http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/comment/article/204920

HineSight by Anne Hines
March 30, 2009 1:00 a.m.

I want to share an old saying. It dates right back to 15 minutes ago when I made it up. “To find good news, look in a mental institute.” That just makes life so clear doesn’t it?

As I’ve mentioned before, as part of training to become a United Church of Canada minister I’m spending eight months working at an inner city church and a mental health hospital. I call this program Thirty Two Weeks In Heaven and Hell. Which place is which changes around from day to day.

Every Wednesday, I work on a mental health ward that houses those suffering from schizophrenia. Some clients are with us for a week, some for many years. Some have “privileges,” which are extraordinary freedoms such as being allowed to leave the building, even cross the street and use the corner store. Others can only leave with an escort and, though the care staff do their best, this may mean not leaving much at all.

Doing spiritual care for these clients is challenging. I suggested to one woman that she try to “listen to her inner voice.” Her response? “I’m trying not to listen to them. That’s why I’m here.” Fair enough.

Not taking client behaviour personally is another challenge. Last week, I walked into the ward happily sporting a short new haircut. Louise rushed over gushing, “I love your hair! You look just like Prince Charles!”

It’s hard to carry on a conversation because some clients find it difficult to keep words in logical order. I sat for an hour with Gordon who babbled to me earnestly and entirely incoherently as I smiled and nodded, all the while thinking, “Dear God, let me not be agreeing that Paul Martin was a modern day Gandhi.”

So, where’s the good news here? Well, it’s not “no matter how bad your own life seems, remember you’re allowed to cross the street,” though it’s a good thing to remember for sure.

On our ward, Dylan paints a picture that’s hung in the hallway and he grins for a day. Loni gets her hair washed and everyone tells her she’s gorgeous. Carson says he’s glad to see me and offers a smile, precious as the first spring flower.

Encouragement. Appreciation. That’s good news anywhere. And the best part is, it’s not a privilege allowed only to some. In any life, in any place, you can make it yourself.

– Anne Hines is an author and humour writer. She has written three novels and one
collection of nonfiction humour.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/610852

Mar 31, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (8)
Royson James

A budget is a document of myth-making. So, naturally, over the next two days citizens can expect to hear the many versions of the truth from Toronto city hall during the 2009 budget debate. These include:

Toronto has a balanced budget; the 1,040 new hires are mandatory additions; tough budget scrutiny has cut spending by $102 million; and the like.

Such claims are usually couched in doublespeak or weasel words that disguise the deception.

One of the most effective? “The cupboard is bare,” followed by the warning that “next year we face an even tougher task because we have cleaned out all the reserves and cut out all the fat.”

In the story of “the boy who cried wolf,” the wolves were there, all right – just not when the boy called out. That may be the case, eventually, with Toronto, but 2009 is not budget Armageddon.

Remember the year city staff sold hydro poles to itself and reaped $60 million? This year, city manager Joe Pennachetti unveiled something called “closed capital accounts,” spare change left over when capital building projects wind down. The found money no one knew existed amounted to $92 million. You’d think it would go to a capital reserve fund, but no. It’s been given to the $1.3 billion TTC budget, part of the city’s $394 million tax subsidy.

No wonder skeptics maintain city hall should easily find 5 per cent savings on an $8.7 billion budget – a figure totalling about $435 million.

Other mythical claims anticipated today and tomorrow:

• The budget committee was tough this year, cutting $102 million.

In fact, the committee cut just $29 million. The rest, $73 million, is to be realized by delayed hiring throughout the year, a manoeuvre called “gapping.”

• The budget is balanced, according to budget chief Shelley Carroll.

It is, if you look at the last line of the ledger. By law it has to be. But, in fact, “balanced” suggests that if the treasurer had to do it again next year, with expenses frozen at today’s level, the result would be the same. And that is not the case.

Toronto’s budget uses provincial revenues that are not promised for next year and “one-time” funds like the closed capital accounts that are depleted. As such, Toronto’s fiscal outlook is cloudy. What’s changed is the administration’s decision to manage expectations and portray the image of a well-run fiscal regime, not one that perennially needs a bailout from Queen’s Park.

• Tax increases are needed to fund inflationary and population increases.

That’s a tough sell when spending is jumping $558 million this year and $904 million over two years – up 46 per cent since amalgamation. Since 1998, inflation has amounted to 22 per cent, and the population is up by just 10 per cent.

