized repetition exercises and acquisition of knowledge rather than the Ministry’s preferred approach of teaching learning skills.  She also criticizes the elder children’s social development, noting that they had difficulty at first with the other children when they entered the classroom.

“The parents, though aware … of the need to stimulate each child by interactions with peers of the same age, outside of the family, either at school, kindergarten, or day care or occasional education trips, maintain their interest in the teaching model of the home school,”  she wrote, going on to lament that they are “refusing to integrate the youngest in kindergarten or day care, and opposing educational outings for the children.”

“Their reasons are always the same and regard a social mistrust that does not meet the needs of their children,” she added. She also took issue with the fact that the parents apparently had not obtained a homeschooling exemption under the Education Act, which requires that the parents offer a program equivalent to that offered in the schools.

I do not recommend that anyone get married or have children in Quebec. The government and courts seem to think that they are the parents of your children, and the regulators of your marriage. So why bother letting them run your life? Go somewhere else instead. Just imagine – being these parents and paying taxes to these fascists for years, so that they can now take your children away from you. This is where the secular leftist obsession with equality of outcome and uniformity of thought leads. They really are fascists, and they really do hate marriage and family.

This story is particular ironic, considering the news story about the 16-year old homeschooled child entering LAW SCHOOL, having completed her Bachelors degree prior to turning 16. Perhaps this child could move to Canada, get on the Supreme Court of Canada, and overrule this left-wing judicial activist? That should be the mission of all homeschooled children, in my opinion. They should be planning on it.

And in other news, the gay rights lobby is forcing their agenda into the Ontario’s Catholic school system. The governments in Quebec and Ontario are both Liberal, and are supported even by some Catholics. These Catholics think that it is the government’s job to redistribute wealth in order to equalize life outcomes and achieve “social justice”. Imagine how shocked they must be now, to find government intruding into their private lives.

News

New report compares cost of coal power to renewable wind and solar power

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Map of Australia
Map of Australia

From the Victorian Auditor-General’s Report, April 2011. (H/T Joanne Nova)

Here’s the chart:

Cost of renewable wind and solar energy
Cost of renewable wind and solar energy

Click here for a bigger version.

Compared to coal, wind power is incredibly expensive, and solar power is even worse.

What happened when the Canadians embraced wind and solar power?

What happened to consumer energy prices in Ontario when the Liberal government embraced unproven wind and solar power?

The Globe and Mail explains:

If you haven’t opened your September hydro bill yet, you’re in for a shock. Rates have risen 18 per cent this year to date, and that’s just the start. By this time next year – election time – Ontario power consumers will be forking over about twice as much (in nominal terms) as they did when Dalton McGuinty took office in 2003.

[…]Power expert Tom Adams may know more about this subject than any other living being. And he’s steamed. Ontario’s rates, he says, have already surpassed the U.S. average and are headed for European levels – “just because of public policy.”

The policy is to go all out on renewables – wind and solar– whether or not it makes sense. The province is paying sky-high rates for power it doesn’t need so we can have wind turbines marching on and on to the horizon, just like Denmark does. “Power demand has been dropping since 2005,” says Mr. Adams. In fact, we have so much excess supply that, from time to time, it threatens to crash the system. Because of this, we’re even paying the neighbours to take the power off our hands.

“Ontario will need new power supplies in the future,” Mr. Adams says. “But why not buy it when we need it?” Instead of waiting, the power authority is signing long-term contracts at the rate of about $1-billion a week, while paying enormous premiums to attract wind and solar producers. In other words, it’s making 20-year commitments to pay stunningly high prices for power we don’t need.

On top of that, the province is building new transmission lines to nowhere while neglecting to ensure that Toronto’s hospitals and banks can keep the lights on. In July, Toronto experienced what Mr. Adams calls “Ontario’s first green blackout.” That blackout occurred because the city’s downtown core is badly underpowered. It has the weakest power system of any financial centre in the developed world.

Why haven’t we done anything about it? Because the green lobby has been campaigning for conservation, instead. And so, when the government started picking sites for transmission upgrades, it decided to build a power line up the shore of Lake Nipigon to connect remote wind turbines to Thunder Bay.

Ever since the days of Adam Beck, the father of public power in Ontario, the province’s energy policy has been linked to economic policy. The motto was reliable power at cost. Now energy policy has been entirely decoupled from economic policy and attached to the runaway train of environmental policy. Everyone in the power system knows it. But they’re so terrified to raise their hands, most of the public is still in the dark.

The National Post wrote about how the Ontario government wastes taxpayer money to subsidize big corporations who experiment with unproven, expensive energy programs, like solar power.

Excerpt:

The Swedish retail giant IKEA announced yesterday it will invest $4.6-million to install 3,790 solar panels on three Toronto area stores, giving IKEA the electric-power-producing capacity of 960,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. According to IKEA, that’s enough electricity to power 100 homes. Amazing development. Even more amazing is the economics of this project. Under the Ontario government’s feed-in-tariff solar power scheme, IKEA will receive 71.3¢ for each kilowatt of power produced, which works out to about $6,800 a year for each of the 100 hypothetical homes. Since the average Toronto home currently pays about $1,200 for the same quantity of electricity, that implies that IKEA is being overpaid by $5,400 per home equivalent.

Welcome to the wonderful world of green economics and the magical business of carbon emission reduction. Each year, IKEA will receive $684,408 under Premier Dalton McGuinty’s green energy monster — for power that today retails for about $115,000. At that rate, IKEA will recoup $4.6-million in less than seven years — not bad for an investment that can be amortized over 20.

