by admin

Acessing Autism Funding

Funding Autism
Re: Accessing Autism services. Editorial, October 3, 2022
Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star
Financial supports and services for ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) are virtually non-existent when you look at the range, breadth, and diversity of needs in the Autistic community while the number of people with Autism grows daily. Even medical professionals have a paltry and limited appreciation of the disorder.
First of all,we need to stop talking about Autism as though it was a childhood problem that can be helped with expensive early intervention therapies. The FC (Facilitated Communication) debacle should be a cautionary tale about unproven therapies that promise the moon but are proven to be fake. There are no longitudinal studies of current early intervention techniques. People are Autistic for life and they have a normal life-span. We need a long-term view, strategies and funding that will support Autistic people throughout their lives.
Secondly, Autism is generally a severe disorder. Only a very small percentage of people are high-functioning yet these individuals are often the focus of media attention. The majority need life-long intensive lifetime support in behaviour, language and social-emotional which is generally non-existent at the present time. The main fear of parents like myself who are often the sole-supporters of Autistic adults is what happens to them when I die? As well we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that the supports that we currently provide in our education system are even adequate. Most services are general special education services and most support settings are general service “warehouse” approaches. Neither of these helps Autistic people grow or advance. ASD is an extraordinarily complex disorder that is multimodal (affects all aspects of life). The disabilities that the majority of Autistic people deal with each and every day and for which they receive no support are overwhelming. Our own 41 year old son needs 24/7 / 365 support and care with all aspects of his life yet he has been forgotten by the system. At 73 time is running out for my wife and I.
We are not alone. We and other parents of Autistic adults are in desperate need of a lifelong life-line that will let our children live out their lives in dignity. A few bucks thrown at the problem isn’t going to cut it.

ain fear of parents like myself who are often the sole-supporters of Autistic adults is what happens to them when I die? As well we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that the supports that we currently provide in our education system are even adequate. Most services are general special education services and most support settings are general service “warehouse” approaches. Neither of these helps Autistic people grow or advance. ASD is an extraordinarily complex disorder that is multimodal (affects all aspects of life). The disabilities that the majority of Autistic people deal with each and every day and for which they receive no support are overwhelming. Our own 41 year old son needs 24/7 / 365 support and care with all aspects of his life yet he has been forgotten by the system. At 73 time is running out for my wife and I.
We are not alone. We and other parents of Autistic adults are in desperate need of a lifelong life-line that will let our children live out their lives in dignity. A few bucks thrown at the problem isn’t going to cut it.

by admin

Education: intelligent illiterates

R

Unpublished letter submitted to The Toronto Star

Re:   Parents upset at lack of rapid testing at schools, September 13, 2021.

With a lifetime of experience in elementary schools as a teacher and principal in Ontario I have noted disturbing trends that have changed the core of education more and more to custodial rather than educational and professional. There is a continuing shift away from the knowledge and facts that make up the curriculum, towards school as a social centre.

Homework and out-of-class learning are things of the past despite the fact that only about twenty-five percent of the material required can be learned while at school. There are only so many hours in a day and this time is being increasingly crowded out by out-of-school activities, family commitments, student work schedules, partying,  gaming and social media all of which are seen as having a higher priority than school and learning. Studying and learning have no place in busy teen lives with cellphones and social media to keep up with.

This change is also reflected in the comments of parents and media. When asked about why it is important for students to return to in-person learning they all speak about the main focus as being on seeing their friends. No mention is ever made of the tough learning that must go on to master an increasingly difficult curriculum. Schools have become primarily social centers where students are gathered to be custodially supervised by adult nannies.

School is about everything but learning.  It’s about social media, friends and fun not preparing students for the future. Education – real education – seems to have been pushed aside and replaced by a socially vacuous, superficial me-world crowded with personal commitments and perspectives where everything is no further away than your Smartphone – and that’s the problem.

Cellphones and social media are  replacing real learning and that is leading to a serious deficit with students studying to learn the information they need to lead society in the future.