• The 1,040 new staff added to payroll, pushing the workforce to beyond 52,000, essentially cover mandatory demands and legal obligations.

Not quite. Yes, 166 are for mandatory social services – and by various measures one can identify about 450 mandated positions. But there are 333 new TTC hires, 72 for facilities and real estate, 70 for parks, 66 for courts, 62 for police, 51 for long-term care, 19 in policy and planning, 18 for treasury, 16 in legal, and so on. There are also 57 additional staff budgeted for solid waste and 45 in water services – two departments not counted in the 1,040 because user fees cover their costs.

Add another 271 to be hired for capital projects, and the total is over 1,400.

Watch on Cable 10, follow on thestar.com. You’ll discover more budget myths.

Email: rjames@thestar.ca

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/610850

Updated report on stun guns still too vague, says Toronto police board
Mar 31, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (6)
STAR STAFF

The civilian body overseeing Toronto police is asking the force for more details about the 179 times officers Tasered people last year, including two 15-year-olds.

Pam McConnell, who led the Toronto Police Services Board meeting yesterday, said yesterday she’s proud Toronto police disclose Tasering information, but acknowledged several facets of its recent report on use of the stun gun are vague and misleading.

The board ordered more improvements, fixes and changes to the document that has undergone several revisions in the past year – from issuing the report semi-annually, to spelling out exactly what certain statistics mean.

The report fails to reveal where and when some incidents occurred, as well as explicit details of events leading up to confrontations.

Board members pressed Police Chief Bill Blair for clarification on why the device was used on two 15-year-old boys and shown to a 12-year-old boy.

Blair said one 15-year-old was trying to commit suicide and the other lunged at officers with a knife.

Showing the 12-year-old the Taser’s blue electrical current halted a fit of violence, Blair said.

“We report far greater detail than anyone else in the country and in North America,” Blair said. “I think it’s appropriate. The public has a lot of questions and needs explanations and we’re trying to make sure they get that.”

Toronto police officers fired Taser darts at people 122 times last year and used it in “dry stun” mode, pressing it against a person’s skin or clothing, 57 times.

Police use of Tasers has been under the microscope since 2007 when Polish visitor Robert Dziekanski died of cardiac arrest in Vancouver’s airport after being jolted by RCMP members. An inquiry is probing that incident.

More than one-third of the 329 times that Toronto officers deployed Tasers – that includes showing its current, firing the darts and pressing it against a person – involved Emotionally Disturbed Persons, the report states.

Blair told the board the term doesn’t necessarily refer to a mentally ill person, but to irrational, angry and violent behaviour.

“It is a perception,” he said yesterday. “Not a diagnosis.”

While the report concludes “few” of those classified as emotionally disturbed were apprehended under the Mental Health Act, board members want more detailed statistics.

Board members have raised the issue of Taser transparency several times in the past, but they decided yesterday to leave specific changes to the report up to Blair and board chair Alok Mukherjee.

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/609928

City nets $8 million from fines while traffic cops get $6 million in extra pay
Mar 28, 2009 04:52 AM
Comments on this story (12)
Betsy Powell
Michele Henry
STAFF REPORTERS

The Crown attorney turns to face a packed third-floor courtroom at Old City Hall.

If the Toronto police officer who issued your ticket isn’t around, she says, it is your “lucky day.”

What she does not say is if either Michael Thompson or Abdulhameed Virani wrote that ticket the odds are you have just rolled the traffic equivalent of snake eyes.

The veteran officers are the Toronto Police Service’s most enthusiastic enforcers of the province’s driving laws, with Thompson earning $162,000 in 2008 and Virani $151,000 – almost doubling their salaries due largely to overtime racked up sitting in courtrooms.

Their names appeared on a list released by the city showing who on the force made more than $100,000 a year.

And those pay packets don’t include lucrative “paid duty,” where off-duty officers, paid by private companies, earn between $60 and $70 an hour to perform a host of duties, such as directing traffic around construction sites.

“It’s the best game in town,” Mike Walt, a retired police officer turned paralegal, said of the money officers can earn from overtime.

And as the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition noted in its most recent bulletin, the number of highly paid officers is climbing rapidly.

In 2008, 1,006 employees of the Toronto police service earned more than $100,000, including 628 staff members whose base salary is normally under $100,000. Four years ago, in 2004, there were 250 earning more than $100,000 and in 2006, 708.

