All Posts Tagged With: "toronto"

Prof. Pettigrew on why universities can’t divest

Fort McMurray, Alta. oilsands (eryn.rickard/Flickr)

Here, Cape Breton University Professor Todd Pettigrew argues that divesting from “unethical” companies isn’t as easy as activists make it sound. After reading his commentary, check out Torrance Coste’s argument in favour of divestment.

I served, for a brief time, on the Board of Governors of Cape Breton University, and one thing I did during that period was speak in favour of looking into ethical investments. After all, we know from the proverbs that money talks.  So if we are talking with our money, why not have it say something important?

Ethical investing, I argued at the time, seemed all the more urgent in the context of university education. If we are trying to teach our students to think critically, shouldn’t we ask tough questions about scholarship endowments and pension funds? Should we give scholarship funds to a student studying, let’s say, social justice, and then tell that student not to worry where that money came from?

Continue reading Ethical investing isn’t as easy as it sounds

Two are in Ontario

Startup Genome has released a global ranking of Startup Ecosystems and three of the top 20 entrepreneurial cities are in Canada. The ranking is based on eight components: startup output, funding, company performance, talent, support infrastructure, entrepreneurial mindset, trendsetting tendencies and ecosystem differentiation. Toronto is eighth, Vancouver is ninth and Waterloo, Ont.—the only small city on the list—punches above its weight class at 17th.  Here are the top 10:

Continue reading Three Canadian cities on Top 20 Startup Ecosystems list

Doesn’t he remember SlutWalk?

Following a string of sexual assaults on female students in Toronto, a street preacher told The Toronto Sun that be believes the attacks happened because Canadian laws “give too much freedom to women.” Al-Haashim Kamena Atangana is a 33-year-old Islamic convert connected to the Muslim Support Network. He can often be heard preaching at Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square.

Atangana, who is planning to hand out literature on the topic, wrote to The Sun asserting that women get raped because of the way they dress. He also proposes Toronto become “the first city in North America to introduce laws that would make it illegal for women to dress provocatively.”

Sound familiar? It should. It’s a more extreme version of what Toronto Police Constable Michael Sanguinetti told an audience at York University last January—that women shouldn’t dress like “sluts” if they don’t want to be victimized. Atangana remembers. He praised the officer in his e-mail.

But apparently he doesn’t remember how it ended—with the public shaming of Sanguinetti and the global SlutWalk movement. Women and their supporters marched in provocative clothes to assert their right to dress however they wish without fear of being sexually assaulted. The marches hit a collective nerve, spreading from Toronto to faraway places like London and New Delhi.

With people like Atangana out there, it’s clear SlutWalk’s work isn’t over yet. I hope he’s prepared for feminists in short-shorts. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t see a few more of them in the future.

Male suspect had phone in his hand

Security camera footage from Toronto Police

Toronto police are looking for a man after several women reported seeing a male lurking in washrooms at York University over the past week.

Police say that on Jan. 9, at 6:05 p.m. two women in a washroom stall at Curtis Lecture Hall noticed a man reach under the stall they were in, holding a cellular phone. The man then fled. The next day at 8:30 p.m., a different woman walked into a washroom at Curtis Hall and saw a man looking over a stall. He fled once more.

The suspect is described as brown skinned, aged 20 to 25 years old, 5’8″ to 5’9″ high with a thin face and chinstrap beard, dark eyes and black hair. He was last seen wearing a grey knitted sweater, blue jeans, grey shiny sneakers with two straps and a grey toque.

But gov’t won’t track race of teachers

In Toronto’s Peel Region, where 57 per cent of people are minorities, South Asians are demanding more non-white teachers. “We’re still seen as outsiders, we’re not part of the team because schools are kind of clique-ish to those who aren’t Caucasian,” teacher Krishna Nankissoor told the Toronto Star. He had complained to the Ontario Human Rights Commission after failing to be promoted, but since made a deal with the board. Tony Pontes, the director of education for Peel Region told The Star that it takes time to get more minority teachers. Dean Alice Pitt of York University similarly explained that although the supply of teachers in recent years is very diverse (33 per cent at York) boards aren’t hiring much, so the face of classrooms is changing slowly. The Ontario Ministry of Education told school boards earlier this year to make equity a focus in hiring, but the government will not force boards to track the races of teachers.

