A multi-faith coalition slammed the provincial government yesterday for failing to fund all faith-based schools in Ontario and called on the government to enforce basic human rights, wrote the Toronto Star April 17. "We have to face the ugly fact of Ontario's discrimination squarely," Eric Lawee, humanities professor in York’s Faculty of Arts, told the Multi-Faith Coalition for Equal Funding of Faith Based Schools in Toronto.
"The education of our children has become a political football," Lawee said, adding Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty made the situation worse by retroactively removing a tax credit for parents with children in private school that had been introduced by the former Mike Harris government. Lawee called the lack of funding a form of "odious discrimination".
Blue Jays GM makes a point of hiring Canadians
Toronto Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi's firing of many of Toronto's scouts when he took over in 2001 is well documented but it should be noted that the wipeout created room to grow for many young Canadians, wrote the National Post April 17. Bart Given (BA ’98), a student in York's School of Kinesiology & Health Science, flip-flopped between jobs with the CFL's Toronto Argonauts and the Blue Jays in the late 1990s. Eventually he moved full-time to the Blue Jays, working in communications and game operations before becoming the manager of team travel in January of 2001. [He was appointed as the Blue Jays' vice-president baseball operations in January 2007.]
Investment guarantees can come with a catch
The hunt for clients prepared to pay high fees to enjoy stock market returns and a guarantee of income and capital in retirement continues to expand, wrote the Toronto Star April 17. Moshe Milevsky, a professor of finance at the Schulich School of Business at York University, has published research that illustrates the high risk of depleting capital before death if stock prices fall sharply soon after a person retires.
Bert Lawrence, lawyer and politician, 1923-2007
Bert Lawrence (LLB ’48) loved the cut and thrust of political debate but he never let partisan politics stop him from making friends from among his opponents across the floor of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, wrote The Globe and Mail April 17 in an obituary. Sitting as a Progressive Conservative from 1963 to 1974, including more than two years as a member of the provincial cabinet under premiers John Robarts and William Davis, Lawrence was one of the best-liked politicians of his era. After the war, Lawrence attended Osgoode Hall Law School and practised law in Ottawa after being called to the bar in 1948.
On air
- Ian Roberge, political science professor at York’s Glendon campus, spoke about the planned referendum on Ontario’s electoral system, on CJBC, Radio-Canada's Toronto AM station, on April 16.