Two excellent letters to the editor on MMP
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/260472
Take a good look at reform
September 26, 2007
As a former member of the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, I have followed the Star’s coverage of the Assembly and the upcoming referendum with interest. Why is it that when Star writers refer to the Assembly members who are recommending the alternative electoral system, they feel it necessary to refer to them as “ordinary citizens,” enclosed within quotation marks? The implication is that, despite being strangers to one another, coming from every riding across the province, sharing no political stripe and holding no political office, they had some common, hidden objective.The effect of this is to remove the most knowledgeable, yet unbiased voice from the discussion. By unbiased, I mean that we have nothing personally to gain. Political parties have lined up on this issue according to whether the reforms will be detrimental or advantageous to them. In the B.C. referendum on electoral reform in 2004, a large number of voters chose electoral reform simply because they were willing to believe that an impartial group of fellow citizens who had thoroughly studied the matter could be relied on to provide good advice. The mocking attitude of the Star toward the Assembly seems intended to discourage this.If an individual wanted to make an informed decision on this issue, there is a wealth of information available. If you have eight months, as did the members of the Assembly, to examine the issues in detail, I encourage you to do so. If you do not, then you may have to rely on someone’s recommendation.
The Star wants to see more coverage, but more of the same type of coverage will not produce any more knowledgeable voters.
Patrick Heenan, Mississauga
In the October 10 referendum on the way we vote, I will vote in favour of change. Here’s why:We have a multi-party system comprised largely of the PCs, Liberals, NDP and Greens; each claims their share of the popular vote. Recent history proves that no one party has any chance of achieving a true majority.
The last time an Ontario government won an election with more than 50 per cent support from the electorate was in 1937. In the 70 years since, all our so-called majority governments have governed with a minority of the vote – recently in the range of 38 per cent (Bob Rae) to 46 per cent (Dalton McGuinty).
In other words, in every so-called majority government since the Depression, more than half of Ontario voters voted against the government that came to power.
Without reform, this state of affairs will continue.
The alternative on the ballot (mixed member proportional) sounds complicated and is hard to understand. But for the first time it would help give Ontarians the provincial parliament they actually voted for as representation would be based, in part, on the popular vote.
What will be the result without change? We will continue to lurch from left to right and back again, building up programs and tearing them down. Long-term policy, with few exceptions, will remain an oxymoron. We will continue to lose confidence in government as an institution. We will continue to waste our votes and young people will continue to stay away in droves.
In the referendum, I fear that Ontario voters may vote against a complicated process, but in so doing reject the achievement of the real representation they long for. Let’s hope there is enough time for them to learn not to make that error.
John Stapleton, Toronto
Truly one of the greatest articles I’ve ever read
Well done Christopher Hume, well done.
http://www.thestar.com/article/260491
43 years of history vs. 20 parking spots
September 26, 2007
Christopher Hume
URBAN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST
The gap between what the city does and what it says is growing wider.
That became clear recently when we heard that Toronto wants to buy the legendary Matador Club and tear it down to make way for a parking lot. A parking lot! A parking lot!
No, we’re not making this up.
This is in the city that likes to pass itself off as the greenest on the continent. As if.
To add insult to injury – or should that be lunacy to idiocy – we also heard that if the owners of the 43-year-old club aren’t prepared to sell their land to the city for $800,000, it will consider expropriation.
Truly, Toronto has lost its way. Truly, whatever our aspirations may be as a civic entity, they are fast being undone by a bureaucracy so out of touch with reality it’s frightening. And where are the councillors in all this? Does their silence signal agreement? Creeping suburbanization is one thing, but this is neanderthal.
And as if all this isn’t madness enough – expropriating an important site at the corner of College St. and Dovercourt Rd. – the city’s intention is to create a 20-unit parking lot to service the West End YMCA across the road.
The YMCA, no less, a place where people go to exercise, swim, play and generally engage in healthy activities.
“We’ve identified that area as high demand (for parking),” Toronto Parking Authority president Gwyn Thomas told the Star last week.
Maybe someone ought to tell guileless Gwyn that the 1950s are over. Oh, and while they’re at it perhaps they could let Mr. TPA in on something else he may not have heard about – a little thing called global warming. Yep, that’s right, Gwyn, and it’s a big problem everywhere else, if not here. Around the world, cities are actually taking steps to get people out of their cars and onto public transit, bikes, their feet, whatever.
But thanks to people like you, Gwyn, that won’t happen here in Toronto. This is a city that invites you to hop into the family vehicle and drive on downtown for a workout. God forbid anyone should have to take the streetcar, which goes to the front door of the YMCA, or the bus, or that they should be forced to cycle, or, worst of all, walk.
