Sometimes the media can be just absolutely infuriating
They endorse the Green Party position, but refuse to mention the Green Party, so since they have limited themselves to only pick between big red or big blue, they go with big red, even though they admit it is discriminatory.
This is just stupid, and is providing disinformation to the public. The Star should be ashamed of themselves.
http://www.thestar.com/article/261741
A better plan for public schools
September 29, 2007
Over the past 12 years, Ontario Progressive Conservatives under the leadership of Mike Harris, Ernie Eves and John Tory have proven to be no huge fans of public education in this province.
Under former premier Harris, and to a lesser extent under Eves, the Conservatives fought endless battles with public schools by shortchanging them of money, waging war on teachers, imposing disruptive new academic programs and encouraging private schools.
Now, John Tory, in his first election as Conservative leader, has plunged Ontario into a divisive debate over public education by promising to extend government funding to all faith-based schools in the province, not just Roman Catholic schools.
Tory has framed his proposal, which might cost as much as $500 million, as a matter of fairness. How, he asks, can Jewish, Muslim, evangelical Christian and other religious schools be denied public support that Catholic schools have received since Confederation?
In one sense, he’s right. Ontario’s public education system, which funds only secular and Catholic schools, is unfair.
But it would be even more unfair to inflict additional damage on our public schools by draining money and resources away from them just as they are getting back on their feet after the years of cuts and turmoil that started in the 1990s under Harris. In effect, Tory’s push to address the historic inequity would help the estimated 53,000 students who have chosen to attend private religious schools only at the expense of the 2.1 million students in Ontario’s publicly funded schools.
And Ontario’s increasingly diverse society would not be well served in the long run by encouraging children to go to school only with others who share their own religious beliefs.
That’s why Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty and NDP Leader Howard Hampton are right to shoot down Tory’s proposal. Both convincingly argue Ontario should focus on strengthening the current public education system rather than spreading its resources even thinner by extending funding to non-Catholic religious schools.
Government funding of Catholic schools has its roots in a historical compromise. Under the terms of Confederation in 1867, educational rights of Roman Catholics in Ontario and Protestants in Quebec were given constitutional protection in the British North America Act.
For years, though, the Ontario government cut off funding for Catholic schools after Grade 10, maintaining its constitutional responsibilities applied only to earlier grades. In June 1984, then Conservative premier Bill Davis announced his intention to extend full funding to all grades, a move that upset many long-time Tory voters.
Since then, other religious groups have found support in a 1985 provincial commission that recommended independent schools receive some public funding under certain conditions, although the government quickly shelved that report. In 1999, the UN Human Rights Committee upheld a complaint that Canada was violating human rights by allowing Ontario to fund only Roman Catholic schools.
Ontario is the only province that fully funds Catholic schools and gives no money to other faith-based schools. Other provinces fall generally into two categories: those that fund no faith-based schools at all, and those that give partial or full funding to faith-based schools.
As imperfect as Ontario’s current public system is, it meets the needs of the vast majority of children, whatever their faith or cultural background. However, Tory’s proposal does highlight a critical issue Ontario will have to grapple with sooner or later.
Our demographics have changed dramatically since the 1867 Confederation compromise that guaranteed publicly funded education for Ontario’s Catholic minority. In the coming years, as other religious minorities in Ontario gain numbers and Catholics represent a smaller percentage of the population, the argument in favour of continued funding of Catholic schools will lose more and more relevancy.
But the path Tory has suggested to address this issue is wrong.
Instead, this province needs to start a process that will eventually eliminate funding for all faith-based schools, including Catholic schools, in favour of investing its limited resources in a single secular school system. In fact, whichever party forms the government on Oct. 10 should strike a blue-ribbon commission to start this inevitable, if politically sensitive, discussion with the people of Ontario.
Changing the system, when the times comes, won’t be easy.
First, taking away long-held rights is harder than granting them in the first place. It requires a constitutional amendment, which both Newfoundland and Quebec got in the 1990s. It needs the approval of the Ontario Legislature, and the authorization of the House of Commons and the Senate. Approval of other provinces is not required.
Second, any government plan that is developed must phase out funding for Catholic schools in a way that does not disrupt the current system nor the lives of the nearly 625,000 students now in the publicly funded Catholic schools.
Third, on a practical level, few politicians want to risk angering the 35 per cent of Ontarians who are Catholic by suggesting such a proposal.
For all these reasons, Ontario is not yet ready to revisit the historical deal on which it was founded – either by extending funding to all faith-based schools, or by eliminating it for every religious school.
For now, our current system, as flawed as it is, is the best alternative, given that after years of neglect by Conservative governments, we need a period of stability so the next government can build on McGuinty’s record since 2003 of rebuilding the public system.
But as Ontario becomes increasingly diverse, the day is coming when the status quo will no longer be workable. At that time, Ontarians should be ready with a single secular public education system that will welcome all students, whatever their beliefs, and will play its critical role in helping Ontario become a province known for understanding, cohesiveness, inclusiveness – and true fairness.
More shocking news from Bush and Harper
http://www.thestar.com/article/261743
Bush’s green plan ‘disappointing’
Lacks any new domestic initiatives to curb greenhouse gases, environmentalists say
September 29, 2007
Tim Harper
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON–U.S. President George W. Bush has called for an international fund to develop technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions, part of a White House bid to reshape the global environmental debate following the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol.
