Written by David Murrell   

Tuesday, 15 February 2011

Jewish Tribune readers are familiar with the sharp debate surrounding the Jenny Peto thesis. The 29-year-old anti-Israel activist submitted a master’s thesis to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education. The essay asserts that Holocaust programs in Canada absolves Jewish Canadians of the responsibility that they share in the “genocide” of aboriginal peoples, of Israeli “apartheid,” and of the “white privilege” that Jewish-Canadians have in Western culture.    Master’s theses are seldom read outside of academia. But the strident nature of Peto’s thesis angered Jewish Canadians. It stirred commentary within the Jewish Canadian press and the conservative media (the National Post, Maclean’s, the Sun newspapers). The many and varied left-wing media, including pro-Palestine activist groups, defended Peto. Two MPPs in the Ontario Legislature (Steve Clark and Peter Shurman) attacked the thesis.

 

What is noteworthy is that, recently, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) rose to Peto’s defence. An unsigned front-page article (Politicians Attack Toronto Grad Student), in the current CAUT newsletter, quotes CAUT executive director James Turk as being “shocked” that the two MPPs would criticize Peto and attack academic freedom. The article claims that critics of Peto’s work emulate US Senator Joseph MacCarthy’s attacks during the cold war.

 

What is disturbing about the CAUT article is its rather strident, anti-Jewish tone. The article quotes MPP Clark and Citizen and Immigration Minister Eric Hoskins honestly enough. MPP Clark criticized Peto’s thesis for being “shockingly antisemitic” and that Eric Hoskins wanted to stop the “rising tide of antisemitism.” The article quotes MPP Shurman as agreeing with the two Progressive Conservative MPPs, in “...condemning this attack on Ontario’s Jewish community”.... But having quoted the three politicians in defending the Jewish Canadian community, the unsigned article then goes on to attack them. After stating that the three politicians are McCarthyesque, and quoting its own executive director, the piece then quotes University of Guelph professor Michael Keefer as saying the Peto thesis is a “well-researched study with a clearly defined ethical focus.”

 

Yet Keefer is a professor in the English department at the University of Guelph and has written that the 9/11 terrorist attacks werre staged by the US government (unmentioned in the CAUT article). More competent observers – Brent Sasley (political science), Werner Cohn (sociology) and Robyn Urback (essayist) – have documented the serious flaws in Peto’s thesis. Much of the thesis is simply her first-person account of her Jewish education, intermingled with heavy politicized jargon and theories from Holocaust remembrance critics (Norman  Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky). Peto’s critics stress that she never bothered to interview Jewish-Canadians involved in remembrance activities.

 

The CAUT article ignores all of this. What is disturbing is that the union – representing the majority of university professors in Canada – is tilting more and more towards political extremism. It defends a poorly-written (and antisemitic) thesis, and quotes a 9/11 truther in its defence. If one goes to the CAUT site and googles “Israel,” the result is a stream of anti-Israel articles: Academic Freedoms and Rights Violated in Israel and Palestine Territories, CAUT – Statement on Gaza Conflict, Questions Pertaining to the State of Israel Bring Strong Reactions by pro-Israel Extremists, and so on.

 

As a member of the CAUT, I have no say in the strident political statements coming from the national office. The full-time employees there are not held accountable by constituent members. Indeed, the national CAUT web page does not publish its annual fiscal statements. Some of my union dues go to the national office – yet its revenues and expenses are kept secret.   

 

Ironically, CAUT purports to defend academic “freedom” – yet it wants to deny free speech to critics of OISE. Yet academic work should be held up to outside scrutiny. Clearly antisemitic work – as a work of prejudiced writers – is work of abysmal quality. This is a given. If OISE wants to certify such work, in time the school will fall into disrepute. And CAUT should not defend such shoddy, incompetent research.

 

MARIA BABBAGE

Brampton, Ont. - The Canadian Press

 

The McGuinty Liberals’ surprise decisions to halt offshore wind farms and freeze the minimum wage have nothing to do with a provincial election that’s just eight months away, the Premier said Tuesday.

 

Protesters opposed to wind power have greeted Premier Dalton McGuinty in many communities across the province, but he insisted the moratorium on offshore projects is not politically motivated.

