Facts:

• “Anarchists” using the black bloc tactic were hiding amongst the peaceful protestors making it difficult for the police to identify them individually [1]
• The black bloc rioters destroyed dozens of private properties and at least four police cruisers on Saturday evening [2] [3]
• The police had identified at least some of the vandals and promised to arrest them at a later time (i.e. a later protest) [4]
• The “peaceful protesters” did next to nothing to stop the “anarchists” from destroying all the property: by many accounts, those who weren’t cheering and applauding were idly standing and watching (bystander effect at work?) [5]
• The police admitted to arresting and detaining many innocent protestors, but also claimed it was a necessary evil to arresting those black bloc rioters who were blending into the crowd [6;ongoing]

The “Anarchists”

“They call themselves anarchists. I think that’s a generous opinion.” -Mayor David Miller

Most of the mass media reporters seem to agree on one thing about the black bloc anarchists: they were mostly ‘punks’ and kids who showed up for the explicit purpose of violence and vandalism. They had no particular cause, nor a particular issue, nor are they even an official ‘group’ of any constitution. These are idiots who get off on seeing chaos and destruction. They probably took Fight Club a little bit too seriously.

These are stupid, naive, and violent ‘thugs’ who don’t have enough to do with their time. For the most part, they are young societal outcasts hailing from the middle class who also happen to be misanthropes.

The “Peaceful” Protestors

So those anarchists with the black gear decided to blend into the crowds of protestors, then gradually hi-jacked the protests and started a riot. The protestors stood by and watched while the streets burned. Then they go on to complain that the police presence is too much and that we were turning into a Police State. The “Whose streets? Our Streets!” chant being used against the police seems a little self serving here when it is blatantly obvious to most residents of the city that the police were there to protect residents against the ever-present violent rioters.

Why is it that the protestors stood by and did nothing? Why is it that they kick and scream about police brutality, but make no mention of the window-smashing and cruiser-burning? This particular theory seems pretty appealing: the protestors seem to want some ruckus and fighting. It might just be useful to their cause. Then there are the conspiracy nuts who keep trying to tell us that the police were the ones who lit their car on fire.

Furthermore, it seems that many of the protestors actually knew who the people in the black were (pretty easy to spot with the big black army boots after they get rid of the clothes), and yet didn’t bother to report anything or confront anybody. They act all brave when yelling at the politicians, but somehow lose their guts when they see an anarchist? Give me a break.

For the large part, most of the protestors are not your average citizens / Toronto residents. Most of us decided to stay away from the city and the mobs of chanting people. Sure, many of them have pet issues that they care deeply about – possibly the environment, child poverty, world hunger, or wars – but the most important common thread between the groups are that the people are there for the purpose of causing a scene. That’s what protests (peaceful ones even) are for, of course.

Think of the people you know who went to the protests. Watch the news footage of the protestors. Listen to the interviews of the people on the streets. From what I gather, most of these people are the ’shit-disturbers’ of society. You know the kind – the ones who like to yell and scream and incite chants for their cause du jour; the kind of people who like to scream and yell at the most seemingly inappropriate times when you just want to, say, go to sleep, or just try to leave work for home (sadly in that particular case, some of us regular folk had to foot their legal bill)!

All this, and we still don’t really know what the protestors were arguing for. Nobody seems interested in putting out a logical argument pertaining to the matter that they are trying to push. Most are only interested in catchy chants, it seems.

The Indignant

Naturally, when some of them got arrested for refusing to listen to police instructions (a common sense and street-smart thing to do in almost all circumstances), they cried foul and started claiming abuses of civil liberties. Well, what about my civil liberties as a resident of the city who doesn’t want to listen to your protests (especially when many of you are extraordinarily ill-informed and naive)? If I recall correctly from my Law & Morality course, our constitution and most constitutions of the “free world” are based on the premise that you have fundamental rights – provided that you do not interfere with other peoples’ rights.

So excuse me if you will for having no sympathy for you lot. If you want to get real change, go shape the public policy debate by helping a political campaign or running for office. Most of the G20 leaders were democratically elected, after all. Yelling and banging and creating the justification for the multi-million dollar security bill certainly doesn’t bring me to your side of the fence.

