Critical Perspectives and Reflections

By: Bill Lee I have many concerns about the wisdom of the NDP action in announcing that they planned on voting down the Liberal budget proposal of recent memory triggering a likely election in Ontario. I have no less concern now that that election is well and truly upon us and I have had the opportunity to chat with other folks on the left who like me have been traditional NDP supporters. First of course is the potential for a Hudak victory and his voodoo neoliberal economic policy as well as his heartless ideas around firing civil servants and education workers (he wouldn't directly fire these folks, but cut the program funding that underwrites their employment) and thus disrupting service delivery. It is clearly not out of the question with the Conservatives poling with equal or ahead of the Liberals so far. Second, I gather from two NDP supporters with close ties to a couple of NDP sitting members and whom I respect a lot, that many in the caucus were upset with Horwath for the...

 By: Cecelia Lee  This is a photo of our son and his young daughter taken In December 2013. He is Anishnawbe and a status "Indian". We adopted him when he was three months old. We decided to adopt a Native child because many were in the care of the Children’s Aid Society at that time, with few likely to be adopted. Today thousands of children, Native and non-Native are in the permanent care of Ontario’s Children’s Aid Societies. Why are these children not getting permanent homes? Most likely it is because not enough people are choosing to adopt. Perhaps some reject the idea of adopting because the children available don't look sufficiently like them, or have biological parents who have very different ancestral backgrounds. Or some of the children may face mental, emotional or physical challenges. Though there are real barriers to adoption for people whose financial means is not sufficient to deal with some of these issues, for many who wish to be parents, ...

By. Barb Nahwegahbow Shawn Atleo’s resignation on May 2nd as  National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations was not the first sign that there’s something rotten in the state of the AFN.  Former National Chief Shawn Atleo in Toronto, April 2013] There were things happening at the AFN before Atleo came into power that the inner circle of Regional Chiefs, and indeed all of our First Nations Chiefs must have been aware of.  And if they were aware, why didn’t they do something about it?  Saskatchewan Regional Chief Perry Bellegarde expressed his surprise at Atleo’s resignation when he was part of a CBC panel on Friday, the day of the resignation. What? Surely, some of the Chiefs he represents had been vocal about their discontent with the education legislation supported by Atleo. In fact, then National Chief Atleo stood side by side with the Prime Minister for the big announcement.  Anyone with access to social media would have been aware of...

 By Bil Lee Prior to announcing that they would not support the Liberal budget (thus triggering an election over what was really a pretty left friendly Liberal program) the NDP in Ontario has been wasting a great deal of breath on hammering the Liberals over the "gas plant" scandal. Of course the Libs have been their old tricky and disingenuous selves in many ways and did waste a pile of money (and try to cover up how much) attempting to score some bi-election wins by cancelling the damn things. But the fact is the PC's and the NDP had both made a promise to cancel them if they got into power, so the money ws going to be wasted in any event. So it was all game playing, and pretty boring game playing actually. I am not against a solid critique of the Libs (except I continue to disagree on the utility of playing at the gas thing). My concern with role back of corporate tax breaks that Horvath has muted about as an election promise is that though I clearly support the ide...