No sir, for us it’s the car or nothing.
Some cities, far, far away from Toronto, impose a fee on those who drive in the city. You and your colleagues may not have heard of them, Gwyn, but they include London, Stockholm and Singapore. In other cities, parking is viewed as a means to control car use. These cities set parking rates high enough to make people think twice about driving downtown.
Not here in Merry Olde Toronto, where we’re only too happy to expropriate and knock down a historic building to oblige the needs of those who must drive, even if it’s only 20 of them. Heritage shmeritage.
As for the development potential of the site, well, there’s lots more where that came from.
Send the wrong message? Who cares about that? Sure this would be considered outrageous in many cities, but this is Toronto. In some cities, parking lots are viewed as a lower order of land use than a building. Indeed, some jurisdictions see parking lots as a way of creating a land inventory for future development. Here, where the city is willing to demolish buildings to make way for parking, we do it the other way around.
So welcome to Toronto, a little behind the times, but a great place to park.
UPDATE:
There is a site dedicated to this cause called, appropriately enough, www.savethematador.com
I wish more people thought more about what kids are eating
http://www.thestar.com/article/260393
Catering to a healthy lunch idea
Junk food is banned at school for elite athletes where students order from weekly menus
September 26, 2007
Jennifer Bain
food editor
School lunch hysteria is sweeping the city. It must be September.
Big food companies are madly trying to put a kid-friendly lunch spin on their products. (Single-serving caesar salad kits might fly with select teens, but not with the grade schoolers depicted in one recent news release.)
The snack food contingent is crowing about new peanut-free labels – perhaps because their products will no longer be confiscated in lunchrooms? (Sorry, but while Twizzlers are an okay treat, I won’t be serving them for lunch.)
I’ve had one local company send a histrionic email about overweight children and how urgent it is to get their particular vending machines into schools. The samples of “healthy snacks” they sent – cookies, chips and peanut butter protein bars – failed to persuade me.
Some catering companies are clamouring to deliver hot or cold meals directly to schools. (Nutritious and tasty, no doubt – but accessible to the average parent?)
Newspapers are filled with routine stories urging us to do the obvious – ask our kids what they want, get them involved in grocery shopping, buy different-sized plastic storage tubs, pack small portions.
Frankly, I don’t get too fussed about my 10-year-old vegetarian’s lunch. She gets a good breakfast (cereal and milk, fruit and cheese), healthy after-school snacks (mixed nuts, more fruit), and a well-rounded dinner (whole wheat pasta, bean/cheese/rice burritos, veggie burgers, lentil soup, the spectrum of vegetables, that sort of thing).
The reality is that my daughter gets just 25 minutes in her school lunchroom (where she’d usually rather chat than eat) – and the kids don’t get access to a microwave.
These days her lunch is simple – a whole-wheat bagel with cream cheese or soy-based deli slices, cheese and lettuce. A tiny tub of chickpeas or carrots, cucumber slices and grape tomatoes. A water bottle, one juice box (100 per cent juice only) or drinkable yogurt, a compromise snack – fruit chews, granola bars (with peanut-free labels), pretzels, crackers.
Naturally, this menu changes depending on my daughter’s whims and my energy level – I’m a failure in the hot food-into-a-thermos department. But putting together a decent school lunch is not taxing.
And, obviously, there’s no one right way to do it. You must take into account your budget, time constraints, child’s preferences and lunchroom realities. It’s always interesting, though, to hear about schools that are on the right track.
At Premier Elite Athletes’ Collegiate in Downsview Park, managing director Neil Doctorow enlisted a catering company to devise a healthy menu. Students peruse a new, two-page menu each week and select what they want for each day of the following week. The food is delivered each morning in individually labelled brown bags and refrigerated until needed. The lunchroom has multiple microwaves. Students can eat in class, too.
The menu is full of fruit, bagels, salads, sandwiches, wraps, pasta, stews and hot entrées. Most of the bread and pasta is whole wheat. There are veggies aplenty and protein is essential. There are just three desserts – fresh fruit salad, oatmeal raisin cookies and carrot cake. There’s no fried food. Prices are roughly $1.10 to $5.50 per item.
“We know people are going to eat what they eat when they go home,” allows Doctorow, “but while they’re here they’re going to learn how to make proper food choices.”
Doctorow, a kinesiologist, has taught in public schools in Toronto, Scarborough, Markham and Unionville. He grimaces at the memory of one grade schooler whose usual lunch was unwrapped cold cuts and a 2-litre bottle of Coke tossed into a plastic shopping bag.
