Rocket Talk: Can Sunday Subway Service Start Sooner?
Newsstand: November 19, 2009
Gender Studies Coming to a High School Near You
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The Art of Not Knowing
Enduring bouts of rain and hail, about a thousand students, workers, and community members marched through downtown Toronto yesterday as part of the Drop Fees for a Poverty Free Ontario campaign. At 4 p.m., they arrived at Queen’s Park to demand that the provincial government start "investing in the people, 'cause we are the solution," as the chant went.
The campaign—now in its second year—was started by the Canadian Federation of Students, and has branched out to include groups from the public sector. Accompanying the Ryerson, U of T, and York student unions were delegates from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (sporting "No More Band-Aids or Bail-Outs" placards), the United Steelworkers Union, CUPE Ontario, the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations, and the Ontario Coalition for Better Childcare, as far as we could keep track, anyway. Together, they urged Dalton McGuinty to protect Ontario citizens from financial hardship by investing in Ontario’s social programs and infrastructure.
The protest was one of thirteen actions taking place across the province.
"There are a lot of issues at play here," Chairperson of CFS Ontario Shelley Melanson said, "but we don’t believe you have to make a choice between cutting off one hand or the other. The [government] money is there." And boy, were there ever a lot of issues. The list included tuition fees, healthcare funding, affordable childcare, a livable wage, women’s income rights, affordable public housing, employment equity, new jobs, access to proper shelters, increased social assistance, Aboriginal rights, and status for all immigrants and refugees.
And if you think that’s a lot to take in, last year’s rally was even busier, adding Palestinian flags, anti-War and anti-capitalist protesters, and Communist Party banners—incorporating nearly every popular left-wing political mantra. In an effort to be more succinct this time around, the organizers narrowed it down to a mere eleven issues.
Lowering tuition fees was the foremost concern. "Seventy percent of newly listed jobs require post-secondary education," said Sandy Hudson, president of the University of Toronto Students' Union. "So obviously, people need access to education."
The CFS is asking for a reduction in tuition fees back to 2004 levels. With a new tuition and post-secondary education funding framework being developed by the Ontario government for this February, the organizers say the time is now. Unfortunately, this message—and the many other noble causes—were conflated and confounded within the sea of rally cries, the issues still too widespread to send a clear message.
According to Parkdale Community Centre food bank volunteer Rob Smits, the need for poverty reduction in this recession is crucial. The amount of people lining up for food went up 50% in the last year, but an increase in funding for such food banks and shelters has been slow coming, he said. "The way the government is doling out money is very disparaging." We at Torontoist heard his message load and clear, but with chants and slogans being heaved at Queen's Park from every different direction, it's unlikely Dalton could decipher it.
All photos by Nick Kozak/Torontoist.
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A more effective way the CFS could reduce fees would be to take the money they spent on this rally, and instead divide it up and return it to their membership.
These events always remind me of PJ O'Rourke's excellent description of participants an anti-homelessness rally from Parliament of Whores (although we could make appropriate adjustments for the Canadian setting adn the 20 years since he wrote):
So I guess if you're not living in poverty than you shouldn't care enough to protest against it.
I'm sure it would be much better if the middle class would simply forget about all those less fortunate and concentrate on being greedy douchebags.
That "excellent"' quote is ridiculous. Give me a break.
I was going to use "remarkable" or "incandescent" to describe the quote but I didn't want to gush.
My point is that since no reasonable person would expect this absurd, unwieldy mess of a protest to achieve any useful outcome, there must be some other motivator for the participants - boredom, desire for cameraderie, free signs, delusional self-importance etc.
And implying that the middle class (most of whom have to work on Thursday afternoons) can either attend a protest or be "greedy douchebags" suggests a pretty binary worldview.
Patrick,
You made my day.
I wasn’t implying that at all. Please re-read what I wrote.
There are other things one can do besides protesting to help those less fortunate in our community. However, sitting back and criticizing people for doing something (misguided or not) is pretty cynical. You automatically assume that the protestors don’t have good intentions. That’s a pretty depressing world view.
And your contention that people attend protests for the ‘free signs’ is absurd. Seriously, what’s more likely? That the protesters thought there might be a chance they could change something? Or that they really wanted to get their hands on some sweet looking signs to decorate their apartment with?
Patrick,
I shall have to read this book now.
Don't forget to Free Mumia...
I LOL'd.
Yes, there are some problems protesting so many things at once, but they're all worth protesting. And I can imagine if they had only protested tuition fees, the blogs and media would be jumping on them for not addressing the 'root problem' of income inequality. And what were the organizers supposed to do? Tell those with placards about gender inequality to go away?
