Nortel Cuts 2,100 Jobs

The high-tech equipment maker, Nortel, plans to cut 2,100 jobs. These job cuts will primarily be in north America. The company also plans to transfer 1000 jobs to lower-cost countries. This is the second round of company reconstructing, in February 2007 the company cut 2,900 jobs and transfered an additional 1,000 to cheaper regions.
This hurts the North American economy greatly, by making these job cuts we are losing many jobs for the purpose of these corporations to cut back on some expenses. Although it allows for less expensive products being sold here, we are losing jobs to other countries and we become heavily reliant on other countries. I think that the government should implement a way to discourage the movement of jobs to other countries to save on expenses. This could include taxes to the company when hiring outside of the main country, the government could use this tax money to give to laid off workers such as in this case.
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/02/27/nortel-jobs.html

Teen Driver Charged For Impaired Driving

A 17-year-old male was charged with impaired driving when he crashed into a passenger car in Toronto's North End on Sunday. The 15-year-old girl in the car was later pronounced dead in hospital. The police have said that speed and alcohol were both factors in the crash. The 17-year-old hit another vehicle, spun out of control and struck an empty bus shelter. Four other people have suffered minor injuries and the 17-year-old boy has been charged with impaired driving causing death and criminal negligence causing death.

In less then a month I will be able to drive and this sort of thing is very frightening. When people are driving at high speeds out of control, while impaired it is extremely hard to avoid. The passenger car from this story, was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when a teen decided to be reckless. The government should place more responsibility on parents when these incidents happen, parents are able to take a stronger role in their child's life and prevent this from happening, and with added pressure from the government i think that these sort of problems will be reduced drastically.


http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2008/02/25/bathurst-crash.html

Catholic Highschool Teacher Charged With Sexual Assult

On February 6th 2008, high school teacher Ann Stewart was charged with sexual assault. Ann Stewart works at Robert f. Hall Catholic School as an arts teacher. She has been charged with sex crimes against a 16-year old boy, she faces one count of each sexual assault and sexual exploitation. Other than the charges, police are not releasing details of the allegations. Ann Stewart has been suspended temporarily from teaching with pay. Stewart has been working with the board since 1999.

This article is very close to me personally, Mrs. Stewart is a mother of one of my friends on my hockey team. There is currently a Facebook group supporting Mrs. Stewart and it speaks of how she is such a great teacher, that always went the extra mile to help out students. The arrest of Mrs. Ann Stewart shows the change in the Canadian School System. Teachers nowadays are pressured to stay further and further away from students, this affects the learning of the students because they are unable to receive the close learning that they were able to in the past. The way the education system has become is terrible, everything is done very cautiously to avoid these sort of mishaps. This is just an example of how the education system is getting worse because teachers are becoming more and more afraid of being pulled into one of these false accusations.

http://www.caledonenterprise.com/news/article/42623

New Home Prices

The year-over-year growth rate in the prices of new homes accelerated its rate of increase for the first time in 16 months in December. The overall Canadian year-over-year rate rose 6.2 between December 2006 and December 2007. This is mainly due to a strong housing market in the prairie provinces.
It is great to see that Canadian Economy has become so much stronger in the past few years. With the rise in the value of the Canadian dollar, and a growing demand for houses, Canada's economy has reached a high. While the United States Economy continues to decrease, we find ourselves more and more prosperous in Canada. The problem that faces us with this boom in housing prices is that for low paying jobs it becomes increasingly difficult to purchase a new home in larger cities. These jobs are very important to the cities' infrastructure however if people working these minimum skill jobs and cannot purchase homes, we will find it increasingly more to find workers in these necessary jobs. The only available options are to make a better transportation available into the city so that these workers can buy outside of the city. The other option is to pay more to these workers so that they can afford a home in the city. I do not like the second option as these unskilled workers should not receive more than necessary for a job that could be done right out of elementary school. We must find a way to provide affordable housing to minimum wage job workers, while still gaining strength in the economy.

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/national/080211/n021102A.html

Afghanistan Mission - Confidence Vote

Prime Minister Stephen Harper plans to put the future of Canada's mission in Afghanistan to a Confidence vote. Harper's government wishes to extend Canada's role in Afghanistan past 2009. If he successfully receives enough extra combat troops and equipment. Harper is ready to open this up to a vote, which if defeated may force a federal election. The Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion say that his party wants to shift to a more humanitarian and reconstruction effort.
With not much support from the U.N. in the combat portion of the mission in Afghanistan I believe that it is important to continue a combat portion. What needs to happen is for Canada to try to persuade western European countries such as England and Germany to take a role in the combat portion. As of now, these countries are in less combat oriented missions in a more rebuilding position. It would be beneficial to Canada if these countries were to take a role in the main combat portion. This would mean that Canada could lessen the amount in combat and have part start rebuilding. This would mean that all the troops would not be removed at once, it could be done in stages, slowly moving to a rebuilding portion and having the combat mission divided equally between the U.N. This would compromise between what the liberals and conservatives are debating, while still remaining in a combat position, it would give more of an emphasis on rebuilding in the country.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/02/06/harper-afghanistan.html#skip300x250

Black Focused Schools

On January the 29th, the proposal to create black - focused schools was approved by the Toronto District School Board trustees. The board has recommended that the creation of an alternative schools should take place, one which focuses more on teaching about black history and culture.This is a plan to keep more black students in school because currently as many as 40% of black students don't graduate in Toronto High Schools.

In my opinion this is taking a step backwards for equality and human rights for everyone. centuries each race has been discriminated against for various reasons, and it has only been in the last half of a century that progress has actually been made towards equality. If we were to create black focused schools, this is once again segregating based on color. This means undoing the progress that has taken so long to be made up. I think that if black students are not achieving as graduating at a high enough rate, and the board believes that the way to fix it is by teaching more black history and culture, this should just be integrated into the existing school system's curriculum. It would be beneficial to black students as well as students from other backgrounds, this way there is interaction between different races and the everyone will be taught a true multicultural curriculum so that there is a higher understanding between the different ethnic backgrounds.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourview/toronto/2008/01/blackfocused_schools.html