The Cops

This brings us to the polarizing topic of the Cops. A cursory glance at the twitter feeds and the headlines from yesterday reveal that the cops were both too brutal and too reserved.

On one side, we’ve got people complaining that the cops were nowhere to be found when the rioters started smashing windows and burning cars; on the other, we’ve got people complaining that the police were too brutal when they managed to stop several potential riots involving the black bloc anarchists.

Oh sorry, I got that wrong: those are the same people complaining about both things. You can’t have it both ways!

Yes, the protestors were arrested and detained, and many of them were of the non-riot type… but as I said above – I’ve got no sympathies for those who willingly put themselves into the police ‘trap’ – how hard is it to not run into riot police? I, for one, am glad that the crazies were stopped before they could break anything else.

It is painfully obvious that the police were being provoked and baited – and while the opposite is also true, the protestors and their indignant supporters seem to get all one-sided in their account of events. Videos are even purposely cut short to show only out-of-context actions by the police. Shame on you guys for manipulating the media – thought you guys were all above that?

So there were a few bad apples amongst the police. There were also a few bad apples in the protests. Funny how things balance, no?

Get the G20 out of my city

Regardless, the only take-home message is this: why the hell were the summits hosted in the downtown core of the busiest city in the country? If they wanted resorts, Canada is full of country-side lakes and rivers. If they wanted big halls, we’ve got dozens of huge spaces in the suburbs. Heck, what about that thing, with the Nations that are United and have this internationally independent building that was built for the purpose of meetings? There doesn’t seem to be any great reason to cause a billion to be spent. (Oh, and what’s wrong with Skype?)

Maybe Stephen Harper just wanted Canada to be on the news more… at the cost of his (least) favourite Canadian city, Toronto. Payback for not voting for the Conservatives, eh?

Unions were originally conceived in the days when employment conditions were poor, worker safety was nonexistent, wages were low, and hours were long. They were needed because no single employee could represent themselves in a fair argument against an employer – one would simply be fired. Since then, unions have won for workers a myriad of rights which have improved workplace safety, given us minimum wages, limits on hours, and many benefits we wouldn’t otherwise have without collective bargaining. These are all good advances which we should not forget, and unions have been instrumental in the advancement of our society.

Unions work because they have power over employers. As a group representing a large number of employees, they can threaten to withdraw their services (ie. go on strike), picket, work-to-rule, among other possibilities. These actions are detrimental to the employer, and any employer will be forced to bargain in good faith given this threat. If an employer refuses to bargain, he can choose to fire everyone (but cause massive disruptions and lose a great deal of reputation – it is also sometimes illegal), or he can choose to wait out a strike. Waiting out a strike, in the long run, will also damage a company, through lost profits and eventually bankruptcy.

This last point is important, because it is what provides a balance to the power that unions have over their employers. If a strike goes on for too long, the workers will be out of a job – because the company will go broke with no income. So the workers, too, must bargain in good faith, if they hope to reach a settlement before this worst case scenario occurs.

Let us now examine the case of modern public sector unions. These unions, such as CUPE (the largest in Canada), represent a variety of workers employed or funded by governments, be it local, provincial, or federal. Bargaining with public sector unions is not unlike that of any other union, with three very important caveats. First, their employers, the government, cannot go bankrupt. Because the government cannot go bankrupt, a strike cannot permanently put the workers out of a job. Second, in most jurisdictions, public sector workers cannot be fired for going on a legal strike. This removes a second risk that workers must take by going on strike. Third, a governmental institution usually has no competition for services. For example, when social services in Toronto are shut down, there is very little one can do as a consumer to boycott either the employees or the employers – we are dependent on them. By contrast, if say, GM plant workers go on strike, consumers can always buy from a myriad of other auto makers, such as Ford, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, etc. With no competition, there cannot also be long term profit losses, which gives neither party an incentive to speed up the process.

This set of circumstances mean that the balance of power in the public sector shifts significantly towards the unions, and evidence suggests that public sector workers have ‘won’ more often than not, public sector strikes last longer than private sector ones, and public sector workers are paid more than their private sector counterparts.