 

 

“People are free to do as they wish in terms of drawing whatever inferences that they desire from the decisions of the government,” Mr. McGuinty said after speaking to a business audience in Brampton.

 

“But the fact of the matter is, we’ve been very aggressive with respect to land-based wind turbines. We will continue to be very aggressive with respect to locating land-based wind turbines here in Ontario.”

 

The government announced the sudden reversal on offshore projects last Friday, just minutes after Mr. McGuinty had finished speaking to reporters.

 

It said the province wouldn’t move ahead with the renewable energy projects – which it had previously touted as key to its green ambitions – until there is more scientific research on their impact.

 

The same day, the government announced it wouldn’t raise the minimum wage this year, sparking fierce criticism from labour groups.

 

That leaves Ontario’s minimum wage at $10.25 an hour, marking an end to a series of annual hikes since the party was elected in 2003.

 

The about-face left the opposition parties questioning Mr. McGuinty’s motives ahead of the Oct. 6 vote.

 

The Premier was determined to push through his green energy policies until he realized it could cost him several Liberal seats, including that of Health Promotion Minister Margarett Best, Progressive Conservative Peter Shurman said.

 

“This is blind panic,” he said. “The Premier talks piously about science. The only science that’s involved in backtracking on these wind turbines is political science.”

 

The decision to halt offshore wind farms is “absolutely political,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said.

 

“I think it’s obvious that it’s McGuinty who’s actually twisting in the wind on this policy, because he’s very, very concerned about the political ramifications of offshore wind in some of his key ridings,” she said.

 

Mr. McGuinty had previously dismissed concerns from local residents who opposed wind turbines because of health concerns. But he changed his tune on Tuesday.

 

“The fact of the matter is that there is a dearth, there is a shortage of science when it comes to locating wind turbines in fresh water,” he said.

February 04, 2011

 

Rob Ferguson

 

Premier Dalton McGuinty likes to boast that Ontario has now regained 95 per cent of the jobs lost in the recession — but is that claim as good as it sounds?

 

Not really, say opposition parties and at least one economist.

 

That’s because thousands and thousands of the 219,500 jobs lost in the recession were manufacturing positions with good pay and many of the new jobs are part-time or lower-paying service sector jobs.

 

“The premier can trot out whatever rosy numbers he wants but we still haven’t recovered,” New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath said after Statistics Canada released the latest unemployment numbers Friday.

 

Ontario gained 36,000 jobs in January — including 12,000 in the Toronto region — but the province’s unemployment rate remained stuck at 8.1 per cent because more people came off the sidelines and tried to enter the workforce.

 

That’s down from a recession peak of 9.3 per cent but well above the 6.5 per cent before the devastating downturn began in October 2008 and ended in July 2009.

 

“Ontario made good strides in January,” said TD Bank economist Sonya Gulati, who noted Ontario is one of five provinces that still haven’t reached pre-recession employment levels.

 

She predicts that will happen as early as this month — another 5,000 jobs are needed to close the gap — but said it’s only part of the story.

 

“When you take a look behind the numbers we do trail in terms of having part-timers and service-sector jobs . . . It could be someone who has been laid off in manufacturing and is working part-time.”

 

Getting the province to a situation where incomes and jobs are equivalent to pre-recession levels “is certainly going to take a bit of time,” she added.

 

In Ottawa this weekend for a Liberal party convention, McGuinty said, “We’re not out of the woods yet. There are still far too many people without work, so we still have more to do.”

 

It’s a message he’s been taking on the road to civic groups like rotary clubs and in a slide show about Ontario’s economy in advance of the Oct. 6 election, pointing out Ontario’s recession job recovery is well ahead of Japan’s, the United Kingdom’s and the United States’.

 

What he doesn’t tell his audiences is that performance lags other provinces including Manitoba, Quebec and Saskatchewan.

 

“Ontario is still not recovering at a rate comparable to the rest of the country,” said Progressive Conservative MPP Peter Shurman (Thornhill), his party’s economic development critic.

 

By Kim Zarzour -YorkRegion.com

January 13, 2011

 

Local dignitaries got a hard-hat tour of the Thornhill Community Centre with Infrastructure Minister Bob Chiarelli Tuesday.

But they also got a hard-nosed partisan pitch for the Liberal party.

 

The community centre and library doors were opened to politicians for a peek at the reconstruction project, due to be complete by March.

