A Peel region school teacher has penned a candid letter pleading for help with the out-of-control violence, vandalism, threats and harassment at her Mississauga middle school.
The letter, obtained by lawyer and anti-woke activist Michael Teper, says Tomken Road Middle School is rife with “countless unsafe interactions on a daily basis” – directed at teachers, custodians, support staff, office administrators and other students.
The teacher says students in this Grade 6-8 school get in your face and tell you to “f-off.” They show over and over again that they are not willing “to uphold any decency” towards both staff and students, she adds.
It is not signed; however it could have been written by many teachers in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and other woke boards, where consequences for bad behaviour (starting with suspension and expulsions) have been replaced by a culture of coddling students who act out.
It’s all under the guise of addressing woke ideology like anti-black racism, oppression, colonialism, pandering to BIPOC students and calling out white supremacy – instead of providing a positive learning environment for all students.
I would venture to say that this out-of-control behaviour has been building over the past few years but has reached “crisis” proportions (as the letter writer puts it) because of a lack of strict oversight by the education minister and education directors who fancy themselves black activists first and educators second.
In fact, as we heard a few months ago the “hug-a-thug” policies of current TDSB education director Colleen Russell Rawlins – who came to Toronto from the Peel Board just two years ago – have exacerbated this state of chaos and violent incidents in several Toronto schools.
A report released last week says 323 TDSB students have been involved in violent incidents between last September and April, the highest since 2018.
The teacher gives a mere “snapshot” of the incidents involving students since last September at Tomken Road middle school – ones that continue to go unchecked.
She says some students defecate in the bathroom and rub their feces on the wall; leave class to get food at the nearest plaza; smoke and vape in corners of the school; steal the wallets and phones of other students; throw empty cups at teachers; bang down doors to get into washrooms or classrooms that teachers have barred and play loud music in the hallways to disturb classes.
The teacher indicates that students threaten other students and teachers with physical violence or will get into physical fights that are filmed and distributed.
She said some students are so scared to go to the bathroom they “soil themselves” at school.
The teacher says there are no consequences for this bordering on animalistic behaviour except for “restorative conversations” with the students and parents who are willing to come to the school.
Suspensions and expulsions are not handed out, and she says, “no one wants to intervene.”
The letter writer says staff are pleading with those who are accountable to return some structure at the school by banning cell phones and forcing students to be accountable for their actions.
“We need higher expectations and we need standards,” she writes. “We are desperately seeking consequences for bad behaviour.”
Talk about mob rule.
It is beyond comprehension that the ill-behaved, violent students in this school and others have been given a free pass to wreak havoc on innocent teachers, administrators and students.
It is even more obscene that the board’s administrators and trustees have turned a blind eye to the chaos.
That’s why when teachers unions, overpaid board bureaucrats and trustees insist it’s all about the kids, I don’t believe them in the slightest.
Pandering to violent criminal behaviour because it would be racist to mete out real consequences has been an absolute recipe for disaster.
Three Iranian men, after being subjected to torture, forced into televised confessions and denied due process, were executed Friday by Iran—all three for “modaraba,” an Islamic legal term meaning “waging war against God.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had no public reaction, but two years ago turned around his government’s approach to Iran as an unprecedented revolt against clerical rule.
The change had Trudeau saying his government would be taking stronger actions against members of the Iranian regime, “including ensuring that we go after them for any assets or homes that they have in Canada.”
That very same afternoon, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Transport Minister Omar Alghabra attended a rally in Ottawa, marking a thousand days since Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shot down Flight PS752 with a missile, killing 55 Canadians and another 30 permanent residents.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s embrace of Iran’s uprising had won him praise in the Iranian community. Poilievre personally attended and spoke at both the Ottawa rally and at a weekend march in Richmond Hill, Ont., attended by an estimated 50,000 people.
Trudeau, on the other hand, was criticized on Iranian social media for not appearing at any events related to Iran while finding time to go bungee jumping in the Gatineau Hills.
Even the left-leaning Toronto Star criticized the Trudeau government, calling its reaction “feeble” and “out of touch” on Iran.