These changes to society have led to a complete de-professionalization of education and the dumbing-down of Canadian and other societies around the world.

by admin

E-Census but no E-Voting?

In this era of the pandemic where anything has been proven possible for humanity in fighting COVID-19 virus including quck development of a vaccine, cooperation amongst all levels of government, mobilizing government to spend astronical amounts of money to support the economy and workers and developing a wide variety of strategies to battle vaccine-hesitancy amongst many others, Elections Canada appears not to have experienced this new revelationship.  Unlike banks and other areas of our digital society that use encrypted servers to send trillions around the world daily voting is still stuck in an anachronistic troglodyte paper ballot, a physical process that is extremely old, out-of-date, flawed, slow, expensive and non-representative (First-Past-The-Post). Forty percent of eligible voters don’t exercise their franchise. It is time that Elections Canada got with the plan instead of putting off the inevitable. When banks want E-Voting it will happen in an instant.

This is completely unacceptable during a pandemic when  everything else is being radically rethought and repurposed. We have just recently completed the E-Census that was online, secure and records the sensitive data of millions  of  Canadians with few apparent problems but the most important right that we have is not being upgraded to reflect the digital reality. Communications companies certainly would not tolerate such an outmoded system – why then are Canadians required to? The process for E-Voting is already in place and needs only slight modifications to be used in the same manner for  the rapidly approaching Vooting Day. An E-Voting system would be infinitely more suitable during a pandemic where a fourth or fifth waave could come at any time as new variants mutate and spread around the world. The Olympics is an excellent breeding site for such viruses. Add this pressing need to all the rest of the positive reasons for voting electronically.

Elections Canada, rather than poo-pooing E-Voting as being too unsecure (it isn’t) should be getting on with the job of building a workable system for Canada.  E-Voting  online would give everyone a vote who has a cell-phone or can get access to one. Every single Canadian who wishes to vote could do so in an instant 24 hours a day, seven days a week in their native language. Seniors, shut-ins, people in remote areas, rural and urban, essential workers, truckers could all vote when they wished and how they wished without any interruption to the economy or themselves. They would be fully empowered by a system that finally liberates them from scheduling a visit to a polling station. Identification cards could be sent out well in advance. This is the least that we could ask during a pandemic. No one would be disenfranchised or have any excuse not to vote. Add to this the ease of reporting voting results and the instant accuracy of the returns and the system is a winner. No more waiting for polling stations to report in late into the night to find out who won.

The entire Elections Canada office has been asleep at the wheel. Time to wake up and smell the coffee.

by admin

Organized crime driving home prices

Re:  StrUnpublished letter submitted to The Toronto Star

ess test could take toll on house affordability, experts say. June 2, 2021.

It is apparent to even any logical, untrained eye that the rapid rise in home prices over the past ten years has more has more to it than simply young people chasing their first homes in a market that  prices everything in the millions while the average family brings in approximately $67K a year. Prices do not rise by hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly and sell by the same amont over asking in bidders-wars unless there is smethjing else quite sinister going on.

What the government and the real estate industry does not want to admit is that organized crime has taken over the housing market across the country. They are the only ones who could have the massive amounts of money ready for laundering through the Canadian real estate market and have been pouring cash into Canada while the government, real estate agents and the RCMP talk abut supply and emand and look the other way. Canada has some of the laxest laws regarding money-laundering. Organized ciminals and gangs from Russia, China, Italy, the U.S.  and around the world are rushing into Canada to get rid of their  money made in the illicit drug trade, human sex-trafficking  and other illegal activities. These are the nouveau-riche of the 21st century. Real estate agents turn a blind-eye because they are picking up quick, fat commissions. They are part of the problem. The government prefers to ignore this problem.