“How long do we think we can afford this as a city that’s basically bankrupt?” said John SewellÖ, a former Toronto mayor who runs TPAC. “We don’t have extra money for anything we’d like and yet the police are walking away with all of this money.”

Under the Toronto Police Association collective agreement, police officers who attend court as witnesses during a scheduled off day are paid a minimum four hours, at 1.5 times their basic wage, even if the appearance lasts for 10 minutes. Officers receive three hours of pay at time and a half if they appear in court before beginning a regularly scheduled shift.

There is no cap on how many overtime hours an officer can work.

One recent day at Old City Hall court, Virani showed up in uniform just before 1:30 p.m., newspaper in hand. He took his seat close to other officers also waiting for their cases to be called. While they chatted and joked, he kept his head down and read. On this day, he was up on his feet a couple of times, notepad in hand, to schedule future trial dates at the request of the ticketed driver or agent. No trials were held and he left by 3:30.

Virani is “always in court,” said Joseph McKinnon, a licensed paralegal and another former Toronto police officer.

Mostly he is there to testify about “pro-turns,” added McKinnon, using slang for prohibited turns.

Is he good value for Toronto taxpayers?

“He is enforcing,” said McKinnon, adding he, too, was also a “high producer” – writing a lot of tickets when he was a cop. The alternative, scheduling court time for police officers while they are on shift, is problematic since that takes cops off the road.

On another day, when a reporter asked Virani about his penchant for overtime, he declined to comment.

Meanwhile in courtroom B on yet another day, before he began his regular night shift, Thompson spent less than an hour in court on one matter.

Described by colleagues as personable, polite and hard working, he has been on the force for 23 years and is a breath technician, his expertise often bringing him to criminal court.

“It is what it is,” he said outside of court.

“I work hard for the money,” he said outside court. “I don’t think there’s anyone who knows me who would say different.”

His fellow officers say as much. “He’s an amazing guy,” said one. “When people drive away (after getting a ticket) they have a good impression.”

—

Excluding parking tickets, some 700,000 charges a year are laid under both provincial statutes and municipal bylaws, 85 per cent of them relating to traffic and driving offences.

It costs the city about $40 million to administer the court services relating to traffic tickets, which includes the costs of justices of the peace, prosecutors and interpreters.

Six million dollars of that goes to pay the overtime costs for police officers who attend traffic court, although not all of that money is paid out in cash since some take overtime in time owing. (An additional $10 million is spent in overtime costs for police to attend court as witnesses in criminal cases.)

That means $8 million in net profit after expenses is collected annually relating to traffic violations.

About one in four charges results in a guilty plea and payment with no trial being required. Another quarter are convicted after not responding to a ticket. In those cases, the courts issue fine notices.

About half of the charges result in the person asking for a trial. Of those cases, about 20 per cent who ask for a trial do not show up and are convicted in their absence, so a fine is imposed. About 35 per cent plead guilty or are found guilty with the remainder of the cases dismissed or withdrawn in court, sometimes because the officer fails to appear.

But many officers do because it is so lucrative to attend court.

The city is currently building six more courtrooms to accommodate the volume ticket able offences that come to court.

—

“He’d give his mother a ticket.”

Virani is a 10-year veteran of the $100,000-plus club.

Among rank-and-file officers, the knock against Virani is that he “doesn’t forgive anybody.” He is also known as a paid-duty “hound,” which strikes some colleagues as unfair.

One fellow officer told of a night, in the entertainment district, when he and his colleagues allowed a man to park his car illegally for a few minutes while he ran into a nightclub to find his daughter.

Virani came along and asked if they planned to issue a ticket. The officers said no, Virani persisted but was shouted down.

A traffic officer who has worked on the same shift as Virani said he lacked diplomacy.

“I may need you as a witness in a criminal offence one day so the human part has to be there,” he said. Focusing on “the almighty dollar that you make from court cards” isn’t a good thing.

Virani was also linked to the entertainment district scandal. In a 2007 ruling, Superior Court Justice Frank Marrocco wrote there was a “reasonable inference,” based on wiretaps, that former Toronto Police Association president Ricky McIntosh, who faces a series of corruption charges, another officer named Nick Guastadisegni, and Virani had agreed to withdraw a charge of making a prohibited left turn against a man “without any legitimate discretionary reason for the withdrawal.”

