RE: Make School Day Work Smarter, Not Longer — December 17, 2012

99.5% of the time I agree with the Frontier's views but on this one I have to provide a different  viewpoint. The existing school system at the elementary level is modeled on the same system that existed in the 60's, 50's, 40's, etc. Children are present in school from 9:00am to 3:30pm. Let's take the average family of the 21st century whereby both Mom and Dad are both present in the workforce (unlike the 60's, 50's, etc. where Mom's were "stay at home"). The standard workday is 8:00 to 4:00 or 9:00 to 5:00. Either parent is now forced to either rearrange their work schedule in order to pick up their child(ren) or find suitable after school daycare (for children under the age of 12).

Now take this situation one step further and apply it to a single parent family that is living at or below a middle income level. The parent gets two weeks vacation per year. The average number of Professional Development days teachers receive are a minimum of 1 per month not including early dismissals. The single parent must arrange and pay for an after school sitter or daycare when their child is released from school at 3:30pm. The cost of this to the parent is significant in terms of percentage of their annualized income. Factor in that the parent must arrange for a sitter 10 days a year not including the two weeks at Xmas and the summer and one can see the system is fine if we were living in 1952 but doesn not work for 2012.

I would argue that the average school day should not only coincide with the average work day but should be 8:30 to 5:30 to allow parents to fullfill their career/job obligations and help contribute to our economy by allowing for more work time and more disposable income directed to things the family needs vs going to after school daycare.

Email - Winnipeg, Mb

RE: Quebec Shouldn’t be Given its Gun Registry Data — September 21, 2012

This column was an eye-opener. Not so much for Navarro-Genie's gun registry argument, but for the examples he gave of the intrusion of the Quebec government in people's lives.

I was aware of the requirement of women to maintain their maiden names upon marriage, but had forgotten, or was un-aware that, among other restrictions, all housing leases must expire at the same time, and that state permission must be sought in naming a child, or to send one to a non-French school. Top it off with the edict that all outdoor commercial signs must be exclusively in French and you have, I believe, the most totalitarian, intrusive regime in Canada.

As with all of their entrenched information-gathering systems already in place, the gun registry in-formation is merely another nail in the coffin for individual freedom in that sad imitation of a democracy.

Eric Hindson, Calgary

RE: Quebec Shouldn’t be Given its Gun Registry Data — September 21, 2012

Question:   Why do you care if Quebec keeps registering long guns, you are in Calgary, does it really affect you?  The majority of Canadian's wanted to keep the registry.

Honestly, I'd be perfectly content if Alberta was the one to leave the country.  You can take Stephen Hitler with you, and continue to ruin your local environment with all the tar sands production and those ugly tailing ponds.  Email from William Groombridge

RE: An ‘F’ for Social Promotion — September 14, 2009
The flip side of social promotion and "putting in your time" is what it does to gifted children. I know of a child who was doing introductory calculus as he finished first grade. The school staff insisted he do second grade the next year with the same students and the same dumbed down curriculum. The attitude of the school was "we will catch up with him." They even blamed the parents for teaching him beyond their level. They wouldn't consider finding an environment where he could be challenged. They kept talking about socialization and insisted his intellectual development would take care of itself. We are throwing away both the top and bottom by forcing them to stay with their age peers. This is why the dropout rate is so high on both ends. -- E-mail from Washington

RE: The True Cost of Fixing Natural Gas Prices — November 18, 2005
I just about fell out of my chair when I saw this the other day. Hydro is nothing more then a political tool being used by the government of the day. SELL IT before they completely destroy it! If I was Bob Brennan I would resign over this. - E-mail from Winnipeg

RE: Artificially Cheap Hydro Power — June 7, 2012

What an interesting read. Things really do have to change. Comment from VectorV

RE: Diversity in Healthcare — January 30, 2011

The bureaucrats at the RHAs shouldn't be in the medical care business. They should stick to paying providers. - Comment Winnipeg Free Press

RE: Transit Blasphemies — February 18, 2005

"As always …excellent stuff! The central planners will not be amused but anyone who likes rational debate will love this stuff!"- Email from Vancouver

