Children & youth

Charity doesn’t buy a lot of shoes

Feb 17, 2009
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OK, this is just a little crass, but the calculation begs to be done. It apppears rather than buying himself a new pair of shoes for the Budget Speech, the Finance Minister has donated $4,000 to the Salvation Army to buy 100 pairs of running shoes for poor children. A generous gesture. But if he… View Article

Children’s mental health: Are we paying attention?

Feb 11, 2009
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According to the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD), 15% or about 1 in 7 children in BC suffer from a mental health problem serious enough to cause significant distress and impair their development and functioning.   In children, mental illness supersedes all other health problems in terms of the numbers affected and the degreee of impairment.  Think about… View Article

School ranking: public shaming with a statistical veneer

Feb 9, 2009
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By printing the Fraser Institute rankings of elementary schools the Vancouver Sun gives unwarranted attention and a gloss of respectability to a cynical attempt to create anxiety among parents and educators through public shaming of students, families, educators and to place public schools in a negative light. The FI’s ranking calculation is not a legitimate… View Article

No full-time kindergarten this year

Feb 4, 2009
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Kindergarten expansion in BC has officially been postponed to the indefinite future, reports Janet Steffenhagen on the Vancouver Sun’s education blog Report Card today, referring to an article in the Nanaimo Daily News as her source. The announcement itself is hardly surprising in light of the gloomy fiscal update delivered by the Premier earlier this… View Article

Infrastructure – more than just ‘guy jobs’

Jan 21, 2009
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Now that almost everyone seems to agree that public spending on infrastructure is a good idea – it’s time for another paradigm shift. Across the political continuum,  infrastructure talk is still all about roads, bridges, and transit – sectors that overwhelmingly employ men. But, to stimulate the economy, surely we need to invest in both social and physical infrastructure. Lets take… View Article