The current model does not seem to be working for the public sector. Make no mistake though – the solution is not to copy the private sector, where workers make far less, and all the profits go straight to wall street investors and managerial executive types. Is it time for a more creative labour bargaining process?

$300 million later, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have little to show for it but a meagre 1% increase in popularity and a dozen more seats in Parliament. While he claims to have gained a mandate to govern with his new ’strong minority’, little has changed in Ottawa. The Liberals will still cower in big votes for some time while they recover and regroup; the NDP’s will continue to make big noises and do little; and the Bloc will continue to dawdle around as always.

The major newspapers are all calling for Dion’s head, justifiably so, but all agree that Harper will keep his job. The fact is, Harper suffered a huge blow yesterday when he failed to win a majority government, even with the weakest Liberal opposition in more than a century. A couple years from now, when there will undoubtedly be another election after the Liberals regroup and finally grow some backbone, voters will once again show their lack of confidence in this compromise of a Prime Minister. When that time comes, it’s likely that Harper will be defeated, if he’s still the Prime Minister by then. Voters will be tired of listening to his attacks and cynicism, and give him a run for his money.

Dion, of course, will be gone. His stoic speech may hold the party over for a while, but the fact is, he gave the Liberals their worst result in living memory. When all is said and done, it’s more than likely that Dion will be only the second Liberal leader not to be Canada’s Prime Minister. His ideas may have been far too ahead of his time, especially in an era of economic uncertainty. One day, voters will embrace a green plan. One that is less complicated and expressed in more eloquent terms than Dion’s broken English could muster.

This election, however, was Harper’s to win. Harper’s rise to political power has been an improbable one, and although his shrewd political maneuvers have certainly helped him on the way, it has mostly been the Liberals’ mistakes that gave him the country’s top job. From Paul Martin’s dithering campaign to the internal power struggles to the sponsorship scandal, the Conservatives have been feasting on the skeleton of a party. Through two terms, Harper has failed to define himself as someone Canadians can embrace. He has alienated voters as well as the opposition.

When Harper leaves power, his legacy will be likely one of scorn rather than reverence. He leaves behind a trail of debris where politics is concerned. Harper brought to Canadian federal politics the now-familiar negative attack ads, complete with ominous music and gloomy graphic art. He survived, not won, two elections without promoting any policy, without standing on any political platform. His party benefited from the best possible timings, and yet could not be trusted enough with a majority government. For what it’s worth, he won by Americanizing Canadian politics. Instead of promoting big ideas, or debating policy, he pointed fingers and endlessly smeared his opponents.

What has been made clear by this election is that at least some degree of political reform is necessary. With the lowest voter turnout in history (59%), it is obvious to everyone that the system isn’t working. Our antiquated First Past the Post system failed to represent Candians’ interests, and the Parliamentary dialogue between parties has broken down. The final results show that 51% of the electorate voted for combined centre-left parties (Liberal, NDP, and Greens), compared to the Conservatives’ 38% (the only right-leaning party). Despite this, we will be entering our second session of the most conservative government in a century.

Electoral reform proponents have been trumpeting proportional representation for years. However, this proposal has never received any traction, likely due to its complexity and ambiguity. (How do you decide which people go to parliament in proportional representation? How are regions represented? How do you ensure individual accountability?) Many of the benefits of proportional representation can be had by instead implementing an Instant Run-Off or Preferential voting system. While it adds complexity to the ballot counting, it is certainly less of an overhaul than proportional representation, with less of its associated costs and uncertainty. This would solve the biggest problem we have in today’s political atmosphere, with a united right and a fracture left (or conversely, a decade ago with a strong left and a fractured right).

What is also needed is a better check-and-balance mechanism. Unlike in the United States, where there are three separate elected legislative branches (the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives) each keeping the others in check, we have in Canada only a misrepresented House of Commons and an appointed Senate. Whatever the reforms are, it is clear that an appointed Senate is no longer appropriate. Since this “Upper House” already exists, simply making it an elected body will not be difficult. Doing so also increases the accountability of our government, and can serve to keep the House of Commons in check. It will also give voters more confidence in our leaders, yielding a greater chance of productive majority commons, given that there is an elected Senate to keep the House in check.