“That drove me nuts,” he remembers. “I used to buy him lunch.”
Doctorow has a particular disgust for school cafeterias. He remembers one that served little more than pizza, beef patties and a daily special that was “some insane, high-fat concoction.”
So does lunch really have an impact on students? Doctorow describes teaching morning classes as a pleasure, but says afternoons can be a nightmare because of caffeinated, sugar-fuelled kids and the inevitable 2 o’clock crash.
That’s not to say enforcing healthy eating is a cinch anywhere, even at an athletic school. In the past, PEAC students have sneaked out for hot dogs and pizza, and still brazenly try to eat junk food in class. (It’s tossed in the garbage.)
So far, the students seem happy with the flavourful, catered meals.
“You can tell they really want us to be healthy here,” reports hockey player Harrison Newlands, 16.
And, unlike most schools and offices, the pressure is on (at least among staff) to eat even healthier.
Doctorow and I are sampling a couple of catered meals when two teachers wander into the lunchroom – one munching on a peach, the other eating a tub of salad.
“The best thing you can do is surround yourself with people who eat properly,” says Doctorow.
A terribly important article that everyone should read
We all know this to be true. But the actual number are still staggering in their magnitude.
http://www.thestar.com/article/260539
Crouching tiger, hidden time bomb
September 26, 2007
Jennifer Wells
Tonight on Dirty Sexy Money the Darling family, or “the absurdly wealthy Darlings of New York,” joins the pantheon of obscenely rich television dynasties. (See the Carringtons, the Ewings, etc.)
Every economic era demands its own dysfunctional, über-rich clan, sometimes with shoulder pads, sometimes without.
When asked about the series, the actress Jill Clayburgh, who plays matriarch Letitia Darling, said Dirty Sexy evokes the sense that “money is … endless.”
It may appear that way to those who live among the top 1 per cent of Canadians, whose average family income increased by 80 per cent over a 22-year period to $684,000. Or the top 0.01 per cent, whose individual average income vaulted to $5.9 million in 2004 from $2.9 million in 1982. (Families in the top income group saw average income explode to $8.4 million from $3.7 million.)
The numbers, courtesy of Statistics Canada, confirm that the rich are getting richer. This we all anecdotally knew to be true, though the quantum of the richness is bracing.
The more arresting numbers, documented in StatsCan’s report this week on high-income Canadians, are buried in the middle band of income earners.
In the 60th to 80th percentile, for example, the average individual income was $40,000 in 1982. The average in 2004? $40,000, after a dip to $37,000 in 1992.
The same stagnation is true of individuals in the 20th to 40th percentile: $14,000 then; $14,000 today. And the 40th to 60th percentile: $25,000 then; $25,000 today. (All numbers are adjusted for inflation.)
Of these three groupings, the only income pop, and it was a relatively modest one, was felt by families in the 60th to 80th percentile, which saw family incomes rise to $70,000 from $63,000.
That’s grim stuff.
Grimmer still when one considers that both points of comparison – 1982 and 1992 – were recessionary periods. “What’s stunning,” says Armine Yalnizyan, an economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, “is that we basically crawled back up to recessionary levels in 2004.”
In May, Yalnizyan released Ontario’s Growing Gap: Time for Leadership. The study examined the incomes of Ontario families raising children under 18.
In her foreword to that report, Yalnizyan said this: “Fully 40 per cent of Ontario’s families have seen almost no income gains or, worse, actual income losses compared to their predecessors 30 years ago. These kinds of trends are expected during recessionary periods, but this is occurring during one of Ontario’s most sustained periods of economic expansion.”
The labour market has done its bit, says Yalnizyan. Workers are better educated and are working longer hours. “They’ve followed the playbook to a T,” she says of all those post-recessionary lessons in belt tightening. Only to have to stare at flat incomes and wonder, is this as good as it gets?
The truth is, the story may be worse than it appears.
The next step in Yalnizyan’s research is to dig deeper into the debt side of the equation. As the “rich” have set the price pacing in the housing market and put the squeeze on affordability, so too have we turned from a nation of savers to what Yalnizyan calls nail biters. “You start to see assets stripped by a generation of income earners as they mortgage and remortgage their homes in order to live the life they want to live or the life they need to live but which their incomes don’t support,” she says.
Here’s a fast fact: lines of credit exploded to $68 billion in 2005, from $29 billion six years earlier.
Yalnizyan calls consumer debt the crouching tiger in the economic woods.
