Thursday, February 26, 2015

Education: Honesty and report cards prove a toxic mix, by Catherine Porter

[Editor's note: This is what we are getting for our $24B in tax dollars ... Gobbledegook!]
If your kid was terribly scattered in class, would you want to know?
Or would you rather think he was “using planning skills with limited effectiveness.”
That’s how Ontario’s Ministry of Education suggests teachers write their report cards for kids getting D’s. They aren’t struggling, floundering, falling behind. They are “demonstrating limited understanding of content.”
I call this edu-speak. The ministry calls it a “positive tone.”
Watch out. I’m writing about the impenetrable language of report cards again. My last column triggered dozens of emails and phonecalls — many angry — from teachers.
“I don’t think anyone hates those report cards more than the teachers writing them,” emailed Debby Conderan, who retired eight years ago after 30 years teaching grades 3 to 8 in the Peel District School Board. “They are edu-babble at its best. None of it says what a teacher really wants to say.”
The dozens of working teachers who emailed and phoned concurred. None of them wanted to be quoted by name, for fear of reprisals. But all said they resent labouring for days over reports which in the end, communicate little. Their hands are tied by three things: conflict-averse principals, school board policies and angry mother-hen parents.
They were furious that Ryan Bird, spokesperson for the Toronto District School Board, had said teachers are “encourage[d] to use language that parents will understand.”
Most teachers told me in no uncertain terms that was not true.
One Toronto public primary school teacher described his first “straightforward” report card comments returning to his desk from the principal’s office. “I was told to be more empathetic to how parents feel about their own children, to re-phrase my wordings to be increasingly diplomatic,” he wrote in an email.
So instead of telling parents their kid was disorganized and his desk was messy, the teacher now writes: “Johnny consistently places his materials inside his desk in a random order. He is highly encouraged to adopt a more streamlined organizational style, so that during in-class work periods he is able to locate his documents with greater ease.”
One teacher sent me the Halton District School Board’s official teacher guide to writing “meaningful” report cards. Teachers, it states, must use “asset language” versus “negative or deficit language.” (The Toronto District School Board also prescribes “asset language” to “encourage students without being blunt or negative,” says superintendent Beth Butcher.)
An example? Instead of writing Jill “inconsistently writes in her personal journal,” the Halton guide instructs teachers to write: “With encouragement, she sometimes communicates ideas clearly in complete sentences.”
“I can’t be honest,” the teacher said over the phone. “Everything has to be positively written.” ... More


Saturday, February 21, 2015

Ontario surplus power exports cost consumers about $25 each in January

My hydro bill was $421, and I'm not even there.

In Ontario, people do laundry in the middle of the night; in New York they say, hurray for cheap power from Ontario!
In Ontario, people do laundry in the middle of the night; in New York they say, hurray for cheap power from Ontario!
New York: WE love Ontario’s cheap power—thanks!
Ontario’s neighbours are once again thanking the electricity customers of Ontario for their generosity and giving spirit, as demonstrated in January 2015.  What a nice way to start the New Year, getting all that cheap electricity generated by their Ontario neighbours!
In January Ontario exported 2,043,768 megawatts (MWh) and for an average price of $29.55 per/MWh while Ontario electricity customers picked up the additional costs of the Global Adjustment pot of $50.68 per MWh.
The sale of that surplus (enough to supply about 2.5 million Ontario homes with power for the whole month) represented 15.6% of Ontario’s total demand. It resulted $58.5 million in revenue but cost Ontario electricity ratepayers $164 million.  That means all Ontario’s electricity customers reached into their pockets to make sure that wind and solar power developers like Florida-based NextEraEnbridge and Germany-based wpd Canada, and others were fully compensated for all the power they generated (or didn’t generate) and was probably exported.
The $106.5 million extra that Ontario’s kindly ratepayers paid in January was about $25 for each ratepayer so it will hardly be missed unless you are a senior on a fixed income, living at the poverty line, have a family to feed, or are disabled.
So, Ontario ratepayers, do you think we can keep this up for the full year?
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©Parker Gallant,
February 19, 2015
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent Wind Concerns Ontario policy.
P.S. Upset about the role of wind power in Ontario’s electricity sector and its effect on our economy? Time to make your voices heard —join Wind Concerns Ontario!

Monday, February 16, 2015

Did you know?: The cost of electricity in Ontario has been steadily falling to 2.25 cents per kwh.

That’s right. The cost of electricity has been falling. What has steadily been going up, and what shows up on my and your hydro bill, is subsidies (‘corporate welfare’) paid to producers to stay profitable. The producer then produce more electricity which lowers the price of electricity and increases the subsidies.

For example, the private outfit that is about to destroy Bala Falls will also receive $100M in subsidies for the first 40 years to stay profitable.

Meanwhile, Ontario then dumps the surplus electricity in New York and Michigan at a loss – i.e. below the 2.25 cents.

Listen to this audio clip from Hunters Bay Radio to get the details.

https://soundcloud.com/hunters-bay-radio/green-tapestry-alan-turnbull-january-29-2015-complete


[Just received my Ontario hydro bill for January - $421. The point is I'm not there, and my thermostat is set at 15C - or about 60F. Imagine what it would be if it was set for 72F!

