When a veteran Goldman Sachs executive used a New York Times op-ed Wednesday to recount his disenchantment with the investment bank, James Darroch, co-director of the Financial Services Program at York University’s Schulich School of Business, said it’s the kind of publicity the company, which is already facing a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint into its sales of toxic mortgage products, doesn’t need, reported the Toronto Star March 15. “I’m sure that they’re very concerned,” he said, “This fits into the Occupy Wall Street (narrative); it fits into a very divisive political campaign.” Read full story.
Toronto area casino: Where to put it?
Political reaction to the province’s announcement that it wants to build a casino in the GTA ran the gamut, reported the Toronto Star March 13. Alan Middleton, a marketing professor at York’s Schulich School of Business, didn’t offer nervous downtown politicians any solace. “You want people to just say, ‘Oh, let’s go there,’ without making it a special plan. Special plan? We’ve already got that: you go down to Niagara, you go up to the north.” For planners, he indicated, good transportation will be key. Read full story.
Ottawa labour clampdown may hurt workers, employers
Canada’s House of Commons passed a bill this week that prevents both a strike and a lockout at Air Canada, reported Reuters Canada March 14. And it is disturbing, unprecedented and not in the best interests of either workers or employers, said David Doorey, a labour and employment law professor at York University. Read full story.
Pick in Toronto-Danforth
The NDP needs to win big on Jack Layton’s home turf to demonstrate that the party’s electoral breakthrough was not the peak, but the crest of a rushing wave, wrote NOW March 14. Fortunately for New Democrats, Craig Scott, professor at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, is an excellent candidate, said the Toronto weekly. Read full story.
Refugee policies should be based on fact, not fiction
Academic research suggests detaining asylum claimants is expensive, harmful to claimants and doesn’t deter, argued Susan McGrath, director of the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University, in Embassy March 14. Government policy-making should be based on empirical evidence, not false, misleading and often egregious assumptions about the motivations and behaviour of people legally seeking the protection of our country, she wrote. Read full story.
‘Any poem of mine’
In a letter to the Globe and Mail March 15, James P. B. Kelly remembered what English professor Irving Layton said in the early 1970s when he heard Australian author Patrick White had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Read full story.
Irving Layton: Enemy of injustice
In a tribute to Irving Layton in the National Post March 15, Irwin Cotler, former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada, remembered his Montreal schoolteacher and York colleague as a poetic genius who constantly used his talents to rail against injustice. Read full story.
Herb Carnegie’s sustainable legacy
There’s an arena at Bathurst Street and Finch Avenue which bears his name. There’s also a public school north of Toronto. An honorary degree from York University in 2006. Membership in the Order of Canada. But the lasting, pioneering legacy of Herb Carnegie, who died March 9, will be as a black hockey player in the white sport of ice hockey in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, wrote InsideToronto.com March 15. Read full story.
Uniforms won’t stop bullying
A controversial Niagara Catholic District School Board proposal to introduce uniforms in its elementary schools will not have an impact on bullying, as the board has suggested, reported the the St. Catharines Standard March 15. “I know of no research to support this,” said York Distinguished Research Professor and bullying researcher Debra Pepler in an e-mail to the newspaper. “We conducted research in independent and publicly funded schools and there were few differences in rates of bullying and victimization.” She said uniforms will not change the quality of relationships in the schools. Read full story.