Bush, however, offered no new domestic initiatives in a speech to the world’s biggest polluters meeting here and appears to have only further isolated his government from the approach favoured by most of the rest of the world.
Bush will not endorse mandatory emission cuts and his speech yesterday was panned by many European delegates, environmentalists and even onetime allies.
“Our guiding principle is clear,” Bush said. “We must lead the world to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and we must do it in a way that does not undermine economic growth or prevent nations from delivering greater prosperity for their people.”
That has essentially been the Bush policy since he decided early in his first term that he would not commit the U.S. to the United Nations-brokered Kyoto Protocol.
“I’m interested in … effective policies,” said Bush, who used most of his speech to recite a litany of existing U.S. policies. “I want to get the job done. We’ve identified a problem, let’s go solve it together.”
Environment Minister John Baird, who represented Canada at the two-day meeting of major polluters, said he sensed a new focus and urgency to the matter on the part of a Bush administration that has been roundly accused of dragging its feet on the issue. “Our emissions are up 33 per cent above Kyoto levels and the U.S. is only up 18 per cent, so I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere by lecturing or passing judgment,” he said.
Most thought Bush’s late conversion to the climate-change debate undermined any message he sought to deliver.
Samuel Thernstrom, the communications director at the White House council on environmental quality during the first Bush term, said the president missed a chance to offer a bold new initiative.
“You were left looking for a little more here, something that would make other countries sit up and take notice and say something is happening here,” said Thernstrom, now a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“He has disappointed before. I can’t say he hasn’t done it again.”
Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said Bush had an opportunity here to take some decisive action, but his lack of action had turned it into a “sideshow.”
“Despite a few hopeful signs that he had changed his mind, the president stuck with the shrinking group of climate change dead-enders who are still fighting against a new, binding treaty.”
Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley), the NDP environment critic, was meeting with congressional leaders while Baird was at the U.S. meeting and he said he came away even more convinced that the Bush conference was merely an attempt by the U.S. president to appear to be doing something.
“One can be forgiven for being cynical about this,” he said. “Why Stephen Harper is giving cover to a discredited administration is beyond me. He is using Canada’s good name to try to lend some legitimacy to a process which has none.”
Daniel Weiss, director of climate strategy for the liberal Centre for American Progress, said Bush was proposing nothing but a grab bag of small strategies dependent on waving “a magic technology wand.”
A must read on what’s really going on with Ontario power generation
This is the article that Josie was writing about in the previous posts.
http://www.thestar.com/article/260940
Parties unplug debate on privatized power system
September 27, 2007
Paul Kahnert
There has been no debate about public ownership and control of Ontario’s electricity system during the current election campaign. There should be. The 20-year, $60-billion Liberal power plan announced Aug. 30 costs more than all the new spending on health care and education combined.
The Ontario Electricity Coalition, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union and CUPE National stopped the sale of Hydro One in court in 2002. Then opposition leader Dalton McGuinty went on the record on Sept. 5, 2003, promising public power and an end to deregulation. Most Ontarians thought the issue of electricity privatization had gone away.
Far from it.
Throughout most of Ontario’s history, the electricity system has been almost entirely publicly owned, controlled and regulated. But cost overruns at Ontario Hydro’s nuclear power stations – actually no worse than on privately-owned nuclear power elsewhere – opened the door for the Harris Conservatives to ram through a plan to deregulate and privatize Ontario’s power system.
When the Conservatives introduced legislation for a “competitive electricity market” in November 1998, there was a huge public relations campaign promising lower rates. At the time, the Ontario Electricity Coalition asked: “How can private, deregulated electricity be cheaper when you add in profits to generators, profits to distributors, profits to retailers, dividends to investors and commissions to commodities brokers?” The answer, of course, is that it’s impossible.
The promise of lower rates in a deregulated electricity market proved to be a fraud all around the world. Electricity markets tripled rates in Alberta; in Montana they went up five times; in California, 10 times, and here in Ontario the retail market had to be closed by Ernie Eves in just six months because of outrage over skyrocketing rates.
After the 2003 election, the Liberals created the Ontario Power Authority and put Jan Carr in as CEO, a well-known proponent of electricity deregulation. Carr is on record as saying, “The OPA is only a transitional entity until a mature, competitive, electricity market can be installed.”
In a speech to the Empire Club on Aug. 9, 2004, Energy Minister Dwight Duncan declared, “All new generation will be private.”
Duncan’s declaration is significant because most of the public generating system has to be replaced over the next 20 years. That means creeping privatization as public generation is replaced with private. Legislation also forbids publicly owned Ontario Power Generation Corp. from generating green power such as wind and solar, which means that private green power will end up helping to dismantle the public power system.
Tucked inside the 4,000-page Integrated Power System Plan unveiled Aug. 30 are proposals that will increase private electricity generation and continue Ontario’s experiment with electricity deregulation.
The plan calls for the “evolution of Ontario’s electricity sector towards a workably competitive market …” that “will lead to increased competition among suppliers and lower costs.”
This is exactly the same promise made by the Harris Conservatives, that a competitive electricity market will lead to lower prices.
The Ontario Electricity Coalition has good reason to call the Liberal power plan privatization and deregulation by “stealth.”