“In the last few days, I think (the federal Liberals) realized the facts on the ground have changed, and also I think they’ve seen reactions from Iranian Canadians,” said Kaveh Shahrooz, a lawyer who organized the march in Toronto.
“The process of working with government is you keep pushing and eventually they give in to your demands.”
Shahrooz told CBC he’s aware the change of direction may have been motivated by Poilievre’s inroads with Iranian voters.
“I think that’s actually a very good thing, and that’s how democracy should work,” he said. “If one party is not being responsive to your demands, another party swoops in and speaks to your needs. And the argument I’ve tried to make to my own community, and I hope every other community follows suit, is, ‘Don’t let politicians take your vote for granted,'” said Shahrooz.
“If a politician ignores your demands, consider what the other party is offering. And I think the message got across loud and clear to the Liberal Party this week.”
In Iran, meanwhile, videos emerged online earlier this week showing many cars congregating around the prison area, with drivers honking their horns and chanting slogans in support of staying the executions.
The protests began in mid-September 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who was arrested by “morality police” in Tehran for allegedly not adhering to a mandatory dress code for women.
The demonstrations have largely subsided in recent months, though there are still sporadic acts of defiance, including the refusal of a growing number of women to adhere to the dress code.
London-based Amnesty International also criticized the cases.
“The shocking manner in which the trial and sentencing of these protesters was fast-tracked through Iran’s judicial system amid the use of torture-tainted ‘confessions,’ serious procedural flaws, and a lack of evidence is another example of the Iranian authorities’ brazen disregard for the rights to life and fair trial,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
At least 582 people were executed in 2022 in Iran, up from 333 the previous year.
A short message purportedly handwritten and signed by the three condemned men was widely published online, in which they said, “Don’t let them kill us.”
In the aftermath of Volkswagen’s contentious $13 billion subsidy for an electric vehicle battery plant, Stellantis has decided to halt the construction of its own Windsor factory. Seeking more government funding, Stellantis now finds itself at the centre of the corporate welfare debate. Macdonald-Laurier Institute domestic policy director Aaron Wudrick joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to dissect the reasons behind Stellantis’ decision, and examine the implications for the automotive industry and taxpayer-funded subsidies.
The City of Calgary is cancelling its massive Canada Day fireworks show and replacing it with a light show due to climate impacts.
The change is a pilot program to address cultural, community, and environmental issues the city claims are experienced with traditional Canada Day fireworks, said Franca Gualtieri, city manager of arts and culture.
The city further claims that the replacement light show will be a “visually stunning display of lights and sounds that will be launched from the main stage at Fort Calgary during the headliner act.”
“Over the next year, we’ll engage with citizens, community groups and cultural groups to collect feedback to understand Calgarians’ preferences for Canada Day programming, which will help guide future decisions around Canada Day fireworks,” reads a city news release.
Calgary Ward 13 City Councilor Dan McLean noted on Twitter that the city is asking for feedback.
“Personally, I love ending Canada Day celebrations with fireworks,” he wrote.
The City is asking for feedback on canceling Canada Day fireworks due to environmental and cultural concerns. Personally, I love ending Canada Day celebrations with fireworks! #yyccchttps://t.co/NJR6eTc2Xj
The city said there are cultural sensitivities related to ongoing efforts at truth and reconciliation with Canada’s First Nations. It says it believes the changes will mitigate disruptive traffic, noise, and overcrowding issues at city viewpoints.
The city also says a light show will be friendlier for wildlife, like birds.
The City of Edmonton came under fire this Christmas when it decided to replace its giant Christmas tree with a light show, also due to environmental impacts.
“The City factored in the cost and the environmental implications of cutting down and transporting a mature natural forest tree and decided to explore other opportunities to bring vibrancy to Churchill Square that would complement the new Holiday Light Up event being planned by the Edmonton Downtown Business Association,” spokesperson Karen McDonnell told True North in Novemeber.
Later, the city said Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi was subject to racist attacks over its decision not to have a tree.
The city declined to elaborate on the nature of the attacks, but one letter to the editor published in the Edmonton Sun and later deleted said the association should have adopted Canada “as is, not with the dream of making it what you chose to leave, or perhaps you shouldn’t have left your home country.”
