CommunityOrganizer

To get to the actual topic which is has backing Wynne backfired on the public sector unions, the answer is certainly not. The 2014 election was between the Liberals and the Conservatives with the NDP polling well back in 3rd place. When Dalton McGuinty campaign in 2003 against Premier Eves and the PCs, he made 231 election promises on his website. But the two most significant ones were 1/ I will not raise your taxes and 2/ I will ensure labour peace in Ontario. Clearly, he did not keep promise number one inasmuch as the two biggest tax hikes in Ontario since WWII were introduced by McGuinty with the health care levy and the HST. But he did keep promise number two and he kept it by providing then more than one million Ontarians in the greater public sector with raises of two to three times the inflation rate while the poor unwashed schmucks in the private sector who ultimately fund this profligacy were experiencing mostly recessionary times requiring eliminating jobs, freezing or cutting wages and benefits and if you were really lucky pay increases in the 1-2% inflation range. This has resulted in today the greater public sector gobbling up over 55% of the Ontario budget in pay, perks and pensions, the doubling of the Ontario debt and the incursion of deficits which now are greater than the combined deficits of all the other province and the federal government, and economic growth and job creation near the bottom instead of the top of the provincial pack. So no, the unions were not wrong in terms of their narrow and short term self interest to blow millions of advertising dollars demonizing the Conservatives and to facilitate thousands of public sector workers campaigning for the Liberals and to help ensure that this huge voting bloc remained loyal to the political whores who bribed them for a decade. Had the Conservatives taken power, they would actually have taken steps to stop the gravy train and to govern for the 75-80% 0f Ontarians who still do not work for the greater public sector. Oh, The Horror!

WIP ... You can google Dr. Levin who was the big cheese in the education department, the DM, when Wynne was the minister and you will find that he has already pleaded guilty to several of the charges against him and that he at the very least as the DM set the focus and tone for the previous sex education curriculum review which was so opposed by the general public so close to an election that the Lieberals withdrew it and no mention of any new sex education curriculum was made when they with monopoly public sector union support managed to inveigle the voters to re-elect them in 2014. - I would argue firstly that in fact it IS up to the parents - not to big brother government and/or to monopoly public sector lefty union grifters aka teachers - to teach (hopefully in large part through example) their own children about sex and moral values and social mores and related things. - However, you make a good point about the pervasive influence these days of the internet and the media generally in influencing kids on social matters and behaviour including in the realm of sex. - Accordingly, I am not opposed to updating the sex education curriculum in Ontario as long as serious efforts are made to ensure that updates in such a highly intimate matter are made with real consultation with and consensus from real Ontario parents across the province not just friends of Kathleen and Levin from the inner city of Toronto. - Now, had this really been done, I have no doubt whatsoever that the new curriculum would not be the same as the one just introduced in outline form. Rather, the new curriculum would 1/ introduce some of the sexual behavioural topics and practices in the later years of the elementary school curriculum and 2/ be at least a bit more muted and less strident about homosexual and transgender and bisexual and questioning (?) and transitional and other fringe (i.e. less than 5%) sexual orientations and behaviours. - Of course this is anathema to the CBC and the really cool and smart (i.e. left wing) people in downtown Toronto and it was not introduced as part of the Liberal election platform last year because it is more than likely that most people across the province would have opposed the curriculum now being introduced. - Look, where you stand depends in significant part on where you sit because where you sit largely determines what you see. If, for example, you are gay like Wynne is and into young male pornography and sex like Levin is or was and if you live in the hip and trendy part of the province in downtown Toronto (such as in Cabbagetown or The Annex or the Church Street area as I used to in the latter two locations) then you assume that "the love that dare not speak its name" which has now become "the love that won't shut the F up" is completely normal practice. And if you are influencing the drafting of a curriculum covering sex education your perspective will prevail. But it is not the perspective of the majority of Ontarian adults across the province and so it should not be used to teach said Ontarians' kids in an area that heretofore was their domain not the government's province. - So yes I'm OK with a revised sex education curriculum but this one would do with some significant tweaking to reflect the views of the majority of adult Ontarians (i.e. the majority of parents). - As to your other comment about the high STD and teen pregnancy rates in the US being mainly related to the lack of proper sex education down there, if you drill down on the stats you will immediately see that the primary correlations are three related ones - the first is racial (blacks), the second is no father figure in the family, and the third is poverty in that order (i.e. the majority of poor people have dignity and live accordingly). No matter how much sex education the schools may provide, some 3/4 of black children will continue to be born out of wedlock so long as the family unit continues to disintegrate.