Private producers are building new natural gas plants. So-called “smart meters” have been installed but not yet turned on. Small and medium businesses are going to get creamed when they are activated: Power will go from 5.5 cents a kw/h to 9.3 cents a kw/h, a 70 per cent increase during the 10 hours a day when they need it most.
How many people know that, after the election, electricity market rate protection for cash-strapped universities, schools, hospitals and municipalities will be eliminated?
How many people know that the Liberals have failed to protect our municipal electrical utilities from the impact of Conservative legislation to force them into debt and eventual privatization?
Ontario with its industrial base has much to fear from electricity deregulation. A volatile, deregulated electricity market is the last thing industry needs.
The debate on deregulated electricity markets in the U.S. is over. Twenty-five states are in the process of closing electricity markets and re-regulating rates.
Most of the pressure to close U.S. electricity markets came from the business community after rates skyrocketed. Manitoba and Quebec don’t have deregulated electricity markets, why do we?
Given the worldwide failures of electricity deregulation and privatization, it’s amazing that the Liberals and Conservatives haven’t changed their electricity policy one bit. Their policies commit us to a deregulated electricity market and a very expensive private power future. Public ownership, control and regulation of electricity are very important both to the economy and now more than ever to the environment. We can’t leave these critical decisions to a profit driven market.
The public needs real debate on this issue during the election.
This should scare the hell out of you
Cell phones are the new cigarettes.
Just five minutes of exposure to mobile phone radio wave emissions can trigger cellular changes that occur during cancer development, according to new research.
Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, found that mobile phone signals induced the production of natural chemicals that stimulate cell division and growth – central to the growth of tumors — even at very low power levels.
Until now, the mainstream scientific assumption has been that electromagnetic radiation could only pose a health hazard as a result of thermal heating. However, this may not necessarily be the case.
According to Professor Rony Seger of the Weizmann Institute, “The real significance of our findings is that cells are not inert to non-thermal mobile phone radiation… The changes we observed were clearly not caused by heating.”
Other scientists are quick to point out that cell division occurs naturally, as tissues grow and constantly rejuvenate within the body, and that this study does not prove any health effects.
Graham Philips with the campaign group Powerwatch said, “Further research is required, however guidance based purely on thermal effects is clearly out of date.”
The Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHR), a government and industry-funded investigation into the potential health hazards of cell phones, launched in 2001, is scheduled to publish its final report next month.
It’s times like this that make me feel like I’m in the twilight zone
http://www.thestar.com/article/261438
Widow, 77, could lose her home to landlord’s teenage son
September 28, 2007
Joe Fiorito
The ashcan of history is set to receive the crumpled page of September, a month mostly worth forgetting. But here is something memorably cruel.
Anne Bowman’s landlord is dragging her to court. He wants to evict her from the apartment where she has lived for the past 53 years.
Anne, a veteran’s widow, is 77 years old. She is frail after a stroke some years ago, but she still has a sense of occasion. When she knew I was coming to call, she got her hair done and put on her makeup.
That her landlord wants to evict her surpasses understanding.
When I spoke to him two months ago, he said he wanted Anne’s apartment for his son, a good boy, 19 years old, who has his heart set on becoming a police officer.
I don’t know the landlord’s son, but if he urged his father to evict Anne so that he can have her place for his own, then he will make a lousy cop.
And if this ugly business is the father’s doing, what lesson is he teaching that young man?
Anne is getting help from legal aid. She goes to court on Oct. 9.
I am going with her.
Should her lawyer be unable to fight off the eviction, and if Anne should end up on the street, I cannot vouch for my reaction.
On to other matters.
A series of columns about public housing drew this note from a TCHC tenant: “I just want to add my experience re: pest control and management when reporting roaches: When I complained about (how long I would have to) wait for pest control, I was told by management that I would just have to learn to live with them. I told them that this was unacceptable and was told, `Too bad.’
“This is indicative of the prevailing attitude I have experienced in all my dealings with housing management. When renting in the private sector, I never experienced these problems. Action was taken (as soon as) a problem was reported and all units in the building were treated for pests. Consequently, I have never had to live with pests until I moved into (TCHC) housing, where you are treated like a second-class citizen.”
Here’s the thing: her building is owned by us, paid for with our taxes, and managed for the public good on our behalf.
So now I wonder who is the better landlord: the one who wants to kick a 77-year old woman onto the street, or the one who says public housing tenants had better learn to live with roaches? Toss-up, I’d say.
Oh, one last thing.
I let fly earlier about the air show at the CNE. I said it ought to be cancelled. It is a waste of fuel, it is far too noisy, the planes make too many low passes over residential neighbourhoods, and there is no point served by an orgy of military glorification.
I got flak from fogeys, old and young, some of whom could even spell their crude and racist remarks. The prevailing argument is that I and my neighbours should move if we don’t like it.
Sorry, boys. We will not be driven off by the likes of you.
And to those students of history who think we’d all be speaking German if it weren’t for the pilots of yore: one sign of the victory over totalitarianism is the flourishing of a variety of opinion, including ones you don’t care for. Or why did we fight?
Finally, I salute the aviation aficionado who sent this briefly eloquent note: “GFYS.” I take him to mean, “Good For You, Sir.”Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca
Why Nuclear is a horrible option
This is from Jeff Berg:
My mother always told me to say please and I so I will heed her advice but I got to say it ain’t easy in this case. The nuclear option is so far and away the least financially savvy and most risky of our options that it boggles the mind and enrages the heart that this is being presented to us as “the only reasonable way forward”. It is so wrong on so many of the facts that let me hear orate on “How do I really not like thee? Let me count the ways!”