That’s a catchy line, one you’re not likely to hear the Darlings fretting over.
Priorities for Ontario – Greens out front at 81%
http://www.prioritiesforontario.ca/
“In April 2007, the Priorities for Ontario Coalition released a detailed set
of policy recommendations aimed at addressing critical environmental issues
like water and air quality, clean energy, climate stability, forest
protection, toxic and waste reduction and curbing urban sprawl. We are now
releasing a summary of the positions of the four main parties on these
priorities to help voters make an informed decision on Oct. 10th.”
The Green Party got a “yes” on 81% of the analysis, next is NDP at 62%, Liberal 35% PCs
12%.
One of the most amazing things I’ve ever read
This really explains a lot about how so many people argue.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-11/beliefs.html
Why Bad Beliefs Don’t Die
Because beliefs are designed to enhance our ability to survive, they are biologically designed to be strongly resistant to change. To change beliefs, skeptics must address the brain’s “survival” issues of meanings and implications in addition to discussing their data. Gregory W. Lester
Because a basic tenet of both skeptical thinking and scientific inquiry is that beliefs can be wrong, it is often confusing and irritating to scientists and skeptics that so many people’s beliefs do not change in the face of disconfirming evidence. How, we wonder, are people able to hold beliefs that contradict the data?In other words, how does truthiness work?
This puzzlement can produce an unfortunate tendency on the part of skeptical thinkers to demean and belittle people whose beliefs don’t change in response to evidence. They can be seen as inferior, stupid, or crazy. This attitude is born of skeptics’ failure to understand the biological purpose of beliefs and the neurological necessity for them to be resilient and stubbornly resistant to change. The truth is that for all their rigorous thinking, many skeptics do not have a clear or rational understanding of what beliefs are and why even faulty ones don’t die easily. Understanding the biological purpose of beliefs can help skeptics to be far more effective in challenging irrational beliefs and communicating scientific conclusions.
Biology and Survival
Our brain’s primary purpose is to keep us alive. It certainly does more than that, but survival is always its fundamental purpose and always comes first. If we are injured to the point where our bodies only have enough energy to support consciousness or a heartbeat but not both, the brain has no problem choosing-it puts us into a coma (survival before consciousness), rather than an alert death-spiral (consciousness before survival). Because every brain activity serves a fundamental survival purpose, the only way to accurately understand any brain function is to examine its value as a tool for survival. Even the difficulty of successfully treating such behavioral disorders as obesity and addiction can only be understood by examining their relationship to survival. Any reduction in caloric intake or in the availability of a substance to which an individual is addicted is always perceived by the brain as a threat to survival. As a result the brain powerfully defends the overeating or the substance abuse, producing the familiar lying, sneaking, denying, rationalizing, and justifying commonly exhibited by individuals suffering from such disorders.
Senses and Beliefs
One of the brain’s primary tools for ensuring survival is our senses. Obviously, we must be able to accurately perceive danger in order to take action designed to keep us safe. In order to survive we need to be able to see the lion charging us as we emerge from our cave or hear the intruder breaking into our house in the middle of the night. Senses alone, however, are inadequate as effective detectors of danger because they are severely limited in both range and scope. We can have direct sensory contact with only a small portion of the world at any one time. The brain considers this to be a significant problem because even normal, everyday living requires that we constantly move in and out of the range of our perceptions of the world as it is right now. Entering into territory we have not previously seen or heard puts us in the dangerous position of having no advance warning of potential dangers. If I walk into an unfamiliar building in a dangerous part of town my survival probabilities diminish because I have no way of knowing whether the roof is ready to collapse or a gunman is standing inside the doorway.
Enter beliefs. “Belief” is the name we give to the survival tool of the brain that is designed to augment and enhance the danger-identification function of our senses. Beliefs extend the range of our senses so that we can better detect danger and thus improve our chances of survival as we move into and out of unfamiliar territory. Beliefs, in essence, serve as our brain’s “long-range danger detectors.”
Functionally, our brains treat beliefs as internal “maps” of those parts of the world with which we do not have immediate sensory contact. As I sit in my living room I cannot see my car. Although I parked it in my driveway some time ago, using only immediate sensory data I do not know if it is still there. As a result, at this moment sensory data is of very little use to me regarding my car. In order to find my car with any degree of efficiency my brain must ignore the current sensory data (which, if relied on in a strictly literal sense, not only fails to help me in locating my car but actually indicates that it no longer exists) and turn instead to its internal map of the location of my car. This is my belief that my car is still in my driveway where I left it. By referring to my belief rather than to sensory data, my brain can “know” something about the world with which I have no immediate sensory contact. This “extends” my brain’s knowledge of and contact with the world.