I tend to believe that protests of this sort aren't going to change any policies. It's hard to think of a protest that gov't actually listened to. I think protests like this are really a way for people to get together and know that there are others who are like-minded... and possibily give them the courage or impetus to continue to fight these problems. For example, when the Iraq war 'started' I was living in Victoria and there was a huge protest/rally directed at the Provincial Legislature. I knew the provincial gov't didn't have much to do with Bush's war, but it was great to know that there so many like-minded people ...that so many others were aware, understanding, etc.
"Conflate" is indeed the key word. Dropping fees and ending poverty are made out to be two sides of the same poster/coin. I might buy in in the first item was affordable education, but it is clearly not.
I don't know if using "drop fees" is a cynical tactic to enlist apathetic students who dislike but can nevertheless afford tuition, or earnest belief—either way it's a misrepresentation of the issues.
Better metrics include education spending as a percentage of GDP and others pointed to in this excellent Walrus article by Rogert Martin.
The Poverty Reduction Act passed this summer has explicit provisions for encouraging volunteerism in poor communities. If there is shouting to be done, it is in drawing attention to exemplary people who already volunteer.
It's become a cliche, but the best social program is still a job. These folks should go get one.
Ignorance is bliss, eh?
CFS being ignorant, useless and a cliché? Will wonders never cease!
Note that CFS isn't the only association of University Students Societies, they're just the least effective one. The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, whose members include Waterloo, Western, and Laurier, is effective, mature and data driven. Instead of tired protests that simply enables students to mimic protests they've heard about or seen in movies, CASA presents coherent, well argued critiques of policy and data driven alternatives.
There's also the point that if you want to focus social programs on the less fortunate, the last thing you should do is reduce tuition fees. Low tuition is a massive transfer from the poorest in society to the middle class. Students themselves tend to have low wages, because they're studying. As a cohort they disproportionately come from well-off families (mainly because functional, stable families with substantial resources are far more likely to provide successful foundations).
Harvard has a much more equitable tuition policy than Canadian Universities - families with incomes less than $60,000 have free tuition while those with incomes between $60k and $120k pay on a sliding scale from 0% to 10% of salary. Harvard's full tuition only comes into play for families with incomes greater than $180k. This is a much, much better solution than a very low or $0 tuition for all, but it's no surprise that the CFS is pursuing regressive, unintelligent, uninformed policy instead of actually innovating.
If you want to play, you run a demo. If you want to change policy, you lobby and create mature policy proposals. CFS plays true to type while CASA affects policy and establishes influence.
You're entirely right, of course. It's sad for students at CFS member institutions that it's going to take a drawn-out and ugly turf war for CASA's approach of sane policy engagement to become the norm.
My interactions with the U of T SU and the U of T Graduate SU lead me to worry that it will be among the last, not the first, schools to leave CFS.
During the last provincial election I proposed a very workable solution for this problem.A plan to provide no cost tuition for many students.It was a cornerstone of my platform.But when I went to get support from the student unions and federation of students they balked at it because I wasn't a member of the NDP.Later Jack Layton wanted my proposal to be used in the NDP platform basically stealing my idea.I called him on it and demanded that he give me credit for the proposal.He immediately dropped the idea.You can see a copy at georgesawision.com
Perennially Indignant, is exactly what these boneheads are.
Here are some of the more memorable quotes from the protest.
"What do we want? Drop fees! What do we need? End poverty!"
"More opportunities for people with color!" shouted one of the speakers on the bandwagon.
"For every dollar a working Canadian man makes, a woman makes 70 cents!" shouted another.
" It's my future it's my right " read one banner.
These people are deep.
I like how the poverty stricken wear $300.00 running shoes or pricey Uggs.
The manufactured placards take jobs away from hand letterers and squash the creative slogans of our young.
One way to save on fees is to skip University and go to a community college, and instead of a useless BA and decades of crippling debt, you learn a trade and fill one of the thousands of vacancies for skilled mechanics, plumbers and other tradesmen (and women).
Kids today really need to get over this idea that we all need degrees. Some people would be better off with a skill.
Something I wish may parents could have learned, but didn't-that's partially why I'm on OSDP today.
I hate this Drop Fees campaign. Honestly, it is just defeating the purpose of its mere existence.
If the government drops the fees, it's still the protesters' own tax dollars paying for the difference. Taxes will go up, other programs will suffer. I can't imagine these people rallying for increased taxes. That'd be overstepping lines of meddling with the real world.
An American I know went to go protest fees and I think this was my snapping point. She has lived in Canada for less than 365 days and was already demanding that UofT lower its prices because it was too expensive and as a public institution, it should be cheaper. Seriously? Seriously, you are an American/non-Canadian citizen complaining about the cost of education in Canada? UofT is definitely not the cheapest option in Canada and going to a state school back home is even cheaper. I can't believe the nerve of some people.
UTSU/CFS is yet to do one thing that I feel represents me.