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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2018-07-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 19, 2018. PAGE 5. Other Views Whose money is it anyway? With the election of the Doug Ford Progressive Conservative govern- ment it's clear that the pendulum of opinion about the value of taxation has swung back toward the right. Ontarians had a clear choice about how to handle provincial finances during the last election. Ford and his party said they would cut taxes yet would balance the budget by finding "efficiencies", no doubt at least in part by shrinking the size of government. Andrea Horwath and her NDP party promised more government services but again promised to balance by imposing larger taxes on high income earners. The Ford pitch was much more appealing to the majority of voters. In Canada, we periodically make these adjustments of the balance between those who think all taxation is legalized theft on one extreme and those who think the government should make life better for low-income citizens by taking more money from the well- off. In general, though, the vast majority of Canadians realize that taxes are necessary for the good things that we want our governments to provide from roads and police protection to education and health care. A couple of books I read recently showed just how moderate Canadians are compared to Britain, for instance. Chatsworth House is one of the most iconic country estates in the United Kingdom (it stood in for Pemberley in the Keira Knightley 2005 movie version of Pride and Prejudice). But after World War II, the family which owns it faced a crisis when British voters elected the Labour Party to run the government. In addition to huge wartime debts to repay, the labour government had ambitious, nation - Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk changing programs like National Health that it wanted to implement. Somebody had to pay. Perhaps understandingly, the working person's party had little sympathy for the plight of people like the Duke of Devonshire. The idea that these families lived lives of leisure from wealth handed down generation to generation abhorred the Labourites so they slapped an 80 per cent death duty on the rich. When the 10th Duke of Devonshire died suddenly in 1950, his family owed four-fifths of all their possessions to the government. It took until 1974 to negotiate a final settlement with the government, even though Chatsworth House with its famous gardens is considered a national treasure. The family ultimately managed to restore the house in part by offering public tours. In the 1970s, Alf Wight, a humble veterinarian, began writing humorous and heart -felt stories of his experiences working with farmers during the 1940s in the Yorkshire hill country. Published under the name James Herriot, the books became a world-wide phenomenon selling millions of copies. After they were transformed into a popular TV series, they created a tourist boom as fans came from around the world to came to see "James Herriot Country". The "industry" he created benefitted Yorkshire and the Britain as a whole, but the Labour government of the day saw only Wight's income. He was paying a top tax rate of 86 per cent (the top tax on investment income was an unbelievable 98 per cent). Naturally Wight's accountants explored ways for him to avoid giving the government 86 cents on every dollar of income, such as moving to the channel island of Jersey which had a lower tax rate. Wight frustrated them because he wanted to live in Yorkshire and continue being a vet visiting the farmer clients he had liked and admired. In his biography of his father, The Real James Herriot, Jim Wight tells of his father's accountant noting all but one other of Britain's top-selling authors had left Britain to avoid taxes (talk about the government killing the goose that laid the golden egg!). The accountant suggested Alf call this other author and see how he managed to remain in Britain. When he did call he got a message on the author's answering machine that he wasn't available because he had moved to Jersey. Here in Canada there's been outrage because the very rich have avoided $7.8 billion in taxes annually by exploiting off -shore tax havens. Some people demand the federal government close this loophole so the rich pay more toward government services. On the other hand, since Donald Trump lowered the U.S. corporate tax rate to almost as low as the Canadian rate, several commentators have said we need to lower our corporate tax rate even more to remain competitive or companies will move to the U.S. People will only accept paying so much tax. There aren't many Alf Wights around who will say "I don't want to lose what I've got so I'll pay the taxes to stay here". Most see what's being taken away, not what they still have. Teaching isn't limited to the classroom t really seems like everything anyone does in political power creates an impending "sky is falling" kind of doom in the world. Take, for example, the recent education announcements by Huron -Bruce's own MPP (and Minister of Education) Lisa Thompson. Like my editor Shawn, I disagree with the changes that the ruling provincial Conservative Party and its leader Doug Ford implemented in education last week. Also like Shawn, I'm frustrated that Thompson was the one to pull the trigger on those changes. It's a step backwards. However, unlike a lot of my contemporaries protesting the changes and posting online, I don't believe that children will become backwards -thinking degenerates because of it. This change puts responsibility on parents to make sure their children learn about things like safe sex, bullying and sexual identity. I, for one, think parents are up to that challenge. Why? Well I'm living proof. In 1998, which is how far back our sexual education clock turning, I was 13 years old and coming to the end of elementary school. I don't remember much sexual education at the time, but I do remember my parents teaching me right from wrong. That included not judging others based on their sexual preference, not bullying people (online or otherwise) and not being a jerk. And while I'm not foolhardy enough to say that, approaching my daughter's second birthday, I had as much experience as my parents had when I was approaching my 13th, I can say that I am going to do my best to stop my daughter from becoming the kind of person who bullies others in any forum and knows that everyone is deserving of respect. The people whose knee-jerk reaction is to claim or post things saying students will be unprepared for the real world as a result of this Ai& Denny Scott