It is high time that we had a real government that cracked-down on the illegal activities of organized cime of all kinds before the likes of Al Capone are running our real estate industry and our country. They could start by demanding that purchasers prove how the money they are using was obtained and banning short term rentals that have locked up the market. The RCMP should get off their incompetent butts and be focussing on real police work of arresting the big drug and rea estate kingpins, seizing property and cash in the process and breaking up this financial fraud not on beating up unarmed Indigenous people and other helpless individuals that are the low-hanging fruit of law-enforcement.

by admin

York Catholic’s problems nothing new

Unpublished letter sent to The Toronto Star

Re: York Catholic Board ‘bleeding senior staff’ April 22, 2021

The recent hiring debacle (again) at YCDSB is nothing new. The trustees have a professional history that includes playing politics relentlessly and playing favourites. They have governed a board where cronyism and questionable hiring practices for senior staff are the norm. The environment has been poisoned for decades. In the 1990s the board was taken over when trustees had run up a huge deficit and expected to force the government to pay for it (they didn’t). Budget cuts decimated the board. Their incompetence in hiring Directors is only the tip of the iceberg.

This has been going on for more than forty years with many of the trustees being re-elected again and again due to voter disinterest in trustee elections. The Board’s “inbreeding” led to other problems that directly affected the quality of education.  Rather than acting like an independent Board (trustees have no individual authority), trustees went against this mandate and became involved with local school parents  and the newly political school councils. They were constantly working behind the scenes, siding with parents, stirring up trouble against the principals and staff with the support of the Superintendents. It was all sides against the middle and many principals got ground up in the process.  Teachers and principals were also divided when Mike Harris took principals out of the unions on April 1, 1998, He effectively emasculated and silenced a group that could have held the trustees (and the Superintendents) at bay. You were guilty until proven innocent. YCDSB became a “yes” Board. Yes boards are bad decision makers. Principals were powerless. Trustees allowed an antiquated top-down system of administration to operate without oversight – my way or the highway. As a principal you were on your own in a jungle and if you didn’t play their game you were ostracized. You were always the last to know.

As a result, education has become a collection of  “yes” people attempting to satisfy everyone while satisfying no one. The YCDSB is no different than any other board in Ontario. If we ever want a good education system we need to give education back to professional educators – full stop. We don’t have doctors being dictated to or police officers or architects. There is a difference between input and control. The former is useful, the latter destructive.

Not exactly a recipe for “quality education.”

by admin

Capitalism and government revealed in the pandemic

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto StarRe: Ontario reporting 3,065 new COVID-19 cases and eight deaths; record number of patients in ICU, April 6, 2021.

During the last year of the pandemic, capitalism and governments have been stripped bare. The gross and extended underfunding of governments which began in the seventies after the post-war infrastructure boom had faded during a misguided effort to stimulate the economy by cutting corporate taxes. The philosophy of the neoconservative right has taken over government and hollowed it out under their watchful eye. Corporate tax cuts became the mantra for governments of all political stripes to stimulate the economy even though they didn’t work.  Corporate taxes were cut to the bone while profits skyrocketed. As governments’ major source of funding shrank cuts had to be made across the board to programs and services. We entered the “Age of Austerity.”

Now in 2021 we find ourselves mired in a pandemic without the proper social infrastructure to deal with it. If governments had raised taxes 1% a year for the past fifty years they would have had an extra fifty percent more to spend on PPE, hospital staffing and infrastructure spending like building new hospitals.  Long-term care homes could have been spared the horrific deaths we have witnessed. In every area of society funding has been reduced to minimalist levels leaving them in jeopardy. This would have been fine except for the pandemic.

Now governments are spending massive amounts of money they don’t have to counteract the pandemic while Canadians die waiting for vaccines that are rolling out far too slowly. This should be a lesson to governments everywhere about raising  taxes regularly to keep up with inflation and growth. Cutting them has gotten us into a real deep hole and does not work. The old expression is true – pay me now or pay me later. Later is always way more expensive.

by admin

Funding crisis

Re: Getting to the root of gun violence, December 19, 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has stripped capitalism bare and revealed a society that is a mile wide and an inch deep. In its drive for bigger profits, capitalism has hollowed out society leaving a thin veneer covering an accident waiting to happen. That accident was COVID-19.