1) Nukes had their kick at the can. And despite the fact that Patrick Foody Sr. of IOGEN and Tom Adams of Energy Probe told the government before they built the first one “You do not have an electricity problem, you have a liquid fuel problem. We’ve looked at your numbers and if you do what you say you are going to do you will bankrupt the OPA and possibly the entire province.” They even went to the length of providing the government of the day on their nickel and time a report detailing and substantiating their conclusions.
All they got for their efforts was the right to one of the bigger “I told you so’s of the 20th Century”, all we got was $32 billion in stranded debt so that we and industry could pay a wholly unreal price for electricity. As a result of this massive hidden subsidy it made it impossible for Solar and Wind and Geothermal and, and, and, to compete economically as they had to pay the full freight of their own way while competing against this massively subsidized and wildly long term and risky problem for us all.
2) There is NO scientific consensus on how much CO2 is produced in the full cycle of nuclear power generation. We do not know IF is even cleaner than clean coal for example. And we know that clean coal ain’t clean enough. Not only is it not clean enough it’s beside the point as cleanliness is not the point CO2 is and CO2 is still very much created by both nukes and clean coal.
Until there is a clear scientific consensus on just how much better, if at all, nukes are in terms of CO2 how the hell can we even consider locking ourselves into this energy future for another 20 years? Much less call it the “only reasonable” option. And don’t forget once it’s done it will once again be industrially and politically necessary for this power to be massively subsidized and once again this will make the playing field so uneven that the competitors that are in fact sustainable and need market share to thrive and grow and improve, will not get it.
3) We humans are not very good at long term planning. This is I think a not very bold statement. And we are going to take on something that requires a geologically long solution? When we have alternatives? Because OPA employees have mortgages? For Christ sake if that’s the problem let’s buy out their mortgages and let the rest of us get on with the real problems at hand.
4) We be really, really, really, rich today. There is no guarantee that we won’t be pretty much broke in twenty years. If you look at what has been done to the economy of our biggest trading partner over the last four years you can see just how fast and far it is possible to fall.
The time for our great leap forward is now when our larder is stacked. We’ve got the will, we’ve got the way. Don’t let them tell you otherwise. Renewables are in fact doable all we need do is just do it.
Background: A year ago, Dalton McGuinty introduced an “Integrated Power
Supply Plan” to outline how Ontario will get its electricity for the next 20
years and beyond. Despite the 80 billion dollar pricetag (43 billion dollars
just for nuclear plants) there were no public consultations. It can be shown
conclusively that 100% renewables (wind, olar, cogeneration) are possible
for Ontario, when coupled with conservation and energy efficiency retrofits.
For information on the issue see http://www.voteforcleanenergy.ca/
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
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.
Well I see I’m not the only one to feel this way.
http://www.thestar.com/article/258857
The HPV vaccine is about preventing cancer. Period
September 21, 2007
Catholic schools debating moralissue of HPV shot
Sept. 19
In the current public debate about the HPV vaccine, the most crucial issue is getting lost. The HPV vaccine can prevent the cause of cervical cancer. We would like to put the emphasis back on preventing cancer and saving lives. Parents and their daughters need to know the facts before they make a decision about the vaccine.First, there is no evidence linking the initiation of vaccine programs for sexually transmitted infections to increased promiscuity. The human papilloma virus is a common sexually transmitted infection. The majority of sexually active Canadians are infected with HPV at some point. A small proportion of infections will lead to cervical and other cancers and non-cancerous warts.
Cervical cancer is preventable. Yet year after year, about 400 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 150 women die from the disease in Ontario. Many future deaths can now be averted through vaccination. However, the vaccine is only effective if given to girls before they are sexually active and exposed to HPV. The vaccine has been widely tested and subjected to the same rigorous evaluation process required of all new drugs in Canada.
HPV immunization is a powerful new tool in the battle against cervical cancer, but it is not a stand-alone prevention strategy. It is not a substitute for cervical cancer screening. Because the vaccine protects against 70 per cent of the cancer-causing HPV types, women still need to receive a regular Pap test to detect changes in the cervix that might turn into cancer. Also, most women have already been exposed to HPV and need to be screened.
By adding HPV immunization to regular cervical screening, we have the potential to put an end to cervical cancer. We encourage parents to get the facts and discuss the HPV vaccine with their children.
Dr. Verna Mai, Director of Screening, Cancer Care Ontario, Torontohttp://www.thestar.com/article/258598
HPV furor a pain for politicians
September 20, 2007
Jim Coyle
This week, the Catholic board in Halton was the latest to wrestle with the HPV vaccination program for female students in Grade 8. It narrowly rejected a motion to ban from its schools a program offered by the province to inoculate against the virus that can cause cervical cancer and genital warts.
The program, opponents said, would promote promiscuity and premarital sex and contradicted Catholic teaching that sex is only appropriate within marriage. One trustee went so far as to suggest students not even be offered counselling or advice on the vaccine.
It’s easy to understand complaints that the program was rushed, or that boards don’t have enough information on the vaccine, or that parents should retain the right to approve such a vaccine.