Denny's Den decision are discounting one of the most important aspects of education: parents. I'm not burying my head in the sand here: there are, undoubtedly, going to people who will continue a cycle of prejudice that they just aren't interested in changing. Prejudice, however, is based in ignorance and ignorance, much like many preventable diseases, can be vaccinated against regardless of what political party is in power. When parents take the time to sit down and explain things to their children they will be protecting their children from falling into prejudice, racial and gender -bias as well as creating a sort of herd immunity to those same attitudes. It's on parents and communities to teach children that we have to be accepting of everyone. Imagine a world in which we all try to do that — suddenly, the people throwing the vicious slurs are the ones who are shunned and condemned and, hopefully, they go home and explain to their parents that what they've learned, either by lesson or example, is wrong. That's kind of the entirety of my point here: we are all capable of teaching children the right way to do things or we can impart the wrong wisdom upon them as well. I don't know why so many people are convinced that teachers are the only people in this world who can impart knowledge. I mean, that seems to be what those knee-jerkers above did. They assumed if sexual education isn't being taught in the classroom, it can't be taught anywhere else. Teachers do not have the market cornered on teaching, despite the name of their profession. I'm not bashing educators, all I'm saying is I went to school with a lot of people who became teachers. Wilfrid Laurier University's Brantford Campus was, by my count, half teachers as a result of the concurrent education program there shared with Nipissing University. In the same amount of time it took me to study communications, teachers were coming out of the university ready to teach. Sure, they receive special training and yes, they do continue that training after they graduate, but they are just people, the same as every parent out there, and we non -public - sector folks are more than capable of imparting not only knowledge upon our children, but wisdom as well. I realize that in a place like Huron County, where you need look no farther than farmers' fields to know how much teaching goes on at home, I'm likely preaching to the choir. Education doesn't stop when the school bell rings. Just make sure we're teaching the right things and it won't matter which poor decision is made by our provincial leaders. And just in case I wasn't clear: the whole sexual education decision announced by Thompson is a poor decision. Cutting content that explains the struggles faced by Indigenous people is also a poor decision. But like I said, just because Ford and Thompson make these decisions about what goes on inside the classroom, it doesn't mean we have to abide by them at home. Sure, those lessons should likely be taught in a classroom to make sure the same message is going to every student, but our elected government apparently disagrees. So we have to take matters into our own hands and make it work. Shawn Loughlin Shawn's Sense Back to the past When our local MPP Lisa Thompson was named Minister of Education, I was immediately concerned for her. Sure enough, many of my fears have come to pass and it's only been a few weeks. The province's education system served as a real flashpoint in the election, so you had to know when Lisa was named to this position she would be in the spotlight for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was Premier Doug Ford's campaign promise to scrap the Liberals' 2015 sexual education reform. While some criticized it as being too graphic and snatching intimate aspects of sexual education away from parents, in the eyes of others it confronted the reality of life in 2015. Cyber -bullying, masturbation, sexually - transmitted infections (STIs), gender identity, sexual orientation and same-sex marriage (which is legal in Canada whether you like it or not) were all part of the new curriculum, not to mention education on granting consent. With the internet now at every teenager's fingertips 24 hours a day and the integration of these realities into mainstream entertainment, the curriculum was trying to teach these things in the classroom rather than on the streets. Early last week, Lisa announced that the province's curriculum would be reverted back to the 1998 model which predates social media, the internet (as we know it) and many of the discussions that are now commonplace regarding homosexuality and gender identity, very literally moving backwards. In a span of just three days, Lisa became the face of decisions to cancel curriculum changes that would have increased awareness of First Nations communities and the residential school system, scrapping a $100 million fund earmarked for school repairs and now the archaic reversion of the sexual education curriculum. What all three of these decisions have in common is that they all have that distinct soundtrack of someone (or some party) firing their heads into the sand. As I was growing up in the Catholic school system, sex (not to mention safe sex) was never discussed. That is because, of course, it wasn't to be occurring among good Catholic kids. Pretending something isn't happening doesn't make it so. Perhaps the PC Party hopes that by not teaching about same-sex marriage that it will simply go away. If kids don't know about STIs, they won't contract them. If the next generation doesn't know how First Nations children were treated in the residential school system, perhaps it will no longer be a talking point. And if there's no school repair fund, schools will no longer need repairs. But hey, Ford hasn't cut any jobs! Well, there was Hydro One CEO Mayo Schmidt, but he's a millionaire, so that's OK, right? He's elite, not like us regular folk! I know Lisa and I know her to be a good- hearted person. That's why I'm so disappointed to see her support these changes. Not only does she paint herself as a regressive thinker, but to most of Ontario, her riding will also be full of regressive thinkers; people who don't respect gay Ontarians or First Nations communities. But most importantly, to them we'll be people stuck in the dark ages; people who fear change and who yearn for the "good of days" as the world passes us by. Having your local MPP appointed to the cabinet should be a source of pride for a community, but unfortunately this one hasn't started out that way. Sure, she's doing us a disservice, but it's our children who won't know about the world around them and they will suffer as a result.