Some experts said the ground stop was justified. York University economics Professor Fred Lazar said it was for the safety of crews on the ground. “Because of the bitter cold, they really can’t go outside for any long period of time, and the equipment would freeze up. Cancelling the flights was the right thing to do,” Lazar said in the Toronto Star Jan. 7. Crews and equipment are required to be outside for longer at an airport the size of Pearson compared with Winnipeg, and upset travellers should think of those out there working in the freezing temperatures: “Tell those people to go out and work on a tarmac and they’ll see it’s hazardous to their health,” he said. Read full story.
Three keys to improved pensions
“There is broad consensus that the private component of Canada’s pension system is deficient,” wrote Edward Waitzer, professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and Schulich School of Business, in the Financial Post Jan. 6. “The majority of private-sector workers do not have pension plans (other than the Canada Pension Plan). As a result, many will have difficulty maintaining their standards of living when they retire. Two opposing policy responses have emerged.” Read full story.
Cognitive advantages of second language immersion education
The linguistic and educational success of second language immersion education is now well established. What has been less clear until recently was whether children who attend immersion programs show the same kind of advantages in cognitive skills, such as metalinguistic awareness and executive control, as do children who are early bilinguals. . . . In a recent study, York University Professor Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues Kathleen F. Peets and Sylvain Moreno studied the development of metalinguistic awareness in children becoming bilingual in an immersion education program, reported Psychology Today Jan. 8. Read full story.
New research supports Mormon dating guidelines
Those who start to form romantic one-on-one dating relationships young are more likely to have problematic behaviors at school and in other areas of their lives, according to a study conducted by researchers at York University in Toronto. “It’s an important point for parents to monitor the type of relations [their] teens are involved in and to promote activities that bring boys and girls together in fairly structured, supervised ways,” said the study’s lead author Jennifer Connolly, a professor of psychology at York, in Deseret News Jan. 7. “Young kids don’t do well in the kind of relationship people expect to find among those 16 and older.” Read full story.
For the record
Alex Himelfarb, co-editor of Tax is Not a Four-letter Word, and Trish Hennessy, director of the Ontario office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, will speak about taxes on Thursday, Jan. 16, at 7:30pm at the Burlington Seniors Centre. Himelfarb is director of the Glendon School of International and Public Affairs at York University and a former clerk of the Privy Council, reported the Hamilton Spectator Jan. 7. Read full story.