Blue Like You

Archive for September 7th, 2007

And the question: “What is the Liberal answer to everything?”

James Wallace covers this quite nicely in “Grits offer 71 New Promises” (Sun). A comment in a previous post brought this column to my attention.

Grits are notorious for assuming that if they keep throwing money at a problem, it will be solved. Never mind analyzing the situation and making sure there are checks and balances and reliable strategies for determining successful results.

Wallace notes:

Results from the province’s Education Quality and Accountability Office show that despite $4 billion in new education spending over the past four years and a watering down of tests, student scores for reading, writing and math in Grades 3, 6 and 9 have plateaued for the past two years and fallen short of government targets.

No amount of money is ever enough if you don’t fix what’s wrong in government.

My reader adds:

However that’s because the lion’s share of the money spent went to ballooning a bureaucracy rather than on effective reading and math programs.

Ontarians should be very afraid that with yesterday’s promises the education premier is looking to bloat the ranks by billions more.

Quite so. The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, which has just released a report on the influence of teachers’ unions in Canada, would likely agree:

Among the report’s recommendations are that teacher compensation be tied to performance and that strikes and lockouts no longer be allowed as ways to resolve disputes in the public school system.

Despite its aggressive arguments aimed at Canadian teachers’ unions, the report is not meant to attack them, said Charles Cirtwill, the institute’s acting president. “This isn’t about killing unions,” Mr. Cirtwill said. “This isn’t about removing gains that have been made to protect individual teacher’s rights.”

According to Mr. Cirtwill, the simple, focused mandate of unions is to represent the interests of their members, which may or may not match that of the public. “The unions have the ability to use the dues to influence politicians. They have a bully pulpit from which to comment very aggressively on policy changes and they’ve been very effective at stopping policy changes which they do not support.”

Compensation tied to performance? Are they crazy???

Where’s that good old-fashioned entitlement ethic?

Seriously, can we really afford four more years of a left-leaning, union-pandering McGuinty government?

Just so you’re warned.

I wonder what Warren Kinsella is thinking this morning about the editorial from the national paper that frequently hosts his column?

Warren, how low can you go? Keep going buddy. Ontario will catch on.

This is worth a look too. The truth about evolution in Ontario curriculum.