What’s difficult to grasp is the connection between a properly explained preventive health measure and the transformation of righteous innocents into fornicating citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah.
It seems a bit like arguing against tetanus shots on the grounds that students who receive them will commence recklessly impaling themselves on rusty nails.
It seems unlikely, moreover, that at the pivotal moment, in the back seat of a car or wherever it is adolescents go about such business, the deciding factor in shedding one’s virginity will be what’s recorded on a vaccination card. And the Talibanesque notion of withholding information from youngsters striding into adolescence is as disrespectful as would be sneaking the vaccine into them on the desexualized pretence that it wards off bubonic plague or baldness.
Any faith-based education system fearing its foundations are so flimsy and its teachings so tenuous and its young so intellectually fragile that a lifetime’s ethical instruction can be undone by a couple of jabs with a needle is as good as declaring its own failure.
Good public policy, freed from religious influence, is based on a reasoned understanding of how the human animal actually tends to behave, not some idealized notion of how in a perfect world it should. We hope, after all, that everyone will at all times drive carefully. But we still make them wear seatbelts.
If nothing else, the HPV fooferaw demonstrates how the best laid plans of mice, men and campaigning politicians can go awry.
For a man branded the “Education Premier,” September must have seemed a smashing month to tour. All those school visits. All those fresh faces and fresh starts. Enthusiasm as yet undulled by tedious routine. Then this.
At a stroke, it probably makes clear the potential for neverending turbulence from the proposal by PC Leader John Tory to extend public funding to other faith-based schools. It certainly makes things more awkward for the premier’s defence of a status quo when Catholic board health policy seems sourced more from the Vatican than Queen’s Park.
http://www.thestar.com/article/258470
Girls’ health comes first
September 20, 2007
Catholic schools debating moralissue of HPV shot
Sept. 19
I can only laugh at the naiveté of Catholic school trustees opposed to the HPV vaccine because they think it means children are going to be promiscuous very early in their teenage years. Sexuality is part of a much larger (and natural) learning experience that includes influences from family, peers, schools and the media. I’d hate to think that we believe our children’s entire moral compass on such complex issues could be guided by the mere presence or absence of a vaccine.Although long-term studies should be conducted before we vaccinate an entire generation of Canadian girls, this is just one more issue that leads me to think it’s time to dissolve the Catholic school system instead of expanding faith-based school funding.
Jennifer Lemon, Angus, Ont.From a young age we steep our kids in a culture that glorifies lifelong promiscuity – from the magazines they read to the songs they hear to the TV shows they watch. From “hot” male models on billboards to “JUICY” printed across their bottoms, they’re bombarded with sexually stimulating messages.
To suggest the HPV vaccine will make them think premarital sex is okay is ludicrous. It also does a disservice to the intelligence of our daughters. I am raising my girls to avoid premarital sex, but I told them that I can’t do anything about the HPV status of the man they’ll marry. There’s no way I’ll let them get that gift on their wedding night.
Mia Andrews, TorontoOur public-health officials have determined that the HPV vaccine can save women’s lives. They also concluded that the most effective time to administer the vaccine is at age 13. Schools were the obvious choice for the administration of these vaccines. We now see that Catholic school boards are debating the vaccine on “moral” grounds.
The unwillingness of some Catholic boards to administer the HPV vaccine is yet another reason why faith-based schools should not receive government funding.
Mary Kainer, TorontoThe objections of some Catholic school boards to the HPV vaccination should make clear to voters the implications of Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory’s proposal to expand faith-based school funding. Why are boards spending their time and resources debating what is medically beneficial to children? This is not their job.
Allowing religious principles to guide the education system tragically misinforms students on important issues, stunting their ability to think critically.
Steve de Eyre, Cleveland Heights, OhioRev. David Wilhelm, a trustee on the Halton Catholic District School Board, believes that Catholic schools don’t have the right to deny the HPV vaccine to students, but the reality is they do. Should the public fund an institution that has the right to withhold a vaccine deemed safe by another publicly funded institution?
Few Catholic school graduates will thank their school board or parents for withholding the vaccine when they contract cervical cancer.
Neil Hollands, Torontohttp://www.thestar.com/printArticle/258471
More faith needed in teens
September 20, 2007
Catholic schools debating moralissue of HPV shot
Sept. 19
As a former Catholic elementary school student, I was appalled to read that some Catholic boards are deciding not to let their students and parents make the ultimate decision on whether girls receive the HPV vaccine. It seems kind of contradictory to me, since students receive the vaccine for hepatitis B. Does this not also promote “promiscuity” and/or drug use?Catholic school boards need to look beyond the immediate picture and see that this vaccine is very effective when given to a girl before she starts having sex. Just because she gets the shot does not mean she is going to think she is free and clear from all sexually transmitted diseases and decide to have wild sex.
At the same time, Catholic boards need to put a little more faith in their teens. Since the Catholic Church preaches abstinence, give girls the benefit of the doubt that they will follow their faith.
