All Posts Tagged With: "BC"
Lawyer calls for another new law school
We’ve heard of the rural shortage. But a suburban shortage?
Photo by Ian Barrett for Maclean's
Just months after British Columbia opened its first new law school in 30 years, a top lawyer is advocating for another one, this time in Surrey.
B.C.’s newest law school is at Thomson Rivers University in Kamloops, where its mission is, in part, to address the rural lawyer shortage.
Tony Wilson, an adjuct professor at Simon Fraser University, makes the argument that there’s a pending shortage in suburban Surrey too. He notes that the city near Vancouver is projected to be the biggest in B.C. by 2020. Surrey grew by 13.6 per cent between 2001 and 2006.
There’s plenty of work, Wilson argues in his letter to Canadian Lawyer. “Surery has… clients, many of them in real estate, real estate development, or other small or medium-sized businesses,” he says, “and if you’re into criminal law, the newspapers would suggest that opportunities abound.”
The case for AD
Even an atheist like me would rather live in the year of the Lord.
If you think professors spend their free time sitting around talking about esoteric minutiae, you’re right. At least, that’s how we spend part of our time. In fact, just the other day, while smoking cigars and drinking brandy, I had a discussion with a friend and colleague over the best way to refer to years from a historical perspective.
You will certainly know that most people in the Western world agree that we are, at time of writing, in the year 2011. You probably know that the year 2011 is calculated based on the supposed year of the birth of Christ and thus we say AD 2011. Why AD? For the Latin anno Domini, meaning “in the year of the Lord.” And, of course, you probably realize that the years before Christ are termed, not surprisingly, BC. This can cause a bit of confusion because novice students of history must take pains to remember that while AD 1600 comes after AD 1500, the reverse is true in BC, where 400 BC comes before 300 BC.
Still with me? Good. Now, what you might not know is that many scholars dislike the AD/BC terms because they speak directly to the Christian origins of the designations. In a pluralistic society like ours, they would say, we should not be reckoning years “before Christ” or “in the year of the Lord” because, after all, he’s not everybody’s Lord (or anybody’s really, but I digress). But since it would be prohibitively difficult to create a whole new system of counting the years (what would serve as our zero year?), the folks I have in mind have been using “CE” instead of “AD” and “BCE” instead of BC. “CE” stands for “Common Era” while “BCE,” not surprisingly, stands for “Before the Common Era.”
This convention has caught on, and, checking my new Chicago Manual of Style, I find that Chicago permits either system depending on a variety of factors, including “personal preference” (9.35). My new MLA Handbook lists both without expressing a preference (7.2). Undoubtedly the new terms are gaining traction, and some are confidently predicting the eventual demise of the AD/BC system altogether. But I think switching to the CE/BCE system is a mistake, and I’ll tell you why.
To begin, remember that the CE/BCE system does not actually change the way the years are calculated. It still uses the presumed birth of Christ as its reference point. So, at best, the change is a surface-level alteration meant to give the impression that there is no religious basis for the system, when, in fact, the religious basis remains firmly in place.
Second, the terms AD and BC have become so common as the names for the eras themselves that people do not directly associate the Christian origins of the terms with the things they designate. Saying that we live in AD 2011 does not make this a Christian year anymore than calling February 14th Valentine’s Day makes that a Christian holiday (even though technically it is the feast of a Christian saint). Similarly, naming a child Christopher (“bearer of Christ”) is not a particularly religious gesture — at least, not anymore. One day, if the CE crowd leaves well enough alone, the term AD will be as secular as “Saturday” (named for god Saturn) or January (named for the god Janus).
Finally, calling an era based on the birth of Christ the “Common Era” is even more offensive to non-Christians than calling it anno Domini. “Common Era” implies that the importance of Christ is acknowledged by all, when nothing could be further from the truth. At least AD and BC have the virtue of honesty.
UVic a battleground for BC recall campaign?
BC’s Minister for Universities may have a very short tenure
Fans of schadenfreude, grassroots populism and reenactments of the Titanic have been enjoying the goings-on in British Columiba politics over the past year, as the Liberal Party has been in free-fall since they announced the implementation of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) right after being re-elected in May 2009.