Another letter shamed the mayor for cancelling the tree.
“Then to make matters even worse, he says that people who don’t agree with him are racist because they are upset,” the letter reads. “Once again, shame on you mayor.”
Polls show that the Alberta election is close. There is a real possibility that the NDP might unseat the governing United Conservative Party (UCP) and spend the next four years implementing their agenda with a majority mandate. I teach Grade Two in Calgary, so I have been paying close attention to the education record and policies of both parties. This series of essays seeks to draw attention to some concerns.
I first noted the NDP’s forceful, misguided opposition to a normal school reopening in September 2020, which history has shown to be a mistake. Thank goodness the UCP government followed the science and reopened schools as soon as the evidence showed it was safe to do so. Hopefully, we won’t have to deal with another pandemic anytime soon, so the NDP’s bad judgement on school reopening may not affect Albertan kids’ futures. But other concerns remain.
Notably, if elected, the NDP might make the historic mistake of undermining school choice and parents’ rights as the first educators of their children. These foundational principles of our education system protect kids’ well-being and promote student learning.
School choice and parents’ rights matter because parents almost always know their kids better than school systems do. I speak from experience. In my eight years of classroom teaching, I’ve learned that I while I deeply care about my students and want to do what’s best for them, I’m not able to do that as well as their parents are.
It’s common sense.
Each of my students is one of 24, or 26, or 28 others, depending on the year. I get to know them very well for one year, in the particular setting of a school, and then they move on to another teacher. Parents, on the other hand, have known their kids longer, in more settings, and will be their kids’ parents for the rest of their lives. If a teacher doesn’t know his students as well as their parents do, then what’s the likelihood that an administrator in the office or downtown at the school division headquarters does?
In my view, parents delegate their role as educators of their children to a school and its teachers. This delegation makes sense because there are many technical teaching skills that not every parent can develop or implement on their own, including everything from phonemic awareness and phonics instruction in the primary grades to advanced calculus at the end of high school. That’s why parents rely on professional teachers and well-run schools to support them while still expecting teachers to consult them when it comes to major issues in their kids’ development.
The implications of this delegation-based view are clear. When it comes to the big decisions – where should my children go to school? What type of school should they go to? What should they be taught about intensely personal subjects? How should they be supported in their social-emotional development?
Parents should be driving the decisions.
The Alberta education system puts this principle into practice through its school choice model. In addition to traditional public schools, parents can choose to send their children to constitutionally-guaranteed Francophone and Catholic schools without having to pay tuition. They can also send their children to a variety of independent schools whose tuition is kept very low through partial funding from Alberta Education. Increasingly, parents also have the choice to send their children to charter schools, which are tuition-free non-profit public schools that feature open enrollment and a distinct approach to learning but are governed outside the bureaucratic strictures of local school divisions.
The result of this school policy is that parents are supported in finding schools that are the right fit for their children. It’s a far better system than being stuck without choice or a voice in the school assigned to you based on your postal code.
This is where my concern about the NDP comes in.
Many of the party’s candidates have expressed skepticism about school choice and called for a one-system-fits-all approach to education, opposing Catholic schools, independent schools, and charter schools. In the last term, NDP caucus members voted against the UCP government’s Choice in Education Act, arguing it should be more difficult to establish new charter schools and that we should not enshrine the principle of school choice in law.
Moreover, their traditional supporters in the teacher’s union and the progressive lobby group Support Our Students have long campaigned for less school choice in Alberta. One wonders what kind of influence these groups will have in an NDP government, and how it could affect Alberta’s school choice landscape in the future.
In fairness to the NDP, their leader Rachel Notley has said that she does not plan to defund Catholic, independent, or charter schools, but instead just wants to focus new support to traditional public schools. This reluctant support of school choice reflects the success of the current model: charter schools, independent schools, Francophone schools, and Catholic schools all boost Alberta’s overall academic performance. It also reflects the success of the parents’ rights and school choice movement in our province. There is a voting constituency that has a real stake in the future of school choice, and the NDP risks their support if they are perceived as too opposed to it.