Sarah Millar, Torontohttp://www.thestar.com/article/258472
A case of ostrich syndrome
September 20, 2007
Catholic schools debating moralissue of HPV shot
Sept. 19
As a Catholic educator, I was both saddened and troubled by the report on the actions of some Catholic school boards. At least one board has delayed the implementation of the new HPV shots on “moral grounds.” The logic goes like this: Giving female teens a shot to prevent a cancer that may be contracted through sexual activity is the same as endorsing premarital sex.Do I want my 14-year-old daughter or son to have sex? Of course not. And I hope that the values they learn at home, church and school will help them decide not to become sexually active as a young teen. However, in 2005, Statistics Canada reported that one in eight 15-year-olds was sexually active. By age 17, that had risen to 28 per cent. So does teaching abstinence work? Clearly not. Or do these boards believe that their students aren’t represented in these statistics?
Do I support celibacy outside marriage? Absolutely. Do I want to see teens denied a simple cure to a deadly disease due to fuzzy logic and a failed plan? Absolutely not.
Peter Monahan, Alliston, Ont.http://www.thestar.com/article/258465
Vaccine is not about sex
September 20, 2007
Catholic schools debating moralissue of HPV shot
Sept. 19
It saddens and horrifies me that someone with as weak a grasp on logic and reality as Huron-Superior Trustee Regis O’Connor has anything at all to do with the education of children. “As a Catholic school board, we are very, very aware that this is a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease and that giving it means children are going to be promiscuous,” he said.Somehow he expects us to believe that protecting our children against four strains of a sexually transmitted disease is going to cause them to run out and have sex, ignoring all of the other consequences. That’s ridiculous and offensive. It’s also offensive to imply that the 400 women who die every year in Canada from cervical cancer are dying because they were promiscuous.
I sincerely hope that not a single daughter of a parent who refuses the vaccine is ever faced with a spouse who had a few youthful indiscretions. I also hope that none of them is ever sexually assaulted by an infected attacker. However, the world being the way it is, both hopes are probably in vain.
Promiscuity is not required to get the human papilloma virus. All that’s required is for one partner to have the virus, and that one partner could be a woman’s husband.
Adrienne Dandy, St. Agatha, Ont. http://www.thestar.com/article/258249
Voices: STD vaccinations
September 19, 2007
We asked you whether you think it is appropriate to vaccinate Grade 8 girls against sexually transmitted diseases. Here’s what you had to say. As sorry as I am to have to say this to the august Bishops of the Catholic Church, we don’t all live in their utopian fantasy world. Denying Catholic children this vaccine will just leave them exposed. A large number of their kids will have sex out of wedlock whether they like it or not. Common sense has to prevail in matters of public health.
Peter Reynolds, Toronto
Seems like this is a great example of why Ontario needs to stop paying for the spread of religious ideals in schools and concentrate on a strong public education system. For the Catholic school boards to interpret the immunization of children against a prevalent strain of cancer as some kind of “immoral undertaking” is as puzzling as it is ignorant. This the health program is about battling cancer.
Brian Carleton, Toronto
For the Catholic school boards to say that they preach against promiscuity and fear that vaccinating teenage girls will promote sexual activity is like saying they preach against dangerous driving and fear that providing seat belts will promote recklessness. Naturally, no parent wants a promiscuous daughter but to deny them a potentially life saving vaccine is, in my view, irresponsible.
Jonathan O’Mara, Whitby
At a cost of $400 per person, perhaps our health-care dollars can be better spent on increasing the number of hospital beds or rebated from health premiums. This vaccination is a luxury item as HPV is only transmitted sexually. I think we should be putting health-care dollars to diseases in which people have little control over.
Trevor Carneiro, Toronto
As parents in this day and age, are we really naive enough to think that our children, during their teenage years, are never going to have any intimate contact? It is our responsibility as parents to protect our children from anything we can possibly protect them from. I only wish there had been that same vaccine about 14 years ago, when I was young.
Christina Leighton, Ajax
I knew this was going to come up sooner or later. High school kids – Catholic or not – are likely to have pre-marital sex no matter what the schools are telling them is the right thing to do. Giving them the option to have this vaccine is preventative and it’s definitely a good thing. Get off your high horses, Catholic schools.
Kerry Chan, Markham
A vaccination does not promote sexual promiscuity. Perhaps a more comprehensive education would help to dispel the myths surrounding the use of vaccinations as well as the influence of media and the pre-existing human disposition for sexual relations.
Bianca Williams, Toronto
I think it’s horrible that Catholic school boards are taking away the chance for these girls to be protected from HPV due to the fact that it promotes promiscuity. It’s ridiculous. A girl who may remain abstinent until marriage could contract the HPV virus through her spouse and then be at greater risk for cervical cancer. Even if the school boards do not support the HPV vaccine, ultimately it should be up to the parents and the girls.
Melanie Coulas, Ottawa
While cervical cancer may not be as prevalent as breast cancer, any preventative course is the only responsible act a person can take. Explain to your child as she lies dying of cervical cancer that it is her fault for being a loose woman. While a woman may be abstinent prior to marriage, her future husband might not be.
Tanya Quaestor, Toronto
If the concern over the HPV injection is side effects or safety, that is reasonable. To assume that Catholic teens are any less sexually active than any other group of teens is naive. You can be sure the Church won’t pick up the tab for the medical care of these girls if they get cancer in the future, nor will it provide financial support for the children they may leave behind.
Kim Darby, Burlington
Abstinence is only as good as both parties agree. Some girls will wait until marriage, but did their partners? This disease is preventable with this vaccine. It is abusive to deny any girl the right to prevent cancer in her body.