But with Harper’s ironclad rule, will he listen to cries of electoral reform? Or will he ignore them, turning his back on promises of reform and accountability, and his political youth when he, too, called for change?

To describe George Carlin merely as a stand-up comedian would be an insult to his memory. George Carlin was a man who, despite not completing his high school education, pushed the bounds of human morality. He is much better described as a modern philosopher. His satirical acts became known not only for their black humour (he was undoubtedly the greatest at it), but also for their seething accuracy in describing the decaying human condition.

Carlin was a fearless commentator, attacking everything that he deemed morally unjust and incorrect. This included religion (and the ten commandments), excessive consumption, obesity, politicians, education, death, the english language, and of course, censorship.

With Carlin’s death, we lost not a Great Comedian, but we lost our greatest modern philosopher, and most fearless social commentator. Nobody before or since has ever taken apart our world so eloquently, shattering our daily illusions of comfort and safety. His musings on our lives will be missed, for there is no one more capable of telling the masses ‘the world as it is’, without any political bullshit and big media bias.

He never caved in to political or media pressure. When his most famous (but probably not his best) act, “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television” was unleashed into the public, he was instantly put under siege by the politicians, the media, and the conservatives. Carlin, though, never backed off. Defying arrests, lawsuits, and censorship, he continued his act, improving it even as the lawsuits mounted. He spent nearly his entire career telling the world that the ‘big establishment’ of politicians, corporations, and the media were all screwing with his country. He did a great deed in giving the people a voice of dissent and common sense amidst a sea of political correctness and corruption.

Now Carlin’s gone, and there is nobody left qualified to take his place, taking it to the media as he did so often. He did what any honest man would do – stand up for his rights, speak up when there’s nobody else to do it, and never be afraid of the government, the corporations, and the media.

Carlin’s great work was perhaps never appreciated by a great deal of people (now is as good a time as any to start), but everyone he reached understood where he came from. In a world where high school students are being censored, politicians are being bought out, the economy collapsing, and where the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, Carlin’s ideas are as accurate now as they were when he first spoke of them.

On a week when the American Senate passed a bill declaring immunity for telephone conglomerates who spied on its customers because the White House said so (without warrants), we should all take a page from Carlin, and let the world know what we think.

Yesterday evening, when he stepped onto that same podium, he was beaming with pride. His speech was confident, yet welcoming. It was delivered with a smile, and a smoothness that John Tory seemed to lack. After 4 years as Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty became someone different. He’s no longer the shaky, detached lawyer he was as the opposition leader. In a quiet sort of way, he gave a sense of security, despite various portrayals by the media of him as a liar.

Even during the campaign, Dalton was unphased by opposition attacks – while the NDPs and Conservatives were busy attacking him with negativity and cynicism, McGuinty ignored all of it, and ran an almost spot-free positive campaign. His quiet confidence let him talk without resorting to low-blows.

Despite what the polls say, or what the oppositions paint, Dalton McGuinty has undoubtedly become a great leader – capable of handling criticism, and find confidence where many would have crumbled. I, for one, am proud to have McGuinty as my Premier.

It’s taken me a while to come up with something to write about on the issue of our latest referendum – that of whether to adopt Mixed-Member Proportionality over First Past the Post. The difficulty of this issue lies in our unique circumstance as well as history.

If you do not know exactly what these two systems are, I won’t go into too many details. The Toronto Star has a nice primer here.

The proposed MMP model is essentially identical to the New Zealand model, which they adopted in the early 90’s after a referendum. New Zealand serves as a particularly useful example to Ontario, as it has a similar population distribution and political landscape.

MMP was suggested and adopted in New Zealand, after two successive elections where the party with more votes lost the election due to their inability to capture enough seats. The citizens of New Zealand were not particularly satisfied with either party in the first place, and with those skewed election results, they decided election reform was necessary. Soon after MMP was adopted, there were some party break-ups and new parties joining the fray.

After Dalton McGuinty promised to look at electoral reform last election, he created the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. This spring, they narrowed down their list to the final candidate to replace FPTP. Which brings us to here.