If elected, it’s more likely that an NDP government would seek to undermine the schools of choice already in place while making it harder to establish any new ones.
Here’s an example: several new charter schools were established in recent years, in part because the new Choice in Education Act lifted the cap on new charter schools and allowed them to apply for funding directly from the Ministry of Education. Previously, they had to apply to local school divisions, which are often reluctant to support alternative choices in their region and to rent out school sites that could otherwise be sold to private developers. Charter schools have benefited from administrative support and encouragement from the Ministry of Education in getting started and meeting the considerable demand for more choices.
Under the UCP, that support has been there. After all, philosophically, conservatives support parents’ rights and choice in education. Under the NDP, that support would likely be gone. Philosophically, they believe in more government control and their key supporters want a one-system-fits-all approach. Their commitment not to defund schools of choice is a reluctant one. It’s more a concession to electoral reality than a genuine commitment to school choice and parents’ rights.
One final example illustrates the concern I have about how the NDP thinks about parental rights in education. During their last term, the NDP brought in a series of measures to support Gay-Straight Alliances in schools. There’s been a lot of discussion of this issue and more heat than light has emerged from the media coverage. As a gay man myself, I want schools where teenagers feel safe and comfortable as they come to terms with their sexuality.
But I am concerned that some aspects of the NDP’s policies would encourage irresponsible teachers to drive a wedge between parents and their children. When last in government, the NDP sought to prohibit teachers from informing parents if their child was transitioning to a different gender identity at school. This worries me because in almost every case, teachers should not encourage kids to keep secrets from their parents. Most parents love their kids, know them best, and should be informed about issues in their lives.
In cases where abuse or potential for abuse is suspected, teachers should abide by their duty to report the issue to children’s services rather than encouraging kids to live double lives. Moreover, treating gender dysphoria in minors is complex. Teachers are not qualified in how best to support kids with this serious mental health condition. We should work to involve parents in the process of helping children who are grappling with these issues.
This is a common sense approach that reflects what most people want.
A recent poll showed that 57% of Canadians supported the idea that schools have a duty to report gender transitions to a child’s parents, with only 18% opposed. That the NDP went so far in the opposite direction when they were in government suggests to me that they truly do not understand the critical importance of parents’ rights in their kids’ educations.
In my view, school choice and parents’ rights as first educators of their children are important values that should be at the heart of our education system. These values help create and maintain quality schools, and they protect kids’ learning and overall well-being. In this election, voters should consider which party will uphold these values best as we continue building an education system worthy of our kids.
Liberal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault issued a veiled threat to provinces as the feds face a showdown over its Clean Electricity Standard, which would ban fossil fuel power generation by 2035.
While speaking on Wednesday, Guilbeault claimed that those not complying with his government’s new regulations would be in violation of the Criminal Code.
“We’ve regulated the ban on coal through (Canadian Environmental Protection Act), which is a criminal tool that the federal government has,” said Guilbeault.
“So not complying with this regulation would be a violation of Canada’s Criminal Code.”
Under the Clean Electricity Standard, provinces will be required to phase out coal-powered fuel by 2030 and natural gas afterwards.
Reacting to the minister’s comments, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said he would risk jail despite the threat.
“If someone’s going to jail. Come get me,” said Moe.
Saskatchewan relies heavily on natural gas and coal for its energy needs. According to the outlet Pipeline Online, the province saw 84% of its energy coming from those sources this last winter.
Earlier this week, Moe and Justice Minister Bronwyn Eyre accused the Liberal government of quashing provincial jurisdiction when it came to natural resources and energy.
“I’m not going to answer hypotheticals with respect to this. But it’s our interpretation that these decisions on how you produce power, most certainly are in the realm of provincial jurisdiction,” said Moe.
According to Eyre, the recently-passed Saskatchewan First Act could be employed to counter the federal government’s overreach.
“We can’t invest in powering this province – and keeping rates affordable as we do it – with these threats hanging over us. That would represent stranded assets to us and enormous cost for the people of this province,” said Eyre.
With Uber’s announcement this week that it is now permitting teenagers to open Uber accounts, we have to guess that either teenagers have changed in the decade since Uber launched, or Uber has changed. I am guessing it’s Uber.