The ability of belief to extend contact with the world beyond the range of our immediate senses substantially improves our ability to survive. A caveman has a much greater ability to stay alive if he is able to maintain a belief that dangers exist in the jungle even when his sensory data indicate no immediate threat. A police officer will be substantially more safe if he or she can continue to believe that someone stopped for a traffic violation could be an armed psychopath with an impulse to kill even though they present a seemingly innocuous appearance.
Beyond the Sensory
Because beliefs do not require immediate sensory data to be able to feed valuable survival information to the brain, they have the additional survival function of providing information about the realm of life that does not deal directly with sensory entities. This is the area of abstractions and principles that involves such things as “reasons,” “causes,” and “meanings.” I cannot hear or see the “reason” called a “low pressure zone” that makes a thunderstorm rain on my parade, so my ability to believe that low pressure is the reason assists me. If I were to rely strictly on my senses to determine the cause of the storm I could not tell why it occurred. For all I know it was dragged in by invisible flying gremlins that I need to shoot with my shotgun if I want to clear away the clouds. Therefore my brain’s reliance on my “belief” in the reason called “low pressure,” rather than on sensory data (or, as in the case of my car, my lack of it) assists in my survival: I avoid an experience of incarceration with myriad dangerous characters following my arrest for shooting into the air at those pesky little gremlins.
The Resilience of Beliefs
Because senses and beliefs are both tools for survival and have evolved to augment one another, our brain considers them to be separate but equally important purveyors of survival information. The loss of either one endangers us. Without our senses we could not know about the world within our perceptual realm. Without our beliefs we could not know about the world outside our senses or about meanings, reasons, or causes. This means that beliefs are designed to operate independent of sensory data. In fact, the whole survival value of beliefs is based on their ability to persist in the face of contradictory evidence. Beliefs are not supposed to change easily or simply in response to disconfirming evidence. If they did, they would be virtually useless as tools for survival. Our caveman would not last long if his belief in potential dangers in the jungle evaporated every time his sensory information told him there was no immediate threat. A police officer unable to believe in the possibility of a killer lurking behind a harmless appearance could easily get hurt or killed.
As far as our brain is concerned, there is absolutely no need for data and belief to agree. They have each evolved to augment and supplement one another by contacting different sections of the world. They are designed to be able to disagree. This is why scientists can believe in God and people who are generally quite reasonable and rational can believe in things for which there is no credible data such as flying saucers, telepathy, and psychokinesis.
When data and belief come into conflict, the brain does not automatically give preference to data. This is why beliefs-even bad beliefs, irrational beliefs, silly beliefs, or crazy beliefs-often don’t die in the face of contradictory evidence. The brain doesn’t care whether or not the belief matches the data. It cares whether the belief is helpful for survival. Period. So while the scientific, rational part of our brains may think that data should supercede contradictory beliefs, on a more fundamental level of importance our brain has no such bias. It is extremely reticent to jettison its beliefs. Like an old soldier with an old gun who does not quite trust that the war is really over, the brain often refuses to surrender its weapon even though the data say it should.
“Inconsequential” Beliefs
Even beliefs that do not seem clearly or directly connected to survival (such as our caveman’s ability to believe in potential dangers) are still closely connected to survival. This is because beliefs do not occur individually or in a vacuum. They are related to one another in a tightly interlocking system that creates the brain’s fundamental view of the nature of the world. It is this system that the brain relies on in order to experience consistency, control, cohesion, and safety in the world. It must maintain this system intact in order to feel that survival is being successfully accomplished. This means that even seemingly small, inconsequential beliefs can be as integral to the brain’s experience of survival as are beliefs that are “obviously” connected to survival. Thus, trying to change any belief, no matter how small or silly it may seem, can produce ripple effects through the entire system and ultimately threaten the brain’s experience of survival. This is why people are so often driven to defend even seemingly small or tangential beliefs. A creationist cannot tolerate believing in the accuracy of data indicating the reality of evolution not because of the accuracy or inaccuracy of the data itself, but because changing even one belief related to matters of the Bible and the nature of creation will crack an entire system of belief, a fundamental worldview and, ultimately, their brain’s experience of survival.
