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Newsstand: August 31, 2015
News today for you: a sex-ed ad blitz timed with the beginning of school, education workers without contracts vote to escalate job actions, and what it's like to live in a TCHC home that desperately needs repairing.
The province’s new sex-ed curriculum, voted on and approved in the face of significant protest last spring, will go into effect as students return to school in the coming weeks. To coincide with that, the Liberal government is rolling out a TV ad blitz related to the curriculum. The ad touches on several topics that are new to the updated sex-ed curriculum, like selfies, online bullying, and gay marriage. The old curriculum, last updated in 1992, was “dangerously out of date,” according to the Liberal Party. Education Minister Liz Sandals added in a statement about the new ads that the old curriculum was developed “long before Facebook and Snapchat became part of everyday life.”
Catholic and high school teachers in Ontario reached agreements with the province over their contracts during the summer, but Francophone and elementary teachers, as well as the 55,000 education employees represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), are still working without contracts. To ratchet up pressure on the government to reach a deal, CUPE members voted overwhelmingly in favour of increasing job actions during the first week of school. CUPE will begin with work-to-rule before moving on, if necessary, to rotating strikes and then a province-wide strike. CUPE education workers have been without a contract for a year.
The soaring repair log facing Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) is well known, but the Toronto Star went to one TCHC-owned building recently to talk to a few residents about what’s wrong with their homes specifically. Joyeux Hendrickson showed reporters how the roof of his home leaks when it rains, to the extent that they have pans set out to collect the water; that squirrels have gotten into the home, eaten the family’s food, and defecated in his mother’s bed; and the ring of black paint in the bathtub they used to hide mould. Del Management Solutions manages the property, but shrugged off comment to TCHC. A TCHC media representative told the Star that “the roof at 58 Grenoble is in poor condition” and that repairs had been made, though she acknowledged some of the repairs had been unsuccessful. She also said mould remediation had been done in some of the properties at 58 Grenoble, though she wouldn’t say which ones.