In its early years, Uber offered a fulsome list of reasons why it did not offer account privileges to consumers under 18 years of age. These included legal considerations (some jurisdictions have laws and regulations that impose age restrictions on transportation services); safety concerns (including concerns about the ability of young passengers to navigate unfamiliar areas, and make appropriate decisions); liability and responsibility (allowing underage individuals to use the service without adult supervision could raise questions about Uber’s liability or duty of care towards these passengers); and driver comfort and discretion (many drivers feel uncomfortable transporting unaccompanied teenagers).
That was then; it appears now that the legal, safety, and liability issues must have been resolved (drivers still generally dislike driving unaccompanied teens).
At its May 17th“Go-Get Family Style” launch event, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stressed the company’s safety features which include dialling 911 in case of emergency (although, Uber’s Terms explain “In the event that you need to place a 911 emergency call on behalf of your teen, the dispatcher you’re connected with will see your location, not your teen’s.” How would that help?)
As a parent and a consumer, the sheer number of sexual assaults by Uber drivers in Canada and around the globe set alarm bells ringing.
As the publisher of Taxi News, I cringe recalling comments from an Uber driver who laughed that he didn’t drive for the money: “It’s to meet chicks, man, the chicks you meet at closing time!”
Only a few weeks ago, the Toronto Star reported that “Police are looking for an Uber driver who allegedly sexually assaulted a female passenger, then used her phone to give himself a tip and a positive review while driving her in Vaughan on Sunday.”
I vividly recall that in September 2015, police appealed to the public to locate an Uber driver in a sexual assault investigation. For all the technology and peace of mind theoretically offered in Uber’s high-tech app system, the driver had vanished and police were using old-fashioned news media to distribute a grainy photo on the evening news.
As recently as 2022, Uber’s own U.S. Safety Report showed that Uber received 3,824 reports across the five most severe categories of sexual assault and misconduct.
Anyway, onward and upward. I have friends who use Uber and who may think Teen accounts are great progress (even after one shared that her driver turned up at her front door hours after dropping her off to tell her he “had feelings for her.”) These folks are prime prospects market for Uber’s new campaign which will ironically cannibalize the public transit systems young people have traditionally relied upon.
“Uber has to find new markets,” explains Marc Andre Way, president of the Canadian Taxi Association. “Uber’s per-ride payments to the City of Ottawa are a fraction of what they were at their peak, which means ridership is really down.
“Going after teen riders will have very little impact on Taxis but will take yet another chunk of the transit ridership municipalities need to support their systems.”
(Dr. James Cooper’s study for the City of Toronto found that 49% of Uber riders came from transit systems, while only 5% came from private cars.)
It’s possible that the legal, safety, and liability issues that prevented Uber from offering Teen accounts them a decade ago have been resolved. It’s also possible that Uber, which has never yet generated a profit, has simply decided that the benefit of adding a new market segment with Teen accounts is greater than the risk of offering them.
Parents will also be making a risk/benefit assessment. They have a lot more to lose.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe made it clear in a recent interview that his government would put its foot down on federal plans to require the province to shut down all coal and gas power plants by 2030 and 2035 respectively.
While speaking alongside Justice Minister Brownyn Eyre, Moe told the outlet Pipeline Online that he firmly believes that power regulation is “within the provincial jurisdiction” and the federal government was overreaching.
“I’m not going to answer hypotheticals with respect to this. But it’s our interpretation that these decisions on how you produce power, most certainly are in the realm of provincial jurisdiction,” said Moe.
Minister Eyre called the requirements outlined under the recent federal Clean Electricity Act an “absolute infringement” on Saskatchewan’s rights to determine its own economic and energy future.
“I think also key to the letter and the message that we’re really putting forward. Now more than ever, you know, to the federal government, is that where there are those direct infringement on the province’s constitution, constitutional jurisdiction,” Eyre told the outlet.
“It really is time to make that clear, that over and over again, including most recently, with the Clean Electricity Regulations, we see an absolute infringement of provincial jurisdiction over power generation, over natural resources.”
