Source: CBC News: Saskatchewan Tuition Increase Highest in CanadaSource: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: Paul Gingrich: After the Freeze: Restoring University Affordability in Saskatchewan Source: Macleans OnCampus: Sask. NDP Commit to Tuition FreezeSource: Macleans OnCampus: Saskatchewan Party Pledges Affordability Source: News Talk 650: Wall Reacts to NDP Post Secondary PlatformSource:
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frances Russell laments the state of Canada’s Potemkin Parliament (and the resulting harm the Cons are inflicting on our political system and our country alike): Poll after poll show a majority of Canadians regularly confuse their parliamentary system with the American presidential-congressional system.
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: A Little Bit of Moonlight Limelight
There’s a whole bundle of things we need to talk about, so lets get right down to it. Last weekend, a note from a charity rocked Parliament Hill by asking Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau to return $20,000 from a speaking engagement that they said failed to produce results and left
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Warning to Tories: It’s not just Trudeau any more … it’s open season on public speakers!
Dave Rodney, the only Conservative MLA for Calgary Lougheed ever to have climbed Mt. Everest twice, or once, for that matter. He is an inspirational speaker. Really. Below: The young Justin Trudeau. Below Mr. Trudeau: The young G. Gordon Liddy and your blogger, also young. Is that 1970s moustache action
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Saskatchewan: A beachhead of labour law reform?
By: Andrew Stevens | First published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on May 3, 2013: Sweeping changes to Saskatchewan’s labour relations and employment standards legislation are on the verge of being passed. Bill 85, the Saskatchewan Employment Act, will dramatically transform the laws governing trade unions and industrial relations in the province. The
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Saskatchewan: A beachhead of labour law reform?
By: Andrew Stevens | First published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on May 3, 2013: Sweeping changes to Saskatchewan’s labour relations and employment standards legislation are on the verge of being passed. Bill 85, the Saskatchewan Employment Act, will dramatically transform the laws governing trade unions and industrial relations in the province. The
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Armine Yalnizyan makes the case as to why wealth equates to far too much power in Canada: The problem is not that the wealthy are too powerful. The problem is that, with rare exception, as their power has increased, it has not been
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – As would-be frackers show us exactly why it’s dangerous to give the corporate sector a veto over government action, Steven Shrybman suggests that corporations are mostly doing only what we’d expect in exploiting agreements designed to prioritize profits over people: Canadian businesses are
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Broadbent Institute’s “Union Communities, Healthy Communities” report discusses the significance of the labour movement in achieving positive social outcomes. And Rick Smith concurrently writes that the right’s attacks on unions represent a solution in search of a problem: (W)hen unions are
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: The "Rebel" Alliance
Perhaps I’m a bit late to the party, but this is an issue that I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about since it was mentioned. In the past few weeks, an issue that wasn’t on anyone’s radar made its way to the forefront of everyone’s minds when
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On giveaways
CBC reports some of the numbers surrounding the Wall government’s planned giveaway of the majority of Saskatchewan’s Information Service Corporation. But let’s take a closer look at exactly what Wall intends to do – and what the province is losing in the process. Let’s make the generous assumption that a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Someday, this could all be ours
Sure, we know that an undue obsession with standardized testing leads to incentives for administrators and teachers to cheat in order to give the impression of improvement. But that’s nothing compared to the impact on other parts of a child’s eduction which get shoved aside in the name of test
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Wall government is extending purely individual rights such as the right to privacy to corporations – and how that could lead to yet more corporate abuse in the future. For further reading…– The Hansard record from March 18 featuring Gord Wyant’s approval of corporate secrecy in
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Provincial Unrest
Alison Redford’s approval ratings have fallen to “Stelmachian” levels Angus Reid has released their quarterly Premier approval ratings. As per usual, Brad Wall is more popular than God, and everyone else is a little more human: Wall (SK): 64% approve, 28% disapprove Alward (NB): 41% approve, 50% disapprove Selinger (MB):
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On impending failures
Lest anybody see the high-profile Atlanta example of standardized testing fraud as an isolated incident, Valerie Strauss writes about how Sask Party-style mandatory testing has produced similar problems across the U.S.: In the past four academic years, test cheating has been confirmed in 37 states and Washington D.C. (You can
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Someday, this could all be ours
Yesiree, frequent standardized testing sure does help teachers focus on what’s most important… Ms. Parks admitted to Mr. Hyde that she was one of seven teachers — nicknamed “the chosen” — who sat in a locked windowless room every afternoon during the week of state testing, raising students’ scores by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ruy Teixeira discusses Branko Milanovic’s finding that on a global scale, income inequality is almost entirely locked in based on an individual’s place of birth and parents’ income: Milanovic asks “How much of your income is determined at birth?” The answer: 80
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Slightly Aged Column Day
Here, on how Brad Wall’s willingness to see the long form census scrapped suggests that his government’s push toward mandatory annual standardized tests for all students can’t be explained by any real interest in evidence-based policy – and how the move looks to damage students’ education in substance rather than
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics: J’accuse! Thomas Mulcair’s treason and the Keystone XL Pipeline.
TweetThe rhetoric is running high this week with President Barack Obama expected to soon decide the fate of the controversial TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline. In Washington D.C. last week, federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair criticized the pipeline that would ship bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands to refineries in Texas. Mr. Mulcair also
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jason Fekete reports on the growing recognition that tax evasion and avoidance are serious global problems – and the Cons’ attempt to be seen nodding at the issues. Needless to say, that posturing would be far more plausible if the same Cons weren’t
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