It has revealed an entire global society that has been underfunded for decades as government after government cut money from healthcare, wages, benefits, pensions and full-time work while shifting jobs offshore to places like China, India and Bangladesh where salaries and protections are miniscule. It was like a social magician juggling balls. As long as he/she could handle it governments kept adding another ball to juggle. Everything seemed fine but as soon as there was a major crisis the jig was up and he/she dropped all the balls.  What the pandemic has revealed is not simply a healthcare system that is fragile and underfunded but an entire skeletonized society that has been stripped of everything of value as well. While we get daily briefings about COVID counts and response measures from the Federal and Provincial governments they do not reveal the real problem – funding.

Public health officials beg society to be responsible and adhere to the guidelines to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed but the reason that they are being overwhelmed is because of the gross underfunding that has been going on for decades. Over the years the problem has never been our capacity to respond it has been our capacity  to fund. Hospitals have been miserly closing beds for years as funding levels were reduced instead of keeping them open and ready for just such a crisis as we have today. COVID-19 should have been a timeto increase the staffing of doctors, nurses, PSWs and to increase spending on PPE and related protective gear while opening extra beds in hospitals to accommodate the increased need. Instead we are confronted with hospitals that are holding the line on staffing and even cutting staff expecting the same number of staff to carry a massively increased load.

We’ve got the head and the tail of the donkey reversed. We shouldn’t be locking regions down to spare the hospital capacity we should be expanding hospital capacity to meet the need and that means increased funding. What we are seeing is years of neglect by successive governments, cutting back funding levels so that healthcare corporations and the private sector in general could make more money. Now we are paying the price – in deaths, suffering and massive increases in government spending on the wrong things. As a society we should be opposed to lock-downs and in favour of increasing the funding to hospitals so that they can do the job.

by admin

U.S. election: dictatorship or democracy?

Unpublished Op-Ed submitted to the NY Times and The Guardian

The U.S. election is only days away and the vast majority of people around the world are holding their breath awaiting the outcome. The choices could not be more glaring and yet no one seems to know with any confidence what the outcome will be despite polls showing a large lead for the Biden/Harris ticket. In Trumpland what should be a no-brainer slam-dunk win for Biden has turned into a toss-up. Continue reading →

by admin

Teachers’ lives matter

Unpublished Op-Ed submitted to The Star

The pandemic has thrust many issues like anti-Black racism into the spotlight. Similarly it has exposed teaching as a critically important yet highly under-valued profession characterized by extreme complexity in the midst of what appears to be a simplistic relationship. For teachers however, charged with caring for and educating the children they teach, it is a solemn and a daunting responsibility. Teachers are rarely given the courtesy of being consulted. Returning to school without modifying class sizes is ridiculous and adds a layer of complexity and concern to a job that is already hard enough.

First, it has become painfully apparent if it wasn’t before, the key role that teachers play in the economy by providing high quality custodial care. Without teachers, parents (women) cannot work. With women making up almost half the workforce today this is a huge economic hit. The importance of teaching has increased immensely in the new economy. Even in our liberated world women still do the lion’s share of the caring work. This is true across society where professions that involve caring for people of any age and in any capacity are done by women. Nurses, teachers, ECE workers, PSWs, cleaners and retail sales workers are dominated by women. In all cases these workers are generally underpaid and over-worked.

Second, the complexity of the job. Parents, other professions, governments hold an infantilizing view teaching as “women’s work.” That is work that has historically been done by women in a patriarchal society. This work has been underappreciated. However, teachers today are well-educated, work to continually upgrade their skills more than any other profession and work in the most complicated profession in the world. Teachers are constantly balancing the psychological, social-emotional, physical and intellectual needs of each of the approximately thirty students in their class, while providing them with quality, often individualized instruction. Add into that teaching also includes a second full time job prepping for the next day’s classes and marking and the workload is immense, 24/7 and intense. Teachers juggle three jobs simultaneously. For all this complexity it is handled with ease by teachers but that doesn’t mean its easy. In addition, teachers deal with the politics of education – trustees, principals, superintendents, parents – all whom have become politicized and assertive and come with their own baggage. Like all front-line essential workers they come last in the decision making cycle. They are rarely consulted when major decisions are made but they get all the abuse when things go wrong. Teaching is a thankless job in itself often made much worse by the self-centered and selfish people both inside and outside the profession who constantly disparage teachers.