Some analysts have suggested that the latest federal law will be another staging ground for a brawl between the federal government and provincial jurisdiction, potentially furthering western alienation sentiments.
Eyre has suggested that the Act could be one of the first things that a tribunal operating under the province’s recent Saskatchewan First Act could tackle.
“With that finding of the dollar figure, we would then keep options open to use that as evidence for a legal challenge to the federal government based on irreparable economic harm,” said Eyre.
“We can’t invest in powering this province – and keeping rates affordable as we do it – with these threats hanging over us. That would represent stranded assets to us and enormous cost for the people of this province.”
Canada’s Minister of Housing, Ahmed Hussen, whose job it is to make housing more affordable for Canadians, now owns two rental properties in the nation’s capital.
It smells like a conflict of interest, n’est-ce pas?
As the first federal housing minister — housing is actually in the swing plane of the province, not Ottawa — Hussen rhymed off within the first week of his latest cabinet appointment a slew of proposed actions.
“I think the first and foremost thing is to build housing supply,” Hussen said of his priorities during his first week of this latest portfolio in an interview with the CBC’s The House.
“It is to ban foreign ownership in our housing sector. It is to implement the promised tax on non-residential, non-Canadian vacant homes beginning in January 2022 and (make) sure that we, as a federal government … get together our other partners to ensure that they can leverage our upcoming investments to build more housing supply, but also to repair the existing stock and increase the capacity of organizations and municipalities to build more housing supply and more affordable housing.”
All this was being said while Hussen was quietly buying up a couple of rental properties.
As True North’s Lindsay Shepherd recently reported, when asked in the House by Kelowna-Lake Country’s Conservative MP, Tracy Gray, what the average rental price was for an apartment in her riding, Hussen flippantly replied, “It doesn’t matter.”
As Shepherd stated, “Hussen couldn’t even conjure up some faux empathy and offer a canned response about how rental rates across the country are unaffordable and not in line with current salaries — he could only offer indifference and deflection.”
And then, on March 23, he bought his second rental property, which his office insisted was rented out at below market rates.
However, Hussen’s handlers wouldn’t cough up the actual rent or reveal if his two properties were rented by family, friend or strangers.
Add to this the fact that, a year earlier, it was discovered that Hussen’s department had given a $133,000 grant to the Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC), an organization whose senior consultant has a history of antisemitism.
Fellow Liberal MP Anthony Housefather claims that he told Hussen about the consultant before the news broke, and that Hussen and his department could have moved quicker to cut the CMAC’s funding but failed to do so.
In 2017, Hussen was presented with the Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awards—he is from Somalia—an award that honours the achievements of immigrants who have chosen to make Canada their home.
Hussen was also presented with a Queen’s Gold and Diamond Jubilee medal. He also received the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Authority Award for his efficacious advocacy work in Toronto’s troubled Regent Park housing project.
So, he has a stack of kudos.
But do those bon mots forgive him of having two conflicts of interest represented by him owning two rental properties in high-rent Ottawa?
As Minister of Housing, Hussen may be privy to information about the housing market not known to the general public, which to some critics, makes his investments akin to insider trading.
“It brings to mind how Congress in the U.S. won’t pass the Stock Act because they’re all inside traders,” housing expert and journalist Neil Sharma told True North’s Lindsay Shepherd.
“The economics of housing in Canada might be a little more obscure to understand for the average Canadian, but what the Minister of Housing is doing isn’t any different. He should be solving the supply paucity, not profiting off it.”
Even when asked by TV Ontario’s Steve Paikin whether he thought he was in conflict for being both a landlord and the housing minister, Hassen replied … “Not really… I’m happy to be contributing to that housing supply.”
In 2021, the federal government implemented a vaccine mandate for aviation employees. While many employees complied, others faced consequences for non-compliance. As a result, Free to Fly Canada has launched a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of aviation employees who were harmed by the mandate. The lawsuit alleges that unvaccinated employees experienced termination, suspension, and coerced early retirement as a direct result of Transport Canada’s vaccination requirement. Greg Hill, a representative plaintiff from Free to Fly Canada, joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss the impact and implications of this legal action.