jacee ... To suggest that protesters blocking a road would after Bill C51 now be labelled ipso facto as terrorists and that PM Harper would advocate water boarding of such people or of anyone else is crazy talk. If you don't realize this, my sincere advice to you and also my hope for you is that you secure professional help. As for me, I am not going to waste my time replying to crazy talk albeit that others may indulge you in this regard. Good luck, Madam.

jacee ... My apologies because I can't figure out the quote mechanism here so I can't reprint/quote your post responding to mine. - Please be more specific and I'll try to respond to your question. You ask if I agree with the oversight provisions of these countries regarding their anti-terror laws and practices and whether I would like similar oversight provisions governing the implementation of Bill C51. I can't answer this question unless you tell what oversight provisions and what countries you are referencing here. - I will say that I certainly favour an independent and engaged and qualified group and process to ensure adequate oversight. Currently, the disagreement seems to be between a government that thinks an independent board of qualified members is better suited to ensure proper oversight than is a parliamentary committee of partisan political party hacks looking first and foremost to embarrass the government. Many people would contend that politicians should and even must be the ones who make laws but that politicians by the nature of their partisan roles may not be the best ones to objectively ensure oversight of implementation. Perhaps we need both means of oversight, I am not sure on this point. But what countries were you referencing and what provisions did you have in mind?

In actual fact, and in spite of the Charter and the desire of lefties to be governed mainly by unelected and unaccountable SCC judges interpreting the Charter as they decree seems fitting at the moment, current security law enables suspects to be held for up to 3 days without charges and the new anti-terrorism law will lengthen that to 7 days. This compares rather benignly with recent UK anti-terrorist legislation enabling the holding of suspects without charges for up to 28 days and with other Western jurisdictions, for example Australia whose recent anti-terror legislation makes Bill 51 seem pretty much toothless. Perhaps the usual left wing knee jerk opponents of the current Canadian government might take the time to peruse the laws of other countries dealing with this increasingly global threat instead of limiting their reading to Peter Waterhole's Charter which was negotiated without the consent of the second largest province in the country and contained the seeds of judicial activism that several of the provincial signatories have subsequently admitted would have kept them from signing the new constitutional agreement had they known then some of what the Charter would spawn over the subsequent 32 years..

- To suggest that the middle level bureaucrats and consultants who worked on the nuts (no pun intended) and bolts of the new sex education curriculum paid no attention to the well known professional, political, policy and personal preferences and prejudices of the two people running the department is not a credible argument to anyone who has ever toiled in the middle or senior levels of public bureaucracies. Ambitious careerists trying to climb the greasy pole to their next promotion generally know what the top brass wants to hear and make sure they get to hear it. Mavericks tend to lose out in promotion competitions and eventually leave in frustration. This way the top echelons of the department can control the policy process even in those areas where they decline to stick their necks out on paper. Given the peccadillos of both the minister and deputy, it simply belies belief that the obvious and early attention to gay behaviour and normality and its supposed moral equivalency with heterosexuality was not at least implicitly influenced from the top. To believe otherwise is to believe, for example, that the same emphasis would have occurred with Mike Harris and John Snoblen (sic) running education in Ontario.

Guyser2 ... Thank you for your brilliant reply. It certainly convinces me of the rightness of your argument, albeit that it was a bit long winded for my taste. Keep up these cogent and credible contributions to this board. We're depending on you.

Does anyone here other than Michael Hardner seriously believe that Dr. Levin as deputy minister of education and with his intense and illegal fascination with child pornography and sexual behaviour and Kathleen Wynne as minister of education with her gay sexual orientation did not at the very least set - either explicitly or implicitly - the general focus and tone that governed the redraft of the sex education curriculum? And if they did not set the requisite focus and tone on such a politically sensitive and socially significant matter as this so obviously is, what in the devil were they doing in their highly paid and privileged positions?

Not until at least grade 3. I wonder if they are using the draft sex education curriculum written during the time that admitted child pornographer Dr. Levin was deputy minister of education and Premier Two Moms Ms. Wynne was the minister of education.

BD ... I suppose it depends who you ask. For example, the 200 plus MPs and senators in the Conservative and NDP caucus rooms on that Wednesday last fall who came within a few meters and one brave and skilled sergeant at arms of being slaughtered might answer in the affirmative.