No wonder solar power is such a hot industry. No wonder, too, that the province of Ontario is in a headlong rush into a likely economic crisis brought on by skyrocketing electricity prices. To make up the money paid to IKEA to promote itself as a carbon-free zone, Ontario consumers and industries are on their way to experiencing the highest electricity rates in North America, if not most of the world.
The government’s regulator, the Ontario Energy Board, has prepared secret forecasts of how much Ontario consumers are going to have to pay for electricity over the next five years. The government won’t allow the report to be released. The next best estimate comes from Aegent Energy Advisors Inc., in a study it did for the Canadian Manufactures and Exporters group. Residential rates are expected to jump by 60% between 2010 and 2015. Industrial customers will be looking at a 55% increase.

Going back to 2003, based on numbers dug up by consultant Tom Adams, the price of residential electricity in Ontario hovered around 8.5¢ a kWh in 2003 — the first year of the McGuinty Liberal regime. By 2015, Aegent Energy estimates the price will be up to 21¢, an increase of 135%. Doubling the price of electricity in a decade is no way to spur growth and investment. In this age of global economic competition IKEA may end up with fewer sales of its Billy bookshelves in Toronto because its customers will be bogged down with soaring power bills and a sliding economy.

How about wind power in a coastal province like New Brunswick? Is that any better? The National post explains the costs and drawbacks of wind power.

Excerpt:

A $200-million wind farm in northern New Brunswick is frozen solid, cutting off a potential supply of renewable energy for NB Power.

The 25-kilometre stretch of wind turbines, located 70 kilometres northwest of Bathurst, N.B. has been completely shutdown for several weeks due to heavy ice covering the blades.

[…]Wintery conditions also temporarily shutdown the site last winter, just months after its completion. Some or all of the turbines were offline for several days, with “particularly severe icing” blamed.

The accumulated ice alters the aerodynamics of the blades, rendering them ineffective as airfoils. The added weight further immobilizes the structures.

[…]Melissa Morton, a spokeswoman for the utility, says the contract isn’t based on power delivered during a specific period, but rather on an annual basis.

“Our hopes is that it will balance out over the 12-month period and, historically, that has been the case.”

Despite running into problems in consecutive winters, Ms. Morton says NB Power doesn’t have concerns about the reliability of the supply from the Caribou Mountain site.

It’s a waste of taxpayer money.

News

Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper wins a majority

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Stephen Harper Wins Majority
Stephen Harper Wins Majority

You can see the latest Canadian election results here on the Sun News Network.

The Conservatives won 167 seats in the House of Commons. They needed 155 for a majority of the 308 seats.

From the Vancouver Sun.

Excerpt:

Conservative leader Stephen Harper has emerged from the election campaign as a much more powerful prime minister and will lead a majority government with four years to change the country.

At a rally of his supporters here, Conservatives cheered and celebrated Monday as the results rolled in from throughout the country, confirming that Canadians, in large numbers, had given Harper the trust he had sought in the five-week campaign.

As the evening wore on, Harper’s party was coming within striking distance of reaching the benchmark threshold — 155 seats — they needed for a majority. When the Tories crossed that threshold, a great cheer erupted in the hall here in Calgary where supporters had gathered to celebrate and listen to Harper’s speech.

The Conservatives success came as the NDP made historic gains at the expense of the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois, which saw their popular vote drop as they lost seats.

In recent days on the hustings, Harper had portrayed the election as having historic consequences for the country. In addition, his own personal future was at stake.

It was clear that with a majority victory, Harper will be regarded by historians as a political success story who united the political right in Canada.

He will have a four-year mandate to implement significant change in areas ranging from tax policy, to the criminal justice system, to foreign affairs.

Here’s the reaction to the Harper victory from businesses and investors.

Excerpt:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has won for a third time the leadership of Canada, in a stunning vote which changed the country’s political landscape.

As the ballot counting wore on over six times zones and more than 5,000 miles from Atlantic to Pacific, Harper won his great aim, a majority government after two minorities in 2006 and 2008. The television networks declared his majority victory well before 11 p.m. ET. The Conservatives may have won 160 to 165 seats when 155 are needed for a majority in the 308-seat House of Commons.

While a Conservative victory again was always considered quite possible, the countrys political landscape was altered in three stunning ways:

The New Democratic Party, a rump group of social democrats in the 41st Parliament with 36 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons, surged into becoming the chief opposition party in the 42nd Parliament with about 105 to 108 seats.

The former chief opposition party, the historically great Liberal Party of Canada, the government of the country for more than 100 years of Canada’s 144 years since Confederation of separate British colonies into one nation, sunk to a very poor third with perhaps 30 seats. Michael Ignatieff, who became Liberal leader exactly two years earlier to the date, was looking to lose his Toronto-area seat.

The Bloc Quebecois, the separatist party from the French-speaking province of Quebec, was wiped out by the surging NDP, from 47 of Quebec’s 75 seats to perhaps two seats.

While the social democrats in the new Democratic party hold a powerful position in the House of Commons, the Conservatives with their majority will enforce a program which by and large is what foreign and domestic business and investors prefer.

The Conservatives will bring back a budget which was lost in the last Parliament when the election intervened 36 days ago, and will continue with a further tax cut for corporations, but a reduction in spending it said would bring back balance during 2014, erasing the federal budget deficit the Conservatives created after 11 years of Liberal government-created surpluses.

Prime Minister Harper campaigned for a majority saying his Conservatives were the prudent economic managers while the others were “tax and spend” parties. He will keep the same course. Economists have said that they see no significant changes in deficit reduction or in monetary policy under the Conservatives.

Well done, Canada! Congratulations!