Critical Perspectives and Reflections

By: BILL LEE There may be hope indeed that the Ontario NDP has learned from the last election performance. In a piece in the Toronto Star, (http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/09/12/andrea_horwath_what_the_ndp_learned_from_the_recent_ontario_campaign.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter ) the leader of the now third party in Ontario, Andrea Howrath writes: "It has been a long summer of reflection for me and for our party." and "There are important lessons to learn from our recent campaign." and again, "...our core values of compassion and justice remain the bedrock of our party and remain my heart and soul." All good and appropriately humble from the leader who took the NDP from Official Opposition to third party status. One point in her piece bothered me however, early on she states: "Some of our most committed activists couldn’t hear the values of the party that we love expressed clearly enough." Doesn't this appea...

Jim Ward One of the greatest challenges facing humankind in the world today is to recognize the importance of the collective. By the collective I mean any situation in which people join together with some kind of notion that this is for the good of all the members of that collective. The 19th century pioneer of sociology and anthropology, Emile Durkheim stressed the notion that to be human one has to belong to some group that is more than him/herself. For Durkheim someone with the human form raised by wolves in a cave would not be human. To be human is to be social. In essence this notion feeds into the left side of modern politics, where the right tends to believe it is all up to oneself and the left believes we are all in this together. When Hegel praised the German state for being the greatest achievement up to that point in human history, he had in mind a huge collective of several million people that eventually became, with some notorious ups and downs, the modern German nation-s...

By: Bill Lee Well, we will shortly have the Great Insane Boondoggle (aka the FIFA World Cup) upon us and at our throats. For one month and more the media will have non stop "coverage" and we will be inundated by over the top blather about the so called "Beautiful Game". I bet the publicity corporation that came up with that one made a bundle. The CBC I understand has won the booby prize of being the Canadian mouthpiece for the various games and its faithful listeners will be fed the usual codswallop that attends all the over -hyped zaniness. Beautiful game eh? It is not just that the game is slow and that players dive like Kingfishers at every opportunity that I object to. Indeed, I actually enjoyed watching my grandchildren play, it was good exercise too. But, the fact of the matter is, like many pro sports (but more so, much more so) soccer, and particularly the World Cup variety has millionaire players who play for teams owned by billionaires in...

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...

By Bill Lee   There has been a great deal of commentary on the death of Jim Flaherty the recently retired Minister of Labour in the Harper government, much of it around his "legacy". Below is an exchange of views that I had on April 12, 2014 with a woman on FB. I don't know the person but she took issue with my criticism of the "Flaherty legacy". I  think it demonstrates a problem of the political literacy level in Canada and ended in my frustration. I wish I had been somewhat more gracious. By the way, Lawlor is my real first name, while William is my second. Lawlor Lee Could not agree more. It may be that JF loved dogs, cared about his family and was good to his kids. But he participated in policies, indeed seemed the life and soul of so many of them, that devastated working class families - 21% cut in welfare rates in Ontario under Harris for example and the mania for cutting and taxes the deficit in a period of unemployment under Harper. So all the ...

By: Ernie Lightman I recently returned from a research trip to Israel where I met with colleagues on the left, both academics and community activists. It seems their universities are facing a gender-religion dilemma comparable to a recent occurrence at York University in Toronto. Remember the case of the male student at York – identity undefined but presumably Muslim or ultra-Orthodox Jewish – who was unwilling to attend a seminar at which women would be present? Well, In Israel, they have the same problem, only in reverse, and affecting large numbers of students. Many young ultra-Orthodox Jewish women, and observant Muslim women, want to attend university, specifically social work programs, but are unwilling (or are prevented by their families and communities) from enrolling in classes where male students will be present. That is to say, they demand special classes for women-only. Both these groups in Israel experience limited labour force involvement for a variety of cultur...

By: Bill Lee The recent publicity about Toronto's sort of Mayor Rob Ford and his enabler brother calling out the Chief of Police here as being biased in his duties by mentioning Ford by name in a couple of public interviews and indeed for investigating the Mayor at all has gotten me thinking. Not about his lust for publicity, of course he has that and is in constant campaign mode to boot. Not about him being a bully, of course he is a bully. Not that he is a privileged, dysfunctional individual with serious addiction problems. Of course he is all of those. It is the image of a deeply self-involved human being who has apparently not sense of the needs, feelings or rights of anyone else. But perhaps the most iconic image of Ford did not involve drugs, alcohol or berating other public figures. It was the image, caught on camera last November of this very fat man, our Mayor travelling at a surprising speed around the council chambers, looking not at all where he was heading or who m...