Implications for Skeptics
Skeptical thinkers must realize that because of the survival value of beliefs, disconfirming evidence will rarely, if ever, be sufficient to change beliefs, even in “otherwise intelligent” people. In order to effectively change beliefs skeptics must attend to their survival value, not just their data-accuracy value. This involves several elements. First, skeptics must not expect beliefs to change simply as the result of data or assuming that people are stupid because their beliefs don’t change. They must avoid becoming critical or demeaning in response to the resilience of beliefs. People are not necessarily idiots just because their beliefs don’t yield to new information. Data is always necessary, but it is rarely sufficient.
Second, skeptics must learn to always discuss not just the specific topic addressed by the data, but also the implications that changing the related beliefs will have for the fundamental worldview and belief system of the affected individuals. Unfortunately, addressing belief systems is a much more complicated and daunting task than simply presenting contradictory evidence. Skeptics must discuss the meaning of their data in the face of the brain’s need to maintain its belief system in order to maintain a sense of wholeness, consistency, and control in life. Skeptics must become adept at discussing issues of fundamental philosophies and the existential anxiety that is stirred up any time beliefs are challenged. The task is every bit as much philosophical and psychological as it is scientific and data-based.
Third, and perhaps most important, skeptics must always appreciate how hard it is for people to have their beliefs challenged. It is, quite literally, a threat to their brain’s sense of survival. It is entirely normal for people to be defensive in such situations. The brain feels it is fighting for its life. It is unfortunate that this can produce behavior that is provocative, hostile, and even vicious, but it is understandable as well.
The lesson for skeptics is to understand that people are generally not intending to be mean, contrary, harsh, or stupid when they are challenged. It’s a fight for survival. The only effective way to deal with this type of defensiveness is to de-escalate the fighting rather than inflame it. Becoming sarcastic or demeaning simply gives the other person’s defenses a foothold to engage in a tit-for-tat exchange that justifies their feelings of being threatened (“Of course we fight the skeptics-look what uncaring, hostile jerks they are!”) rather than a continued focus on the truth.
Skeptics will only win the war for rational beliefs by continuing, even in the face of defensive responses from others, to use behavior that is unfailingly dignified and tactful and that communicates respect and wisdom. For the data to speak loudly, skeptics must always refrain from screaming.
Finally, it should be comforting to all skeptics to remember that the truly amazing part of all of this is not that so few beliefs change or that people can be so irrational, but that anyone’s beliefs ever change at all. Skeptics’ ability to alter their own beliefs in response to data is a true gift; a unique, powerful, and precious ability. It is genuinely a “higher brain function” in that it goes against some of the most natural and fundamental biological urges. Skeptics must appreciate the power and, truly, the dangerousness that this ability bestows upon them. They have in their possession a skill that can be frightening, life-changing, and capable of inducing pain. In turning this ability on others it should be used carefully and wisely. Challenging beliefs must always be done with care and compassion.
Skeptics must remember to always keep their eye on the goal. They must see the long view. They must attempt to win the war for rational beliefs, not to engage in a fight to the death over any one particular battle with any one particular individual or any one particular belief. Not only must skeptics’ methods and data be clean, direct, and unbiased, their demeanor and behavior must be as well.
Related Information
- Search CSICOP: belief*
About the Author
Gregory W. Lester, Ph.D. is a psychologist on the graduate faculty of the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and in private practice in Houston and in Denver, Colorado. Address correspondence to: Gregory W. Lester, Ph.D., 111 Harrison St., Suite 1, Denver, Colorado 80206.
A fantastic evaluation from the Association of Ontario Health Centers
I don’t know what I love more; their conclusion, or their critical evaluation of party responses and ability to cut through the spin. I wish everyone could read and hear politicians’ responses like this.
http://www.aohc.org/aohc/index.aspx?ArticleID=249&lang=en-CA
ONTARIO ELECTION 2007 – What Ontario’s political parties are saying about the Second Stage of Medicare
In August 2007, AOHC issued a 20-point “call to action” to Ontario’s political parties. Building the Second Stage of Medicare: A Call to Action for Ontario’s Political Parties contains 20 priority action steps that the AOHC believes must be taken to improve health and health care in Ontario.
Here are the parties’ detailed responses. Below, a brief comparative analysis is provided.
Ontario Liberal Party — Ontario PC Party — Ontario NDP — Ontario Green Party
AOHC BRIEF ANALYSIS OF PARTY RESPONSES
Green Party fully commits to Second Stage of Medicare action plan; Clearer answers needed from other major parties
The good news: The Ontario Green Party has committed to all 20 action steps that AOHC identified in the action plan to speed up completion of the Second Stage of Medicare.
The bad news: In general, the answers received from other major parties were much less clear. So during the next few weeks of the election campaign we need Ontarians who believe in the benefits of our action plan to question politicians from these parties much more closely.