Job action could be taken Thursday

School bus drivers in Toronto could be on strike as early as Thursday. Members of CAW, local 4268, have voted 91 per cent in favour of job action. According to CAW, which represents more that 600 drivers, who work for the privately owned Stock Transportation, the dispute is centred over discrepancies between total hours worked and compensation. Stock provides bus services for schools in Toronto’ north and east regions. “Our members deserve to be treated fairly. They provide a crucial service for the city’s education system, including for the largest school board in the country,” union president Debbie Montgomery said.

Jewish Defence League to hold event to counter Israeli Apartheid Week

The Jewish Defence League of Canada has announced it will be hosting an event called “Islamic State Apartheid Week” in Toronto next week. Its stated goal is to “counter the campus lies against Jews and highlight the truth of Islam,” as well as “expose and confront the Israel bashers and Jew haters during IAW [Israeli Apartheid Week].”

Sounds like this all should go off without a hitch, no?

So far, it seems the program consists of protesting IAW events. The first gathering is scheduled for Tuesday, March 8, to protest a screening of “Jaffa the Oranges Clockwork,” which (to add another twist) is being sponsored by the Ryerson Student Union. Two more protests–one at the University of Toronto and another at York University–have been scheduled so far.

As of yet, just over 100 people have confirmed attendance on Facebook.

Students in Toronto, Calgary are proving that authority still rests with the governed

This has been a good year for students wielding power over their administrations. A high school student in Toronto, suspended for speaking his mind to the administration, got the school and local media on his side and had his record cleared. Two students at the University of Calgary criticized a professor online, but a court cleared them.

It hardly even matters what the students at the University of Calgary were speaking out about. As it has it, the kick-off was a relatively childish Facebook group about a disliked professor. But it quickly turned into a story about a university pushing its students around arbitrarily without regard for their rights or due process. The students saw this and asked a court to side with them. On Oct. 12, 2010, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench saw fit to do so, ruling that the students’ Charter rights had been infringed.

In Toronto, the situation never escalated quite as far, but was no less dramatic. After a 17-year-old soccer player voiced his concerns about support for the school’s teams at an assembly, his school banned him from athletic activities and suspended him for two days. The heavy-handed and blatant act of censorship did not go unchallenged. Parents, fellow students and media outlets across the city quickly rose to his defence. Inside of two weeks the school’s administration backed down, reinstating the student’s privileges and allowing him to return to class.

He’s now trying to expunge the suspension from his record as he prepares to apply to university, and it seems he has support on his side again. While his principal has said it won’t be an easy feat, if precedence is any indicator, I don’t think he’ll have a problem realizing his latest ambition.

In a year where we’ve heard much about heavy-handed government from WikiLeaks, G20 abuses and corporate scandal, that the power of the people can still be wielded, and wielded with courage, is itself encouraging.

These are students who showed incredible courage and wisdom. They recognized that they had been wronged, and recognized the most effective avenues for correcting those wrongs. But what these examples demonstrated most effectively was the power of the people when they come together.

When media outlets and hundreds of supporters rally behind a cause, it cannot be ignored. A mentor of Russell Crowe’s Gladiator said it best: “Win the crowd and you will win your freedom.”

Even Barbie in this summer’s Toy Story 3 was on to this idea. “Authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from threat of force!” she declares in the film.

And while there is much to be sorrowful in this world, as 2010 nears its end we can be thankful that it is still our consent that is required above all else in government. And we are still free to withdraw that consent, whenever we see fit, so long as we have a few friends to stand with us.

Crown withdraws charges over lack of police warrant

The Crown has dropped charges against about 100 people arrested during a police raid at the University of Toronto during the G20 summit.

Police entered the Koffler Student Centre and the Graduate Students’ Union facilities back in June without a warrant (whoopsies), and arrested a number of activists after discovering several “weapons of opportunity.” These weapons included rocks, bricks and sharpened sticks, which—yes—are fairly ubiquitous, but call me cynical if I don’t believe the GSU had planned a sort of hut-building orienteering exercise for out-of-towners during the G20 summit weekend. The activists, many of whom were from Quebec, later accused police of profiling them because of their province of origin.

For all of our coverage of this story, please click here.