 

After the tour, Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti praised Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty for working with the federal Tories to fund the project. “You are literally transforming our community and as mayor of Markham, I just want to say thank you very much.”

 

But amid the tour’s jovial ribbing and backslapping, Thornhill MPP Peter Shurman said there should be some fact-checking, too.

 

Minister Chiarelli praised the $6-million renovation of the library and community centre as one of the good-news stories to come out of the recent world recession. 

 

Infrastructure stimulus projects, created to kick-start the economy, helped produce more than 2,300 jobs in York Region and 300,000 in Ontario, he said.

 

But Mr. Shurman, the Conservatives’ critic for economic trade and development, questioned Mr. Chiarelli’s facts, pointing to discrepancies in other figures recently quoted by the minister as he toured other infrastructure projects.

 

“He’s been throwing numbers around and then backing off,” Mr. Shurman said, alluding to controversy over facts quoted by the Ottawa media last week.

 

The former Ottawa mayor told a radio show host the province’s green energy deal with Samsung has created 18,000 jobs. In an interview the following day, he said the figure was really 16,000, then added the solid number was 10,000. 

 

“He needs to get his facts and numbers straight,” Mr. Shurman said, adding the premier’s website links about 8,200 jobs to the act. 

By Caroline Grech

 

Vaughan council’s request for the provincial government to remove the HST from hydro bills has the approval of at least one member of the legislature.

 

“I was thrilled that my municipal colleagues took this strong a position, which says, in essence, that the people of Vaughan cannot take these wallet-gouging costs anymore,” Thornhill Conservative MPP Peter Shurman said.

 

At its Dec. 14 council meeting, Concord/North Thornhill Councillor Sandra Yeung Racco brought forward the idea to request that Premier Dalton McGuinty and Energy Minister Brad Duguid alleviate some of the pressure on homeowners by removing the tax.

The Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) took effect July 1, 2010 in Ontario and is applied to most purchases and transactions. 

 

The 13 per cent HST replaces the federal goods and services tax (GST) and the provincial sales tax (PST).

 

Vaughan councillors have heard from residents that their high hydro bills are a major concern.

 

Council’s recommendation also asks the premier and energy minister to ensure any future increases do not exceed the rate of inflation.

By: Antonella Artuso - Toronto Sun

 

The harmonized sales tax should come off all home heating bills including gas and oil, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says.

 

This tax cut would save average families about $220 a year, she said.

 

The Ontario treasury would forego about $350 million a year, but Horwath is promising to fill that hole by clawing back recent corporate tax cuts and cancelling further planned reductions.

 

“The bottom line is people are struggling still...the middle class is feeling like they’re not holding on any more,” Horwath said Thursday. “I believe our focus is going to be on making life more affordable for folks.”

 

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said the NDP’s plan would hike taxes for important job-creating sectors such as the struggling forestry industry in the north and the fragile car industry in the south.

 

”She’s proposing to put us out of competition with Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and New Brunswick. It is about the most short-sighted dumb public policy pronouncement one can envision,” Duncan said.

 

The Ontario Liberal government, which ushered in the HST, has chosen instead to provide exemptions in some areas, cuts to personal income tax, a sales tax credit and temporary rebates, he said.

By: Robert Benzie - Toronto Star

 

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says she would scrap the harmonized sales tax on energy bills if her party won the next provincial election.

 

To bankroll the $350 million reduction in hydro, natural gas and heating oil levies, the New Democrats would raise corporate taxes.

 

“Our focus is on trying to make life more affordable for folks,” Horwath said at Queen’s Park on Thursday.

 

She said her policy would save a family with two children about $220 a year in hydro and heating costs.

 

Horwath lamented that the governing Liberals have just rewarded Bay St. at the expense of Main St.

 

“The HST is coming in one pocket and going out the other pocket to huge corporate tax giveaways. We don’t think that was the right thing to do,” she said, adding the New Democrats would “claw back” recent corporate tax cuts and cancel scheduled reductions.

 

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan accused Horwath of jeopardizing Ontario’s recovery from the worldwide recession by making it harder for businesses to operate here.

 

“She’s proposing to raise taxes on the forestry sector in northern Ontario, she is proposing to raise taxes on the automotive sector in southern Ontario,” said Duncan.