Newsstand: June 19, 2015

This Friday's news bulletin is short and sweet: a look at a new initiative to bring Syrian refugees to Canada, and teachers may go on strike (again) this summer.

By Tannara Yelland • Illustration by Matthew Daley

Lifeline Syria is a grassroots effort modelled on the 1979 Operation Lifeline, which brought Vietnamese refugees to Canada in the tens of thousands. It’s based in Toronto and has received Mayor John Tory’s support; he’s also called for other major cities in the country to take up the cause. Millions of Syrians have been displaced by the civil war that’s been raging for years, and Canada has pledged to bring 10,000 of those refugees into the country in the next three years. Lifeline Syria is being touted as a way for individual Canadians to do something “to contribute, because many people feel powerless in the face of these global crises” by chairwoman Ratna Omidvar.

The provincial government and the province’s teachers, in both public and Catholic schools, have been feuding for quite a while. It threatened to boil over when Peel, Durham, and Rainbow-district teachers went on strike this spring, leaving 70,000 students out of the classroom for weeks, but the province passed back-to-work legislation that ensured the school year could come to a normal close. The province wasn’t so quick to act on developing a mutually agreeable labour contract for teachers, though, so come July the province may well see teachers on strike again. Teachers with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation will be in a position to strike again in July, according to a union bulletin sent to the OSSTF, as will Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association. Watch out for canceled extracurriculars if that’s something you need to look at during summer.