Karen Littlewood’s column never once considered that taxpayers are fed up with throwing good money after bad in the name of improving education.
Just once I wish the OSSTF and other unions would recognize that test scores continue to fall, the services they offer are mediocre at best with more and more seeking private school alternatives (if they can afford it). This taxpayer’s perception is that teacher unions always push to increase their membership (ie. union coffers) and have no problem with dozens more teachers appearing on the annual Sunshine List. Littlewood’s column was not only disappointing but disingenuous.
Stephen Baechler, Niagara Falls
Chronic underfunding?
I had to take a deep breath when I read Karen Littlewood’s piece on education in Ontario. Why am I not surprised to hear from an educator that the key to all things great is simply more money?
Would that have anything to do with the fact that this same educator and her colleagues seize every opportunity to strike for higher wages and benefits? Never mind COVID 19, how many times have teacher strikes kept students out of school in the past 15 years? On another front, how does Littlewood explain the decline in math and reading skills that began long before the Ford government took over — back when Kathleen Wynne gave teachers pretty much whatever they asked for? It seems they still couldn’t parlay that into improved academic scores for Ontario students.
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Through government changes and new generations of students, one element has remained unchanged: the teachers and the unions.
I’m reminded that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.
Or we can just shovel more money onto the fire.
Chris Pifer, Ancaster
Many ways to reduce chances of getting COVID
It’s too bad the message in this story was limited to “get a vaccine and you’ll be OK. Much else is needed, and possible, as Canada’s Chief Science Officer says.
Vaccines help those who’ve inhaled the aerosol (invisible little particle in the air) with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Like Dr. Allison McGeer’s seatbelt analogy, it’s only one of the layers needed to prevent infection. (Vehicle-related death/injury prevention layers include airbags, children’s car seats, bumpers and vehicle and road design, etc.)
We can avoid inhaling the virus all together — the primary prevention principle of public health. It starts with accepting that SARS-Co-V2 spreads in the air like smoke.
Therefore, we need to clean the air. Near people, that means a respirator (disposables have two straps and there are other kinds) or a KN95 (usually with two ear loops and the right filter material). It must fit snugly to our face without any of those gaps found in “baggy blue” surgical masks.
Further away, we need spaces with fresh and filtered air. (Healthy indoor air has been a workplace issue for 35-plus years.) For places without ventilation systems, DIY Corsi-Rosenthal boxes (four filters and a box fan duct taped together) and their PC fan versions are very effective and less expensive than most commercial versions.
Other layers include fewer people inside spaces for less time, regular testing, accessible and useful data (like that prepared by COVID-19 Resources Canada), paid sick leave and policies that require using it.
However tired we are of this virus; we won’t be done with it until all the layers are available to all of us.
Dorothy Wigmore, Canadian Aerosol Transmission Coalition, Kingston
Antisemitic or just uncomfortable?
There seems to be some confusion — deliberate in the case of right-wingers — between actual antisemitism, on campuses and elsewhere, and Jewish students feeling uncomfortable. Not afraid. Not under threat. Uncomfortable.
I was birding one day wearing my green Free Palestine T-shirt. A man said I shouldn’t wear that shirt birdwatching in public, it might make some people feel uncomfortable. (What he meant, I believe, was that it made him feel uncomfortable.)
I said, “Good. That shows they still have a conscience.”
That shirt didn’t identify me as Jewish. I now have one that does. Would that have made him less uncomfortable? Or more?
Elizabeth Block, member of Independent Jewish Voices, Toronto
Who is the ‘extremist’?
Premier Doug Ford is succumbing to his worst instincts in doubling down on his bid to build Highway 413. He accuses federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault of being “extremist” because the federal government is requiring a full environmental assessment of the hwy. 413 project.
The Supreme Court recently and specifically ruled that the federal government has jurisdiction to review projects to ensure that environmental impacts are avoided or mitigated.
It is the Ontario government that is using extreme arguments to justify a project that is unnecessary. Changes to how the already-built hwy. 407 operates would provide a better solution to traffic problems that the hwy. 413 is supposed to solve. Building hwy. 413 will exclusively benefit land speculators in Peel Region. It will weaken agriculture on some of our best farmland and will compromise the integrity of the Greenbelt.
Ford has learned nothing, apparently, from mistakes in judgment he made in 2023 and is determined to repeat them in 2024.
Andrew Stewart, Toronto
Poilievre's hyperbolic rhetoric isn’t newsworthy
Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre voted CP's 2023 Newsmaker of the Year, Dec. 19
The media has learned nothing from the Donald Trump fiasco.
Fox News as well as mainstream media built a pulpit for Trump and amplified his message.
Now we have our own little mini-Trump who is “changing the political conversation" (much for the worse), creating a toxic atmosphere in Canadian politics and who has no practical policies but is against everything liberal.
This type of politics isn’t newsworthy because it contains no news, just hyperbolic rhetoric and to spotlight him with an award is just plain wrong and playing into his hands.
By all means cover Pierre Poilievre when he has something of substance to say but stop amplifying his nonsense.
Peter Bradley, Mississauga