When candidates come to your door, appear on election call-in shows, or attend all-candidates meetings, ask them for clearer answers.
Liberals and NDP to improve dental care
Except for the Green Party (which said “yes” to all 20 action steps), only one action step – concerning dental care -secured significant commitments from other major parties. AOHC called for publicly-funded dental coverage for all Ontarians not covered by private dental insurance, and publicly-funded oral health care to be provided at all of the province’s CHCs and AHACs. Liberals and NDP both stopped short of publicly funded coverage for all Ontarians. But both parties did commit to funding dental care, with NDP committing to dental care in CHCs.
Who said what on four key issues?
To our other questions AOHC received very general replies from the Liberal, NDP and Progressive Conservative Parties – or no answer at all. Here’s a list of who said what on four of AOHC’s key calls to action.
1. To ensure that every Ontarian who needs access to CHCs and AHACs can secure it, complete a network throughout the province.
*
The Green Party said “yes” and committed to completing a provincial network, beginning with the establishment of 20 new CHCs and AHACs per year for the next four years;
*
The New Democratic Party did use the word “increase” with respect to the number of Community Health Centres and AHACs, but offered no further details. Their reply said: “Community Health Centres and Aboriginal Health Access Centres have a proven track record of providing excellent health care, health promotion and community development in a very cost-effective manner. That’s why our party supports increasing the number of CHCs and AHACS to provide better health care access across the province.”
*
The Liberal Party said that when the recent expansion of CHCs they initiated in their first mandate is complete they will, “in partnerships with the LHINs review to see if there are areas of additional need across the province.”
*
Despite our specific question about CHCs and AHACs, the letter we received from the Progressive Conservative Party made no mention of either kind of Centre. We also looked in PC party platform and found no mention there either.
2. Improve health care for Aboriginal populations, and eliminate the second class status of Aboriginal Health Access Centres (AHACs) by providing $14.6 million in new annualized funding to Ontario’s ten AHACs.
* The Green Party answered with a simple “yes”.
* As noted above, AHACs received no mention in the letter we received from the Progressive Conservative Party.
* The Liberal Party noted that in their first term they allocated $1 million to ensure that AHAC physicians and nurse practitioners are treated equitably. To make further progress, they said “we will review the funding of AHACs.”
* The NDP said “any approach to population health should address these disparities” but offered no specific detail.
3. Improve health care for newly-arrived immigrants by eliminating the 3-month wait period for OHIP that is currently imposed:
* The Green Party answered with another simple “yes”.
* The Liberal Party said: “Since coming to office, we have taken some steps to rethink this policy as seen in our commitment to waive the waiting period for military families. We will review this policy during our second term.”
* The NDP offered no answer to our question.
* The Progressive Conservative Party also offered no answer to our question.
4. To improve Ontarians’ access to health care, remove barriers that prevent Nurse Practitioners from practicing what they are trained and licensed to do.
*
Again, the Green Party answered by saying “yes” and agreed to implement the recommendations of the Nurse Practitioner Taskforce.
*
The Liberal Party said they are waiting for recommendations from the Health Professions Regulatory Advisory Committee.
*
In their party platform, the Progressive Conservative Party say they will allow health practitioners to practice to full scope of practice but in their letter to us the party made no mention of how this would be applied to Nurse Practitioners.
*
NDP say they “support expanded roles and fair compensation for health professionals like Nurse Practitioners” but offered no further detail.
An excellent editorial on today’s Ottawa Citizen
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/views/story.html?id=90914384-8d99-4284-901f-f3331ba46011&k=57768
Simply an amazing article, and it is a shame that Frank de Jong is only mentioned once, since Mr. Mintz’s recomendations are exactly in line with GPO tax-shifting proposals.
Green Mintz
| The Ottawa Citizen |
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Shifting Canadian taxes to encourage growth and entrepreneurship, while discouraging pollution, is an idea so obviously overdue that any politician who doesn’t propose it should have to explain why.
It’s no surprise that some business-oriented environmentalists have been pursuing this idea, but now we find the likes of eminent management professor Jack Mintz, the former president of Toronto’s C.D. Howe Institute, on board. We all should be arguing about how we promote green industry, not whether we should.
In a meeting with the Citizen’s editorial board last week, Ontario Green Party leader Frank de Jong used an inviting slogan: “Tax what you burn, not what you earn.” He makes a legitimate complaint that companies and individuals get to use finite natural resources — from gravel to water to clean air to land — practically for free, while governments tax away the proceeds of entrepreneurship and risk and labour. It should be the other way around, he says, to promote the efficient use of resources and let people whose work makes money keep more of the profits.
