MiddleClassCentrist

The teacher is suspended until the investigation completes, depending on severity of course. "She called me an idiot." vs assault, harrasment, etc. My mother-in-law was suspended because a grade 8 who didn't like her, told her parents that my mother-in-law had sent her outside in the winter without a coat as punishment. It never happened, no students corroborated but, the parents kept pushing for justice. No other teacher saw the student out in the cold, since the student would have been immediately send back in to get a jacket. It was in the "cruel and unusual punisment category" Another incident at my old high school. A teacher scolded kids in the class for using anti-semitic language on a repeated basis. The students got revenge by claiming that the teacher had made sexually suggestive comments to them. The students quoted the teacher as saying modern slang he didn't even understand. He was listed as a sexual predator threat in Children's Aid database and moved to another school. The police were never contacted. There was never even an incident reported with them. He wanted them to report it to the police because then he'd be cleared. Nope, there is a file that labels an innocent man who was simply trying to teach students to be respectful, a sexual predator risk. And all the system did was teach the kids that it is perfectly ok to lie, cheat, and steal your way to punish someone for trying to get you to be a human being.

There likely are unreported cases. I know of one case from when I was a student. The coach of the girls basketball/volleyball team. The girls loved him and talked about how cool he was all the time. He bought them booze, held team parties after school. He eventually went to work at Queens as a coach (where this behaviour is technically legal). Who knows, maybe he was reported and that's why he left. I have heard the saying that "once a teacher reaches a certain age, their pay should start going down". There comes a point where teachers are no longer effective. Not all teachers are bitter, I liked almost all of my teachers.

From an economic point of view. It costs more to run two school systems. - Twice the beaurocracy. - Wasted funds for infrastructure. - School buses go to one school half full, and go to the catholic school across the street half full. This is especially a problem in rural boards where transportation is a huge money sink.

http://www.oct.ca/PublicRegister/Default.aspx?lang=en-CA -> Search the name of any teacher. You can also use it when your child is in High School to ensure that the teacher of your child is qualified for the specific subject they are teaching. (Important for Math and Tech subjects) All they need to do is list any required disciplinary action that parents would need to know. If a teacher was found innocent and no action was taken, nothing needs to be shown but if they are reprimanded it could be shown. Keep in mind, teachers recently received a notice that ANY relationship with the student outside of teacher/student is considered grooming. This included: Talking about your life outside of school, asking about the student's life outside of school. You can be reprimanded for saying "How was your weekend?" or saying "I took my son swimming on the weekend". It is considered grooming... They want teachers to be robots, not humans.

I wish more people understood how they exponentially benefit from a stable society and public infrastructure.

He's just taking his cue from right wing media.

Sensationalist is what it was. As long as they aren't listing completely innocent teachers convicted of no crime, I'm ok with this. In 2009-2010, there were 114,386.57 teachers. They were talking about what, around 100 cases a year... even a smaller number of those were serious. So 0.1% of all Teachers in the province have an accusation that is brought up in the OCT. For any workplace, that's extremely good. This few hundred includes theft of school funds, harassing colleagues, being accused of pulling a student away from a fight they were involved in unreasonably(yep, those too lol) and cases that were based onFALSE accusations against the teacher. Being related to teachers, all a kid has to do is accuse their Teacher of a sexual offense to have them removed from the school and listed as a 'sexual predator risk' by children's aid. This will happen with no trial, no jury and no judge will verify the facts. Children are right, adults are assumed guilty. They won't bring it to court because they know it didn't happen but make a note of guilt in the children's aid database. That should be illegal. What I found interesting in the Star research was that the most brutal cases were in the Catholic Schools. I want statistics on that to see if it was just a coincidence. All I can say is that I'm glad that I'm not a teacher. No one has respect for them anymore.

... I don't even know how to convey my level of disappointment in our government for this.

Shawinigan!

There is a reason Rogers and Bell are only really dominant to any degree in some parts of Canada for telecomm. They suck and can only exist/gouge with the CRTC's backing in the guise of protecting Canadian ownership.

As opposed to arbitrarily raising it to infinity as a company fails... It's up for discussion good sir. An executive's success relies almost entirely on the quality of people below them. Maybe setting it at a ratio of what it was in the 1960's or some other timeline before the divergence began to occur. All I'm saying is that we have examples of salary caps to improve the quality of a social construct. Putting a salary cap would encourage top earners to raise the lower wages in their company because finally, they'd have personal invested interest in that wage being higher. It would no longer be a number just to be cut at all costs. A war of the highly paid on the rest. From the other perspective, workers are the ones who actually generate the profit for a company. Why should they be paid 20x less because the company needs more of them to succeed? I'm just talking about it. I guarantee that this is an eventuality in a few hundred years and our current economy will have shifted toward socialist policies for wage and compensation. We can't have a far right capitalist economy running forever. Especially since the current goal in such an economy is now to roboticize and automate, eliminate jobs and reduce the pay of all jobs that aren't near the top over time through inflation. Just follow those trends, you can see where it's going... unless there is change to stop it.