RE: Taxi Industry Reports Tired and One Sided — September 27, 2010

Thank you for the excellent piece by David Seymour in Saskatoon's The Star Phoenix of September 24, 2010. On two fronts, the piece succeeds. First, Mr. Seymour shows that the paid expert Professor Mundy presumes that more rather than less taxi regulation is necessary. Second, Mr. Seymour scrutinizes the selective and dated scholarship that underlies Professor Mundy's pre-ordained conclusions. Similar criticisms of Professor Mundy's reports have emerged in St. Lake City and Denver. Perhaps being away from the coasts clears the heads of Canadians and Americans and allows us to see these taxi reports for what they are. - Prof. Thomas D. Russell, J.D., Ph.D. University of Denver Sturm College of Law

 

Nav Canada
About two dozen countries have shed direct state control of air navigation over the last 15 years. Poole and Butler attribute NavCan’s radical performance improvement – it’s now the best in the world – to its innovative corporate structure.

The Case for Dumping Hydro Subsidies
There’s about a $300-million annual subsidy to domestic rates. I think it’s a crazy policy. It’s understandable historically, and there’s a certain lag time in changing practices. But given the current level of export earnings and our knowledge of efficiency, it’s a crazy policy.

After the Indian Act
Just as observers in Old Europe knew there were problems with the Divine Right of Kings, aristocracy and feudalism, it is widely recognized that the act is paternalistic, distorts First Nation democracy and locks reserves out of the economy. But to avoid the kinds of shocks experienced in Old Europe, First Nation citizens, policy makers and governments must carefully think about what would actually fill the vacuum left by any winding up of the Indian Act.

Former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith
It is naïve to assume a city and its mayor, manager and employees are good at everything. No business is good at everything. Why is City Hall good at everything? The City Hall has a responsibility to provide services so managed competition says that even with the city having responsibility sometimes it can hire-out or tender out those services more effectively than it can produce them themselves. And managing the competition between the private and private and public sectors is one way to drive value.

It's Getting Better All the Time
In a giant setback for the global doom-mongers' movement, eminent American economist Indur Goklany has collected in one volume the long-term trends in the most significant indicators of human and environmental well-being. The evidence is compelling. In The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet, Goklany demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, global economic growth, free trade and technological change have led to unprecedented improvements in the human condition.

Mandate Letters Will Increase Universities’ Troubles
Ultimately, undermining university autonomy achieves the opposite of what Lukaszuk claims to be after. And by reducing meaningful choice and work against the liberty to decide what to study, it will likely reduce creativity and muffle innovation. It will yield followers instead of forming leaders. The minister’s plan, however well-intended, is half-baked and dangerous to universities.

Immigration Can Be an Antidote to Urban Decay
Recently, Detroit too has experienced economic benefits from two groups of immigrants: Arabs and Latinos. Arab American employment now contributes $7.7 billion to the city’s economy, and provides $544 million in tax revenue to the state. They now support over 140,000 jobs in the city. Latino immigrants are being credited with helping to revitalize Southwest Detroit, which saw $200 million of investments between 1993-2008, and the area’s population grew by nearly 7% between 1990-2000 even as most of the city declined. The City is now home to nearly 50,000 Latinos, up from under 20,000 in 1990.

School Choice in Alberta and B.C.
Education Secretary Rod Paige attributes this to the fact that they “serve as laboratories of innovation—they can be public education’s ‘R&D’ arm. With greater autonomy than traditional public schools, and with a tendency to attract pioneering educators, they can try out new approaches to education that, if proven effective, can be transplanted back into the larger public education system.”

Eco-Fascists
Eco-Fascists deals with two related topics: (1) the difficulties Nickson experienced in securing permission to subdivide her property on Salt Spring Island and (2) the larger context of North American environmentalism within which this local process unfolded. The two are linked because the “incidents” she encountered on Salt Spring ‘came from a plan, one that has been carefully devised and put into place over the past thirty years.’ Let us begin with the Salt Spring story.