I posted yesterday that the price of electricity has fallen by 46% in the past 7 years to 2.25-cents per kwh. So why is my hydro bill so high? Subsidies. Subsidies paid to the producers to meet guaranteed prices. These subsidies have risen by 1,215% over the same period.]


Save the Bala Falls!

Save Bala Falls! Click on the photo to sign the petition.

The Bala falls is the one and only iconic heritage of the charming, historic town of Bala, Ontario. It has been used as a portage by Native voyagers on their way to Lake Couchiching and back, as well as fur traders, and explorers. Its significance lies in its connection to both the past and present, and once gone it cannot be replicated or replaced.

However, now the province of Ontario, together with a 'for-profit' outfit, is pushing through a plan to destroy Bala Falls as we know it. Why? For the purpose of making more money.

So how much is heritage worth? To a cynical, uncaring, avaricious government, apparently not much. But to the people of Bala it is priceless.

Even if you are not from the Bala or Muskoka areas, but have a concern for history, heritage, and the environment, sign on those principles. This is a wider issue than just one.


Thursday, February 12, 2015

Boycott the foreign-owned monopoly, 407 ETR

Boycott the foreign-owned 407 ETR...
The following is a reprint of an email I received in my box, and it certainly merits your consideration.
You can drive the 400-mile length of the New York Thruway (I-90), from Buffalo to New York City, a toll road with fully staffed toll booths, for peanuts. Actually 2.1 cents per km. No accounting fee and no video fees.
Then there is the cost of driving across the top of Toronto on Hwy 407; everything is electronic and automated, drivers pay for the camera operations and the billing costs in addition to the exorbitant toll rates, and the Ontario Gov. acts as 'enforcer' in collecting the unpaid tolls!
Even Al Capone and his crew never had it as good as this during the bootleg liquor days of the 1920's and 1930's!
I thought you might like to read this, it's a real eye opener, what a rip-off!
In the early 1990's Ontario was almost bankrupt under Bob Rae's NDP government. But it desperately needed new roads, as it still does today. So, the Rae government built a toll road around Toronto and it was a great success - a cash cow called the 407 ETR.
The Conservative government of Mike Harris then later foolishly leased this road for 99 years to a Quebec-based company for a substantial amount of money. This was in May 1999, and was done to reduce the deficit and look good.
Before the Harris government could lease the road, however, they had to pass new legislation to allow this, because never before had a public road been sold to a private company. This very flawed legislation was passed in November 1998. The new Quebec owners then closed the deal.
This Quebec company then sold the road at a profit to Spanish owners, thus assuring that profits from the road would never be taxed in Canada.
As part of this deal, the Ontario government agreed that individual license plate renewal would be denied if there were any outstanding tolls against that plate and its owner. Therefore, this arrangement, in practice, made our government a collection agency for a privately held, for-profit foreign consortium. In addition, the terms of the deal stated that there would be no statute of limitations on these bills and that they would never go away even if the citizen went bankrupt (or, in some cases. died.)

Even your income tax has a statute of limitations.

The 407 ETR refuses now, as then, to produce any photographic or other evidence, that what they bill is an accurate reflection of the offending vehicles presence on their roadway. There is no accountability, and OUR government still collects the SPANISH bills for them. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the Spanish company decides on the interest rate on these forever bills and currently it is 26.82 per cent compounded monthly but it varies based on the whims of the Spanish owners.

Moreover, there is a definite problem with who gets billed. In very short order after the sale of the highway, according to the media of that time, 100,000 citizens who had never been on the road had been incorrectly billed. The MPP's were deluged with complaints and so the Conservatives under then transportation minister David Turnbull told the private Spanish company to clean up their act. Until there was evidence of that happening their collection deal was cancelled. This was in 2000. However, in 2005 the 407 ETR went to court to reinstate its original sweetheart deal. The judge ruled in its favour even though this company still showed no accountability and still did not produce evidence of the legitimacy of its charges.
The government of Premier Dalton McGuinty should have appealed this decision but never did, and now the agreement covers any vehicle that is owned by the person who has an offending licence plate. So if you own six vehicles and one of them is alleged to have been on their road, your government will not issue any licence plates for any of your vehicles until you pay the 'alleged bill' at your government licence office.
Rising tolls are the discretion of the Spanish consortium
The toll in 1999 was seven cents a kilometre, but since then it has risen to 19.85 cents (an increase of 238% in a decade and a half).
There is also a monthly accounting fee of $2.50 and a video charge of $3.25.
That is far beyond the rate of inflation and there is no control on how much this foreign company can charge.
The tolls here are higher than anywhere that I travel. This road is simply built through cornfields, whereas in Mexico or Italy there are mountains, tunnels, bridges, etc., and still those countries have substantially lower toll fees. The current toll in Mexico is 13 cents per kilometer, but that includes automatic medical coverage for everyone in the vehicle.
With all the road taxes we Ontarians pay, the last thing we ever expected was a toll road.
We need to buy back this road and break the deal with this consortium.
I find this whole arrangement both offensive and intimidating.
If any Canadian government is going to collect for any privately held company, change the rules on the statute of limitations, etc., then it had better collect for all private companies on the same terms. This current arrangement discriminates against all other private companies.
STAY OFF THE 407 AND STARVE THEM OUT OF EXISTENCE!