Brenda DelPozo, Toronto
This vaccine is approved for use in females aged 9 to 26 years. I don’t think this is advocating sexual activity in prepubescents. Regardless of when you think it is appropriate to allow your child to be vaccinated, the onset of sexual activity is something you can neither predict nor control. Shouldn’t the overriding concern be to prevent a disease that may one day harm or kill your child?
Christine Lyons, Toronto
I am firmly opposed to this vaccination both on moral and on fiscal/political grounds. It seems to me that an awful lot of money is going to be wasted so that Merck can line their pockets with our tax dollars. Compare this with this incidence of prostate cancer in this country. It is a major adult male killer and yet the $25-35 test is not deemed worthy to be covered by provincial health care. Parents who wish to protect their pre-sexually active daughters against a largely unknown virus by using a largely unknown and untested vaccine should do so out of their own pocket (at their own risk) and not the public purse.
Nestor Komar, St. Catharines
The fact that moves are being made within Roman Catholic school boards to suppress this important public health initiative on grounds of religious morality is compelling evidence — if any more were needed — of why public money should not be used to finance faith-based schooling of any kind.
David Mayerovitch, Ottawa
It’s extremely difficult to fathom anyone putting a young girl’s future health status at risk for the sake of making a dogma-based non-sensical moral argument. Parents need to decide whether they want to follow their Church’s teachings or save their daughters from experiencing a preventable cancer. The choice seems rather simple.
Robin Kelly, Toronto
It isn’t the vaccines which promote promiscuity, its raging teenage hormones and the lack of education and open discussion inside the Catholic school boards. By restricting discussion to abstinence you mystify and poorly prepare youth for life.
Geoffrey Peart, Milton, Ont.
In this day and age, everyone needs to be educated against STDs and anything that can help in the spread of them helps. I have some concerns about the long-term effects though. Do we know enough? That being said, STDs are for the most part preventable with education.
Charlene Smith, Woodstock, Ont.
The truth is, at some point, teenagers will be having sex. Not every Grade 8 girl is off to the nunnery. The larger issue is just how much do mom and dad know what their precious little kids are doing? It’s a safe bet that many kids are only telling part of the story to mom and dad, and they are probably not talking about the one thing that does promote promiscuity: alcohol.
Trevor Wedgewood, Toronto
Yes, it is appropriate to vaccinate young girls against sexually transmitted diseases. Young women (and young men) will make their own decisions about whether or not they want to wait for marriage to become sexually active. A jab in the arm doesn’t suddenly make people want to do something they didn’t want to do before. Getting your tetanus shot doesn’t encourage you to go step on rusty nails, does it?
Jeff Zarnett, Toronto
Is it morally appropriate not to prevent our future generations from a virus that afflicts so many women in this country?
Sha Skel, Toronto
A wicked and perverse generation should be preaching the virtues of abstinence, rather than promoting another “condom” for the number of risks associated with premarital sex.
Robert Baker, Toronto
Huron-Superior trustee Regis O’Connor’s comment that “…we are very, very aware that this a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease and that giving it means children are going to be promiscuous” is insulting to say the least. Even if the girls (for they are the ones at risk, not the boys) meet his standards and are chaste until marriage, who is to say their future husbands have been? Should these girls have to pay for their husbands’ sexual partner’s disease? Mr. O’Connor – and apparently the Halton-Superior school board – must have very little faith in the success of their teachings with girls (and boys too, I guess). Perhaps their program needs to be changed, but this is a health issue, not a morals issue.
Cynthia Lagueux, Uxbridge, Ont.
Finally, our medical system has a vaccination that prevents cancer. Cervical cancer is now a totally preventable disease yet some people have their heads buried in the sand thinking their “teens” aren’t sexually active. Would there be this many outcries if there was a vaccination against colon, or breast cancer? I doubt it. It is because of the perception that HPV is solely contracted through promiscuity that people are opposing it.
Mike Eliadis, Toronto
As a health care professional I don’t see how this vaccine is any different than the Hep B vaccines being provided to students already. How else do they feel teenagers are exposed to Hep B? Blood transfusions? Sharing needles? Let’s be honest, if Hep B is being acquired by teenagers these days it’s most likely through sexual exposure.
Danielle Porter, Newmarket
After reading the article in The Star, I am amazed at the narrow-minded view of the Catholic members that providing a vaccination program will promote promiscuity. It is time the members of the Catholic Society realize that humans will have sex before, during and after marriage. It is our nature and should not be illustrated as something evil or unnatural. If someone chooses to abstain then they should also be respected for their decision. The decision of the HPV vaccination should and must rest with the parents, not a religious doctrine.
David Kowch, Courtice, Ont.
It is entirely appropriate to vaccinate girls against this disease. If this was for a disease that affected men only, the Catholic Church wouldn’t be saying a word.
Ian Graylish, Scarborough
This is so infuriating.
Why are Catholic school boards even allowed to debate something like this? Religious beliefs should not affect decisions of public health. What these people don’t realize is that this vaccine should be given to grade 8 girls, not because they may be sexually active, but because medically speaking, it is the most effective time in a woman’s life to receive the vaccine. A woman may not have sex until she is married, and her husband may pass on this virus to her. If she has been vaccinated, then she won’t get cervical cancer. Seems pretty simple, and yet the ignorance that comes out during this debate is astounding. My favorite line is from Huron-Superior trustee Regis O’Connor, “As a Catholic school board, we are very, very aware that this a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease and that giving it means children are going to be promiscuous” Is he insane? That is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. As if a girl, in the heat of the moment, would base her decision on whether or not she has been vaccinated. It is truly frightening that this man has anything to do with educating children.