I see your point of view but, I believe that is what EI is for. The transition between jobs. thousands of students work through their education every year. I worked 20 hours a week + 6 hours voluntering with a full course load. Student loans are available for people who are retraining, they dont need to go on welfare. Almost all welfare recipients have the skills necessary to be 'cart boy' or 'night shift restocker'. The only reason someone would stay on welfare (other than being disabled) for a long period of time is because they aren't willing to do those jobs. They'd rather get something for nothing than work at that level. These long term people are the people who should be actively giving something back by working "for free" for charities. Welfare recipients likely don't even need to be retrained. They are aiming for customer service/retail or any other low level jobs with 'no significant skill' requirement. This is the typical end goal. A low level job where a self-respecting person can become self-sufficient. I can't imagine ever burning all of my bridges and putting myself in a scenario where I would have be be on welfare. I'd grab a retail job, probably at a home improvement store or something at least somewhat close to my interest. When I think of potential long term welfare recipient, I think of my father-in-law. He burns bridges all the time. He has no where left to go. He burned the bridge with my wife and I the last time we took him in. His last stop is welfare if his current relationship fails and he... burns that bridge too. He refuses to get a job to supplement his income, even at a home improvement store (he likes to build things). He refuses to complete orders to sell the wooden products he makes because he wants to do work on his own time. He's technically retired... early(62) but doesn't have enough fixed income alone to support himself. He hates working underneath anyone who tells him what to do, called in sick repeatedly at his old job in his final years before retirment, took extended sick leave knowing that his pension was based on his last few years(And now why he doesn't have enough to support himself)... That, is what I think of when I think of someone who is on welfare long-term. Someone who is perfectly able to help themselves but, refuses to do so. A regular person who is willing to help themselves won't be on welfare for long. Where I'm coming from is, if you make it too comfortable for a welfare recipient, there is no incentive to get off their butt to make themselves self-sufficient. I still believe in a strong welfare program. I don't think it's too much to ask to have a long term welfare recipient start working "for free" with a charity to keep the cheques coming. I'd settle for that over a hard cap of 3 years for physically able individuals.

I do understand your example and it was a pretty good attempt to illustrate the issue. Except in your example you are applying a bad thing that affects a small group to a large group. We are talking about a good thing that applies to a small group being spread out, just a bit more over the large group. This is more like the NHL. Revenues of all teams are shared so that more teams can exist and reach more people on a balanced level. There is a salary cap to ensure that one team can't just buy up all of the talent and dominate the league, preventing anyone else from being able to reasonably compete. The example above is taking a good thing and spreading it out to improve the quality of a social construct and is more in line with our discussion.

Yeah. I think that most people see benefit in encouraging others to work harder to receive more compensation. The difference of opinion is what the that the pay variance should be limited at or what is reasonable. Communism is just a bogeyman pulled out to scare anyone who makes more than the average income. Someone could argue that a CEO's pay should be capped at 10x the lowest salary in the organization, for example. 10x the compensation could be enough incentive to do the job.

Sometimes it seems like we have certain people like that on these boards... I mean there are people who are ideologically conservative or progressive on these boards who are perfectly reasonable to argue with in discussion.... And then there are the party/ideologue parrots who contribute nothing to discussion, just continue berating everyone with the same old irrational, plugging fingers in ears "lalalalalal" I'm not listening to you but you are wrong anyways. Paying someone $10/hour(If in Canada) to spam internet boards is cheap. I just wish they were easier to expose.

I'm more interested in seeing whether people care in 3.5 years. Harper has done nothing risky but, is still helping put us in the hole. Spend provinces money on a low risk crusade of being "anti-criminal". He'll try to blame this on the Provinces.

I think the fact that the Liberals and then the Conservatives pilfered the EI fund... And now the suggestion is that we raise contributions, is more concerning.

I talked about how corporations should fail in the free market instead of being propped up by government... in response he called me a communist. Frankly, I don't understand the logic. Must make sense in CPCFTW's version of conservatopia... Where the free market is giving tax money to business and cutting services for the poor.

What Christmas is All About

You need to review the concept of paying back. It's not like I can pull the same trick at my bank and reduce my mortgage because they are making money off of me. Because it's not actually paying back. Ideologues like yourself use it as an excuse to give corporate kickbacks.

I think it's cute that when I argue free market principles, CPCFTW calls me a communist.

Because that was an original game. Not another Scrabble knock-off

Advernews. It annoys the crap out of me. The viral news subset is usually subtle that someone wouldn't notice it unless they are thinking about it. I wouldn't be surprised if this was somehow set up by Zynga. I've seen CBC do a lot of advernews in their technology section. Overtime you learn the favourites and I wonder if/how much CBC is being compensated for the advertisements masquerading as news.

Source? Proof? It would help mediate discussion.

I didn't even catch that. I am more irritable toward software and tech viral campaigns and advernews so it stood out.