Teaching is one of the few professions where the professional is required to work with thirty clients at the same time for five hours a day, for ten months of the year and deal with all the needs of those clients on a daily basis. Every other profession deals with clients one person at a time. Teachers do an incredible job of this, reflected in the miniscule numbers of problematic student events that occur in Ontario on a daily basis given the millions of students that are being dealt with each day. No other profession has a track record of quality care and success like teaching.

The government’s plan to open schools with full class sizes demonstrates how little the government, the public and the medical profession understand about teaching. Stuffing thirty students into a 750 sq. ft. classroom with or without protective measures will be a disaster. There is no room to move in our egg-crate classrooms and this type of reopening is a wide open invitation to COVID-19. It puts teachers, students and society at risk. Bad idea.

Teaching is the most honourable, dependable, demanding profession in society that is treated with disrespect because it employs a large number of women. It is also one of the last one’s where those in it are there for altruistic rather than monetary gain. It’s about time that society began to show the same respect for teachers that they show for doctors, lawyers and every other profession starting with pay. Teachers are a bargain at any price but its time to upgrade the profession and bring it out of the 1950s. Every other profession that we value we pay well. It’s time that teachers (women) were made equal partners in society. Its time to stop treating them like the governesses of our society’s children who should be seen and not heard and begin to acknowledge that like many other jobs that women do their work is critically important to the economy and to society. Teachers should have the last word on whether schools reopen and how.

by admin

Where is the corporate money during the COVID crisis?

Unpublished letter sent to the Toronto Star

Re: Ontario in line for $7B chunk of $19B economic aid package. July 17, 2020.

As Justin Trudeau is unloading buckets of taxpayer’s cash in an a vain attempt to soften the blow of the pandemic and even Conservative Premiers like Doug Ford are opening up the traditionally tight provincial purse strings to help, Corporate Canada and the private sector have contributed an insignificant amount of cash to help. No level of government has said a word about raising corporate taxes to offset the hit to the economy. This would be a real, tangible way for corporate Canada to pay it forward and give back some of the billions in corporate welfare they have benefited from in the past. Bombardier and GM are only two of many that have benefited from free cash. A ten percent toll would go a long way to taking the edge off the final bill. Wealthy individuals should also willingly pay an extra ten percent surcharge over and above their regular taxation. The one group that makes and owns all the money in society hasn’t shared a penny of it with working taxpayers.

Regular workers (male and female) are taking a personal hit after being laid off from their part-time minimum wage jobs but as well will have to pay back every cent of the money that has been lavished on them to this point including the money paid out to business. No one, not the least of which is Bill Morneau wants to let the taxpayers know how they are going to balance the books again. Its not itme to talk about the twenty-year depression that is going to follow the pandemic.

In an era when hundreds of inequities have been exposed those with the most have given the least. The wealthy corporations and individuals who keep telling us in their commercial advertising that we are all in this together have yet to step up. These are companies who have seen their corporate taxes massively shrink over the past fifty years and who have pocketed the cash. Whether it is the oil industry, air lines or hospitality they have all made billions in the past but now they all don’t have any cash. Shat happened to saving a pool of cash for just sucn emergenceis as individuals are told to do? During the time of big profits the economy has remained stagnant as have wages and benefits while corporate profits went through the roof.  These same companies pay out all their profits to rich shareholders and cry poor when the government comes calling with more corporate welfare. Corporations around the world are totally unscrupulous in the way that they drain every cent out of governments claiming they are just getting by. When in doubt they go bankrupt leaving clean-up costs to the taxpayers again.

Instead of buying a new Bentley for the driveway or a new yacht for their home in Monaco corporations should be paying it forward.