A successful petition for a referendum on the tax generated hundreds of thousands of signatures, and now organizers, led by former Premier Bill Vander Zalm, have begun the next stage of campaign: recalling MLAs.
To be successful, a petition must have 40 per cent of eligible voters from the riding, and must be completed within 60 days. The first recall initiative begins on Monday, and the target is Ida Chong, MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head, located in Victoria.
(well, not actually “Victoria”. Victoria as most Canadians know is a series of small municipalities, with the capital city at the centre. If you live in Victoria, as I did for 18 years, this becomes very annoying to explain time and time again. Oak Bay-Gordon Head is located in two of these smaller municipalities. We now depart my Grade 10 Civics class, and return to the blog post)
This is interesting to university-watchers for two reasons. The first tie-in is that Chong is the newly appointed Minister of Science and Universities. The second is that Oak Bay-Gordon Head, aside from being home to a plethora of public sector employees (28 per cent of the population in 2001) and old people (21 per cent over 65, from the same year), is home to the University of Victoria.
Now, it doesn’t take much to assume that a university student in Victoria is more likely to be on the left of the political spectrum than not. Until this year, for example, UVic’s student union was dominated for over a decade by a pro-Canadian Federation of Students slate, and generally advocated for policy positions to the left of the NDP. So one can expect at the very least a few thousand eager participants in the recall process.
However, there’s a catch. In BC, recall legislation states that “In order to sign a recall petition an individual must have been a registered voter for the electoral district for which the member was elected on general voting day for the last election of the member.”
Meaning, for a UVic student to sign a recall petition, they would have had to be a registered voter in Oak Bay-Gordon Head in the 2009 election, which would remove most first and second year students. Moreover, aside from being 18 months ago, it is also outside of the traditional school year. The thousands of UVic students who went home/vacationing during the 2009 summer won’t be eligible. So the student influence may not be as strong as it would originally seem.
But will the recall be successful? Well, I’m no Nate Silver, but if it’s going to pass anywhere, Oak Bay-Gordon Head could very well be it. Vancouver Island has always been solidly anti-Campbell, but more importantly, the riding is dense enough and close enough to Vancouver to ensure there will be an army of canvassers. The relative lack of apartments in the riding will make it easier to knock on every door, too.
On the other hand, it’s quite possible that some of the sentiment against the HST has wavered with a) A referendum date set for the HST, and b) Campbell’s promise to resign as premier. Whatever the case, the clock begins to tick Monday.
BC government cuts $16 million in education funding
Last-minute cuts incense hundreds of students
It’s understandable that in tough economic times, governments will make funding cuts. The BC government’s latest $16m cut to education funding, however, is completely inexcusable.
Not only is it in clear violation of the BC Liberals’ May election platform promise (p. 26) to “maintain this year’s funding levels for student aid,” but according to BC MLA Gary Coons, “the Campbell government delayed telling students the programs had been cancelled… in order to hide the cuts until after the election.”
Indeed, several students who applied for the March deadlined Premier’s Excellence Award – a $15,000 scholarship awarded to the top high school students in the province – recently telephoned the Ministry of Advanced Education requesting the results of their applications. They were told that the judging process was complete and that the winners would be notified shortly.
When the news came that the scholarship was eliminated, most students, including myself, reasonably assumed that this year’s winners would still receive their awards and that the program would cease to exist next year. Alas, this was not the case.
After several phone calls to various government representatives, it has been confirmed that the program will be eliminated immediately, meaning even those students who applied and were apparently selected as recipients this year are out of luck.
This failure to notify students before they spent hours applying for the scholarship – or at least before they spent months anxiously awaiting the results – has been met with understandable outrage.
Other cuts include eliminating the Nurses Education Bursary at a time when the province is in dire need of more nurses, as well as the:
Permanent Disability Benefits
Debt Reduction in Repayment
BC Loan Reduction for Residential Care Aid and Home Support Worker
Health Care Bursary
Early Childhood Educator Loan Assistance