In any case, the Crown has withdrawn the charges since police didn’t have a warrant for the raid. According to police spokesperson Meaghan Gray, the police didn’t believe they needed one, citing “reasonable and probable grounds” for the arrests.

This incident is one just among a slew of G20 humiliations on all sides of the debate, including gross overspending ($334,000 bill for sun screen, bug spray and hand sanitizer, for example), vandalism of public property, mass detention of peaceful protesters, and even a police officer threatening the arrest of a woman blowing bubbles.

But why the GSU thought it a good idea to turn its gym into a makeshift hostel during the hyped-up G20 summit, especially when the campus was pretty much shut down, is beyond me. Why the police decided to raid the area without a warrant, however, also leaves me scratching my head. Unfortunately, neither scenario is surprising.

Photo: Police car set on fire by G20 rioters at Bay and King

Dorms face a ‘major problem’ and when kids come home, you could too

Imagine you’re a bedbug—a creepy nocturnal creature, maybe no bigger than an apple seed, that craves human blood. Times are good for you right now in North America. DDT once rendered your species a distant memory, a revolting relic found only in children’s rhymes. But you’ve evolved immunity to the short-lived, environmentally friendly insecticides of today, and you’re on the march. So where would you prefer to nest and spread your progeny? You’d look for a communal setting, one where people are frequently moving and swapping furniture. Tidiness is a minus; substance-induced inertia a plus. The ideal host population would include sheltered young people who have never seen a bedbug or learned to recognize its excreta.

“Universities are in the line of fire,” declares Don McCarthy, president of Braemar Pest Control in Bedford, N.S., and board member of the Canadian Pest Management Association. “You’ve got transient populations. You’ve got a lot of the social aspects that come with being at university—your buddies come over and sleep over; everybody’s going back and forth to parties and study sessions. There is not a major university anywhere in North America that does not know this is a major problem, whether or not they have it.”

There is no evidence bedbugs can transmit disease, and their whole modus operandi is to be noticed as little as possible. But news of their presence can ward off visitors and clients as effectively as any plague—as retailers are discovering in New York City, where flagship stores for franchises such as Niketown and Victoria’s Secret have had to close temporarily to address infestations, and as Toronto learned in August when a mere Internet whisper had Toronto International Film Festival organizers double-checking venues.

News of on-campus infestations occasionally slips through to public notice. Ryerson University in Toronto has had intermittent problems dating back to at least 2006. The same is true of the University of Alberta, which had to evacuate and treat the entire 20-storey Newton Place residence in 2008. McGill was hit tornado-fashion in 2007 and 2008, with New Residence Hall, MORE House, and Solin Hall all affected. The University of Calgary admits to a steady “one or two cases per year,” according to spokesman Grady Semmens. Humber College in Toronto is following up a positive finding last month with a campus-wide sweep of residences using bedbug-detecting dogs.

At Simon Fraser University, bug-sniffer dogs have become a familiar sight; the school uses them pre-emptively, checking every residence once a year shortly after the start of classes. “SFU has not been immune to the bedbug problem,” says Chris Rogerson, associate director of residence life. “No multi-unit housing provider is.”

But Rogerson emphasizes that universities enjoy advantages that private apartments or social housing don’t. “Universities have departments like mine whose job is to educate tenants, dispel myths and misconceptions, and organize quick reactions to problems,” he observes. “We encourage early reporting, and our attitude is, address the bug, not the person.” That’s why the dogs are brought in after the students arrive. “We don’t get into saying, ‘Well, the unit was clean before you got here.’ The best defence is to make sure there’s no stigma attached, so students don’t decide to suffer in silence.”

Routine pre-emptive inspections are becoming part of the arsenal for many schools, according to Mike Goldman, owner of Toronto’s Purity Pest Control and a pioneer of bedbug training for dogs. “Universities have to deal with students, but ultimately they also have to deal with parents,” says Goldman. (Some of those parents may be worried about secondary infestations acquired on home visits; bedbugs aren’t avid travellers, but they can be transmitted in laundry or other personal effects, a potential worry as thousands head back home for Thanksgiving weekend.) “Nobody wants to get the ‘What kind of school are you running over there?’ call.” Dogs can detect live bedbugs super-accurately, but Goldman says they work better when students are given advance notice to tidy up and minimize distraction. “They’re bedbugs,” he says. “The dog and I have to be able to get to the bed.”