The question one first needs to ask when considering whether to move to a new system is – what is wrong with our current system? Critics of FPTP often cite this figure: over 50% of the votes in Ontario were ‘wasted’ – meaning that those votes did not end up voting anyone into power. This is an inherent flaw of FPTP – to win a riding, a candidate needs only the most number of votes, not a majority approval. If an NDP candidate had 30% of the vote, the Liberal candidate had 29%, and Conservative candidate had 28%, and the other %’s were eaten up by Greens and others, the NDP candidate would win – even though he would have less than a third of the votes in his riding. Thus, 2/3 of the votes would in this case be ‘wasted’.

But in the context of Ontario, no election has been won where the winner got less votes than another party. In fact, the last 3 elections have been won with about 45% of the vote – which isn’t bad, although critics will say even those aren’t “true” majorities. (I would argue that minus the spoiled ballots and fringe parties, that’s about an even majority)

Do we really need electoral reform? Before jumping into a new system, one also has to consider the price we’re paying for that. While it is true that MMP will give us a more ‘proportional’ view, it is not necessarily a good thing. As it stands in our current political climate, any election under MMP will be won by the centre-left parties (Liberal and NDP). Naturally, if, say, the Conservatives get more votes than the Liberals, but the Liberal and NDP parties decide to form a coalition (a very likely scenario), then those conservative voters will still call foul since they technically had the ‘most votes’ but couldn’t form government. Is it so wrong that the winning party received a majority government? Well, that’s a question for another debate.

In addition, the MMP proposal calls for about 20 more seats in parliament. With Ontario’s finances in problematic shape, funding an extra 20% on politics may not seem the best idea to improve democracy. (And – will more politicians help solve problems at Queen’s Park?)

A third problem – in New Zealand, after an election it is not immediately clear who will form government. After one of their MMP elections, it took 9 weeks – more than 2 months – to form a government. All that time, we would still be paying the politicians, for doing little to nothing. While this may assist in forming a political consensus, it may not get anything done.

You gain some, you lose some. What is obvious is that the system is not as broken as most people seem to think. The biggest problem in Canadian politics is the lack of interest. A 58% voter turnout is dismal, and nobody seems to care. That’s in part why I’m writing all this anyway. I’m trying to get you to vote.

What’s my verdict? Well, I think some alternative methods, such as the approval voting system might work better in Ontario. (Thanks Awdan for bringing that up in one of my comments). For tomorrow’s referendum, I will be voting Yes. Why? It’s not because I support MMP – but because I know the referendum is set up to fail. It requires 60% approval and a majority in 60% of the ridings. I’m voting yes because it’ll send a message to the politicians that we care – that they still need to take a hard look at themselves, because the system isn’t perfect.

Before you vote - and please vote – I’m going to try my best to inform anybody reading this of any critical issues they should know about. I admit that I have a slight Liberal bias, but only after a lot of logical thinking. I have tried my best in this particular article (I don’t usually do that) to convey facts rather than opinion. However, you will need to note my leanings before considering my points.

To better understand the premise of this election, you should know that in 2003, the Liberals defeated the Conservatives by a large majority victory, essentially ending the Mike Harris-Ernie Eves era often referred to as the “Common Sense Revolution” because of Harris’ early campaign slogans.

(Note – the following is a brief history lesson – if you know this, skip it)

Why did the Conservatives fall? In part, it was because after more than a decade at the helm, they began to mismanage things. Selling off public property, privatizing many provincial institutions, and delegating provincial responsibilities to the cities all began to add up. The Conservatives’ lack of foresight led to escalated debts – in 2003, the Conservative government ran a massive $5.6 billion deficit.

This of course begs the question – why where the Conservatives in power at all? Well, they were greatly aided by the Liberals of the 90’s. After Bob Rae’s NDP government fell, voters chose to swing to the political right, to give the Conservatives a mandate – to fix the fiscal mess that Rae left Ontario.

The conservatives did pretty well, up to a point. But why weren’t the Liberals elected? Well, to put it bluntly – they sucked. The Liberals ran a terrible campaign against the Conservatives – three times – before they finally got their act together (and even then, not completely). The Liberals finally won in 2003, after it came to light that the government was in a dire financial crisis. Dalton McGuinty, who promised pretty much everything he could possibly promise in an election campaign, managed to convince voters that he wasn’t completely incompetent, and wound up with the Province’s top job.