This is simply another reason why the government should not be funding faith-based schools.
http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/258142
Catholic schools debating moral issue of HPV shot
Catholic school boards across the province are facing growing complaints that the HPV vaccination program promotes promiscuity.
Last night, the Halton Catholic District School Board narrowly rejected a motion to ban the program from its schools this year and the Toronto Catholic District School Board is to vote tonight.
The Huron-Superior Catholic District School Board decided unanimously last week to delay the program in its schools until it receives more information from the Ministry of Health.
The board believes the vaccine will give students a signal of support for premarital sex and the Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops notes in a Sept. 13 letter to parents that sex is “only appropriate within marriage.”
Absolutely absurd.
The vote by the Halton board, after lengthy debate, was four to three in favour of retaining the vaccine program to protect girls from cervical cancer.
Oakville Trustee Anthony Danko, whose motion had sought to ban the program, had also asked the board not to offer counselling or advice to students regarding the vaccine on school property during the 2007-08 school year.
Why is this man involved in teaching children when he is advocating ignorance for students?
Another trustee, Rev. David Wilhelm from Milton, spoke out against Danko’s motion, saying it was too strong and that parents should have the ultimate decision to decide whether their children would have the vaccine.
“We don’t have the right to take that away,” Wilhelm said.
Three Halton student trustees weighed in against the program, although they were not allowed to vote.
One was Erin Gamble, 16, from Oakville, who spoke in favour of Danko’s original motion.
“I’m taught every day to save myself for marriage and practise abstinence,” she said. “Giving the vaccine to Grade 8 girls contradicts what I have been taught.”
Drink some more kool-aid, Erin.
Trustees in favour of Danko’s motion said they were concerned the province implemented the vaccination program too quickly before there was enough research to prove the vaccine was safe and effective.
They were also concerned students would be able to opt for the vaccine against their parents’ wishes. But Rev. Wilhelm printed the letter from the Ontario Bishops, which said the parents had the right and the responsibility to decide whether their daughters should have the vaccine.
“And I don’t think any of us have the right to take that away as difficult as that may be,” the priest said.
After the narrow vote defeating Danko’s motion, Burlington Trustee Bob Van de Vrande proposed that the regional health unit also provide an information package to parents and that it include a letter from Hamilton bishop Rev. Anthony Tonnos.
Van de Vrande’s motion also wanted the region to ensure the vaccine will not be administered to a student unless parental consent is obtained in writing.
The board carried Van de Vrande’s motion by a five to one vote.
The Ontario bishops ask that parents remember that “infection with HPV or other sexually transmitted diseases can occur only through sexual activity, which carries with it profound risks to a young person’s spiritual, emotional, moral, and physical health.”
The Huron-Superior trustees have reservations about allowing the vaccine in their schools, said trustee Regis O’Connor.
“As a Catholic school board, we are very, very aware that this a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease and that giving it means children are going to be promiscuous,” he said.
“We teach abstinence outside marriage.”
Even if the school board receives more information from the Ministry of Health, O’Connor said he is unlikely to vote for the HPV vaccine.
Again, how stupid do you have to be before you are no longer allowed to affect education policy? O’Conner and his board have asked the Ministry of Health to provide more information on this vaccine, at taxpayer expense, and he is saying ahead of time that even if he gets the information, he’s already made up his mind and will be voting against it. There is just so much wrong with this one statement that it nearly makes my head explode.
In July, the Ontario government announced that all Grade 8 girls in the province would have free access to Gardasil, a $400 three-shot vaccine that can prevent HPV types 16 and 18, which are responsible for 70 per cent of cervical cancer cases. Nearly 400 Canadian women die of the disease each year.
Dr. Bob Nosal, Halton’s Medical Officer of Health, said the bishops’ letter is factual in its description of how HPV is transmitted and points out it is a voluntary program.
“This is a safe, effective vaccine that works,” said Nosal. “This will – and should be – offered to all Grade 8 girls and it’s up to parents and to the child themselves whether she has it.”
Halton launched the vaccination program in public schools this week, offering it to the region’s some 3,000 Grade 8 girls.
Halton’s Grade 7 students take part in the immunization program for Hepatitis B, a disease that can be sexually transmitted.
“I’m struck by how I don’t get a hue and cry about the hep B vaccine, but I’m hearing about the HPV vaccine,” he said.
“For those who want to be protected from at least two strains that cause 70 per cent of cancers, this vaccine works.”
Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty said the government would like to conduct the vaccination program through the schools because of convenience for parents and children.
“But if we run into a lot of resistance from a particular school board, we’ve already thought this through – we can do it through public health,” he said.
“We have to wait and see how many boards are going to say no before we pin it on one particular board, but … my advice to the board is the single most important issue here is the health of our young women.”
Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory said he hoped all Ontario schools, including Catholic ones, adopt the new program.
“I would like to hope all school boards will co-operate in making sure these vaccines are available and that if there’s anybody that doesn’t want to have the vaccine, that’s a parental decision,” he said.