Mr. Mintz, a taxation professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, comes at the problem from the other direction, arguing that Canada’s personal and corporate tax rates are too high and are harming investment and economic growth. Canada’s effective tax on capital is 30.9 per cent, Mr. Mintz found, while the average in 80 other industrialized countries he looked at was only 20.6 per cent. If you’re making a new business investment, he found, there are 69 other countries that will tax you less to do it. Personal taxes are too high, too, particularly in the lowest bracket, hurting the efforts of low-income earners to pull themselves out of working poverty and into financial comfort.
A bunch of regular old tax cuts would be OK with the C.D. Howe Institute, but Mr. Mintz recognizes the need to replace at least some of the lost revenue, and so he advocates a sensible environmental-damage tax to do it. Chief among them is a tax on fuels — everything from gasoline to coal to nuclear — that would vary according to the amount of pollution each generates, perhaps including its contribution to climate change.
There is an important debate yet to be had comparing taxes on carbon emissions versus emissions-trading schemes, as a way of fighting climate change. Both have merits, and Mr. Mintz advances all the arguments for a carbon tax, including that everyone would pay it (not just big emitters) and that what Canadians would pay to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would be predictable rather than varying over time. Certainly, making a carbon tax revenue-neutral for the governments charging it by cutting other taxes to compensate makes the idea more palatable than a carbon tax on its own.
Regardless of the mechanism, it’s clear that green tax-shifting is an important means of transforming Canada’s economy to make it both more sustainable and more competitive internationally. Serious politicians who want Canadians’ votes in the next election should have their ideas and their research ready.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
Amen, sister
http://www.thestar.com/article/260061
Real issues are being ignored
September 25, 2007
School funding fight escalatesSept. 24
I am amazed and horrified that the people of Ontario have allowed the major political parties to sabotage the true election issues by focusing on faith-based school funding.Hungry children can’t learn. Families living in unsafe and substandard housing can’t provide a secure environment to foster learning. People earning the minimum wage or less can’t provide the necessities of life for their families. The poor who live on the streets without basic health care suffer from myriad health problems. Without clean air and water, Ontario’s environment will be unsustainable. Without a supply of knowledge workers, our economy is in jeopardy.
Poverty, the economy and the environment are the main election issues. Parties need to address them and share their policies with the electorate so that we can make an informed choice on Oct. 10.
Maureen Gmitrowicz, Brooklin, Ont.
Two great letters to the Star on Tory’s nuclear plan
http://www.thestar.com/article/260065
Nuclear is not the answer
September 25, 2007
Tory vows to fast-track nuke plantsProgressive Conservative Leader John Tory’s vow to fast-track the building of new nuclear plants shows that the only difference between Tory and Premier Dalton McGuinty on nuclear power is posturing. Tory is upfront about his love of expensive nuclear power. McGuinty’s Liberals talk about their commitment to green energy, but they curiously fail to mention their $40 billion commitment to build 14,000 megawatts of nuclear power – arguably the biggest nuclear construction program in the world – in their policy platform.Tory publicly says he will streamline the approvals process for new nuclear plants, while McGuinty already quietly rewrote Ontario’s environmental protection law to exempt his nuclear electricity plan from an environmental assessment. Unfortunately, all of this posturing about who can build nuclear plants faster comes at the expense of discussing clean-energy options that can keep the lights on and lower greenhouse gas emissions.Even after circumventing our environmental protection law, it takes 10 to 15 years to build a nuclear station, making it too little, far too late.
The solution? Switch from nuclear and coal mega-projects to a modern portfolio of options that are quick to deploy: conservation, renewables and local, decentralized generation. We have the technology and renewable-energy potential to let our coal and nuclear stations go the way of the dinosaurs.
Shawn-Patrick Stensil, Greenpeace Canada, Torontohttp://www.thestar.com/article/260054
Fast-tracking plants sounds ominous
September 25, 2007
Tory vows to fast-track nuke plants
John Tory’s promise to fast-track nuclear plants is unacceptable in its present form. The term “fast-track” suggests cutting corners. Tory wants “to streamline or eliminate duplicative regulatory processes.” Is the environmental assessment one of those? I hope not.While I understand his desire to solve our electricity problems with more plants in shorter time frames, he must state clearly how he would achieve this rapid expansion. Electricity supply is important to us, but our health could be at risk if the assessment is eliminated.
Cyril A. Morong, Toronto