Naturally, Dalton’s Liberals couldn’t deliver on all their promises, which included shutting down all Coal power plants by ‘07, giving more support to autistic children, freezing tuition fees, and not raising taxes. It is this point that the Conservatives and the NDP’s are trying to tell you. Dalton McGuinty is a liar who broke his promises. Certainly, by any count, McGuinty has broken a great deal of promises, but at least he’s been able to admit it publicly.

If John Tory wasn’t such an incompetent politician (see previous post), he probably would have fought this election entirely on McGuinty’s broken promises. In essence, the 2007 election is about whether you trust Dalton’s Liberals enough to give them more time with Ontario. The facts are, since 2003, the Liberals managed to eradicate a $5.6 billion deficit (albeit having to heave a ‘medical premium’ to do it), improve schools (lowering class sizes, increase funding to secondary and postsecondary schools), lower hospital wait times, closing some Coal power plants, and putting in a greenbelt protection plan. Sure, they had to lie and break some promises to do it, but that’s what politics is about anyway.

This election is about whether you think the Liberals have done a good enough job, and whether they are proposing a good enough plan for the future. Last time around, they were excused from promising too much, because they were new to government. Being the incumbents this time around, they have no excuse. So how do their platforms stack up?

Well, I won’t get into the fine details of them, for that - try here. What you need to know is that the Liberals are offering less than they did last time – because they finally realized they need to plan realistically so that they won’t break any promises. Their focus is to reduce hospital wait times, attack poverty (increasing minimum wages gradually to $10.25), and getting greener power. The big question for them is whether or not they will abuse the electorate’s trust this time around.

The Conservatives have decided that Mike Harris was a radical after all, and are walking away from all his policies of the 90’s (those that included moving of provincial responsibilities to cities, privatizing health care, and shrinking government branches). However, they haven’t made much noise about their own platform lately – they’ve been busy shooting themselves in the foot with the faith-based schools debate and running negative attack ads on Dalton.

The NDP’s are as usual, lagging behind in the campaign. The NDP’s are probably the most principled party, fighting consistently for the underpriviledged. They have a very aggressive stance on poverty, and demand a minimum wage raise to $10 as soon as they are elected. Their plans are far more aggressive than the Liberals’ – although it seems that they are talking like the Liberals of 2003 – promises, but forgetting about the means to pay for them.

What will you vote? That’s up to you – that’s the whole point of democracy. If you DO have questions, post a comment below. I’ll try to help.

Tory was inadvertantly admitting defeat to his 2007 campaign. His Conservatives were banking on a campaign that focused on McGuinty’s broken promises and backtracking – but now that Tory’s been caught blatantly backtracking, his television ads seem like nothing but hypocrisy. At least McGuinty had an excuse to backtrack ($5 billion debt), while Tory’s only claim to an excuse was the vehement opposition to the idea (which never had legs to begin with).

Barring a miracle, McGuinty’s Liberals will go on to form another government. The only question remains is whether it will be a majority or minority. Not that Tory’s defeat will be surprising, though. Despite all the hype by the media and their ‘polls’ about Tory being a better leader than McGuinty, Tory has actually been a remarkably terrible politician.

Tory’s most recent claim to fame prior to becoming leader of the Ontario PC’s was his entry into the 2003 Toronto Mayoral Election. Remember that one? The one where he lost to David Miller. Anyone who has been following politics (or the news, for that matter) will know that David Miller’s municipal government is being run into the ground, with increasing debts and a split caucus at City Hall. That Tory could not convey his supposed leadership skills over Miller should be indication to everyone of his unsuitability to politics.

John Tory was connected to one other infamous political event. In 1993, the 135-year-old Conservative Party of Canada, entered a federal election as the sitting majority government. Led by popular prime minister Kim Campbell, the Conservatives looked like they would face minimal trouble defending their government. That was, until the campaign began. Disaster after disaster struck the Conservatives – eventually escalating to the oft-cited Conservative TV attack ad about would-be PM Chretien’s facial expression.

The result of the 1993 federal election was that the sitting Conservatives lost 149 seats. I don’t have the precise figures, but I’m fairly certain that it was the worst political defeat in Canadian history (and probably one of the modern world’s greatest). The oldest political party in Canada was left with a paltry 2 seats. It helped bring to the life the right-wing Reform party as well as strengthening the radical Bloc Quebecois. The federal Conservatives were soon swallowed and forgotten. (The current Conservative Party of Canada is but a similarly named twin, but not the same party)

The 1993 Conservative campaign manager’s name was John Tory.

So, Tory obviously has a history of running political campaigns into the ground. Nothing’s really changed, despite his stay at Rogers as CEO.

John Tory is not the great leader that the PC’s are telling you he is. He’s but a failure of a politician, trying over and over again to do something he just doesn’t understand. If he were a good politician, he would never have let the one religious schools issue bring him crashing down.

I’m not going to tell you who to vote for – that’s your choice. But you have a right to be informed, too. So if you had any inclinations to vote for John Tory’s Progressive Conservatives, I’ll at least be able to say: “I told you so”. Personally, I think Tory is a lying hypocrite, which is worse than McGuinty, who is by any standards, just a really good liar (as any good politician seems to be).

All of these changes were designed to simplify the curriculum, or perhaps, in their mind, to make the curriculum more ‘relevant’ to students. The ministry cited increasing failure rates in mathematics, and the low enrollment numbers into the Calculus and Geometry courses. There was some noise made by students and parents, as well as the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers. To this end, I wrote the ministry a letter, which I subsequently posted on my blog (click to read). [For the record, after they replied with their initial acknowledgment of my letter, I never heard back from them.] After hearing the complaints, the ministry decided to postpone the proposed changes for a year, while creating a special task force to investigate the changes to the curriculum.

I, for one, was hoping the ministry would scrap the changes completely, and realize the mistake they had made. Unfortunately for me, that didn’t happen. While I occupied myself with the various activities at university, I forgot about this issue during the past school year. So when I visited my high school again, I was shocked to hear that new changes were to be implemented next year which would have a dramatic effect on current secondary school math students.

The changes made were:

• Grade 11 Functions and Relations became Grade 11 Functions
• Grade 12 Advanced Functions and Introductory Calculus became Grade 12 Advanced Functions
• Grade 12 Geometry and Discrete Math was basically removed, making room for a new course, called Grade 12 Calculus and Vectors
• The third senior math course (and generally recognized as the easiest), Grade 12 Data Management, was essentially untouched

Now, it would appear that Calculus remained in the curriculum, and that the only real casualty was the Geometry and Discrete portion of mathematics. Upon closer inspection, in fact, both calculus and geometry+discrete were dumbed down and/or removed. Vectors, which made up about one-third of the old (and difficult) Geometry course, was added onto the already packed Calculus course, while some of the Grade 11 Functions and Relations content was moved to the new Grade 12 Advanced Functions course.

What did all this accomplish?

• Grade 11 students who don’t intend to take calculus now have a much easier course;
• Grade 12 students who wished to take calculus, but not the more difficult geometry course must now take an extra course to get their credit;
• Stronger grade 12 math students who wished for a challenging course to stimulate them are now simply out of luck.

Not to mention, of course, the problems that they caused for all the students going into this ‘transition’ year. (Namely, all the students who took Grade 11 Functions and Relations last year will have to take Grade 12 Advanced Functions, which repeats some amount of material, before they can take Calculus)

Now, I am sure the Ontario Ministry of Education had the students’ best interest at heart when they implemented these changes, but they have gone about it in a completely backwards way. To put it bluntly, in order to curb failure rates of senior mathematics students, the ministry has decided to dumb down the curriculum. Simple, right?

Well, as I wrote previously in my letter to the ministry, the failure rates, in fact, are representative of a larger problem, and that is the growing incompetence of our educators and the use of particularly bad learning material (anyone who remembers the Quest 2000 series of textbooks introduced by Harris will understand what I mean). Kids are no longer learning the fundamentals properly – of course they’re having trouble in upper years.

I’d love to get into how the education system is flawed, but that’s a topic for another day. Most of it, of course, has to do with most educators teaching all the wrong things, and the mostly forceful rote memorization and inherent boring-ness of the assigned work. If we start teaching people to ask why and motivate instead of lecture, we might actually see some positive results.

In any case, the fundamental flaw behind this new series of courses is that instead of fixing the fundamentals from the ground up, they have decided to build another obstacle and hoping for the best. Seriously, will requiring an extra math course before calculus really improve students’ understanding of the concepts? Surely, those who were having trouble with calculus aren’t going to suddenly get better at it just because they’ve been given more math.

A second fatal flaw in the new courses lies in the lack of a true mathematics course. Anyone who has taken high school calculus knows that for the most part, this is a course about memorizing techniques and, well, methods of differentiation. For the most part, students taking calculus don’t realize its significance, nor do they expect to use it in any facet of their life after the course. Most merely enroll in the course to get the prerequisite for their university program. The only real mathematics course for senior students, Geometry and Discrete Mathematics, has been all but destroyed.

Sure, the ministry did note that the “Discrete” course was getting low enrollment numbers – but for good reason. It was a course designed, and in that respect, designed very well, for students who were genuinely interested in mathematics or were at least skilled in the subject. I say without hesitation that content-wise, it was definitely the most challenging course I took in high school, but it was also very enlightening, from a mathematics standpoint.

Geometry and Discrete brought everything we learned in mathematics together, from basic number theory to algebra to geometry. It required connection between concepts, and a deep level of understanding of what mathematics is. If nothing else, it was an unbelievable learning experience. The sheer elegance of mathematics was brought out in the course, and for those so inclined, it was even enjoyable.

Beyond just the learning experience, Discrete provided a solid basis upon which science, math, and engineering students could build during their postsecondary education. Without taking the Discrete course (which was not a requirement for my engineering program), I would surely have done far worse in both my Vector Algebra and Linear Algebra courses. Ironically, the only reason I had a vector algebra course at all in my first year was because it was removed as a prerequisite for entry into the program last year. The class average in that course was very high this year – and not because the material is easy, but because most of the students there had already learned the material.

Now, engineering at the University of Toronto is a rather diverse group. I would venture to say (although I do not have solid statistics here at the moment) that somewhere between a third and a half of the students in my program was from out-of-province, and yet, most still had the background knowledge for that course. This proves only one thing – the rest of the world is at least on par with the Ontario education system. Now, with the removal of the more challenging course, Ontario has surely fallen behind.

As an aside, but perhaps not so off-topic, AP Calculus in Ontario has all but hit an end. The flagship course of the American Advanced Placement program is a course which teaches university-level calculus to high school students who wish to get a head start, or wish for a truly challenging learning environment. With the addition of a second prerequisite to calculus, it essentially forces all secondary schools to semester their grade 12 math programs, and run calculus in the second semester. Thus, if AP Calculus classes were to be run, it would have to be in the second semester as well. Typically, schools in Ontario have their second semester from February to June. Unfortunately, the Advanced Placement exams run by the college board in the States is held in early May. That leaves only three months for AP Calculus to teach students all they need to know for the AP Exams in May, on top of all the other curriculum-required material. This little logistical problem has rendered AP Calculus virtually useless in Ontario. Now, it will only be a matter of time before that is ultimately canceled, leaving Ontario students further behind their counterparts from the rest of Canada as well as the United States. Oh, and not to mention the more impressive European education systems, and the ever-competitive Chinese students. So much for having a good and competitive education system.

Canada was recently ranked one of the worst in terms of innovation among modern industrialized countries around the world. Now, with Canada’s largest province deciding to dumb down the education system, Canada will fall even further behind in innovation. Without solid mathematical foundations in secondary school, the postsecondary institutions will now have to shoulder the burden of teaching students these subjects, in an environment that is generally harsh for learning (for one, if you fail in university, you’ll now have to pay for it – is that any incentive to take a challenging course?). With our mathematics lagging behind, it is no wonder that we’re not innovating – how long will it be until our economy begins to suffer because our students have been denied the opportunity to excel in a global context?