In 2007, Virani was charged with misconduct under the Police Services Act and docked 10 days pay for withdrawing the ticket.

At the sentencing hearing, one of his superiors noted Virani’s “impressive work ethic” and said he considered him to be a “conscientious workaholic.” He also praised him for treating the public with respect, following orders and carrying out any detail.

—

Officially, police claim not to be in the business of generating revenue, “there’s lots of pressure to write tickets, no ifs, ands or buts,” says one former traffic officer who did not want to be named. “It’s tickets, tickets, tickets. I’ve seen guys get in s**t if they didn’t write their numbers.”

Some paralegals estimate that a police officer could issue up to 400 tickets a month.

Under the law, officers are required to appear in court when someone wants to fight a ticket.

“There’s not really any discretion,” said Barry Randell, director of court services City of Toronto

Officials try to schedule officers so they appear on several matters at once.

—

Good, efficient enforcement is key to keeping roads safe, says Brian Patterson, president of the Ontario Safety League. But merely writing and fighting tickets in court won’t rid the streets of dangerous drivers.

The current system enables people to walk away from tickets with lesser fines or fewer demerit points, Patterson says, but it doesn’t make them better drivers.

“The reason we have enforcement should be re-education, not collection.”

There are many dedicated traffic officers who won’t let people off the hook just because the system is bloated, he says.

But instead of ending up in court, drivers should be given the option of enrolling in re-education classes because, Patterson says, there are some people out there “who don’t even know the rules.”

Such options would unclog the system immediately, Patterson says and produce safer drivers.

“The tools are out there to fix the system,” he says.

Patterson also believes in getting certified statements from traffic officers instead of having them in the courtroom just to defend the facts of the case.

“At the end of the day we’re just burning up time and resources and making the system less workable,” he says.

Randell admits that when it comes to fighting the Highway Traffic Act in court, there are myriad inefficiencies.

The city and province, he said, are looking at ways to streamline the process “to make it less cumbersome and less costly.”

Paying an officer to be present to defend each ticket he writes isn’t cost effective – especially if many of those visits are just to set another date.

While officials try to book an officer’s tickets all on the same day in courtrooms dedicated to specific offences, it is often difficult to do so.

Officials are looking at many ways to replace an officer’s in-person testimony, including replacing his or her live statements with a certified document.

Making those changes would involve rewriting law, says Toronto Police Association head Dave Wilson, which is not a domain of the police. However, he says, the ticket is already a certified statement, so there is no need for another. And, if someone wants to contest the facts in court, the officer must be present to defend his decision.

Trying to replace an officer’s live testimony with a pre-written statement, “doesn’t make any sense at all,” Wilson says. “It goes against the whole legal system.”

excerpts from:

An All-Consuming Cause: BREAST CANCER, CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY, AND THE MARKET FOR GENEROSITY

By: Samantha King
University of Arizona, USA
Sociology of Sport

My contention is not that tools such as cause-related marketing are simply manipulation or propaganda that impose meanings and values on docile consumers or incite false desires in the name of “diffusing or neutralizing political unrest” (Ewen 1976, 12). Rather, it is that cause-related marketing has emerged as a technique by which to understand, represent, and act upon the desires of consumers to be generous and civic-minded citizens, albeit in ways that are ultimately profitable for corporations.

The effects are a new form of subsidized philanthropy (in cause-related marketing campaigns, corporations might best be understood as vectors for the transfer of money spent by consumers on designated products to the nonprofits in whose name the products are sold), often a new form of advertising (resources other than money donated as a result of cause marketing campaigns are tax deductible), and a constant flow of images suggesting that the key to solving America’s social problems lies in corporate philanthropy, personal generosity, and proper consumption.

While causerelated marketing sells goods through this promise, it also packages generosity as a lifestyle choice through which individuals can attain self-actualization and self-realization.

—————————————————————————

The symbolic effects of cause marketing are the focus of the second part of the essay, in which I turn to a case study of the National Football League’s breast cancer marketing campaign (entitled, in a press release announcing its launch, “Real Men Wear Pink”). Through an analysis of the articulation of popular anxieties about crime and character in the NFL to discourses on player volunteerism, I argue that the class-inflected, racially coded, and gender normative ethos of generosity offered up for consumption through this campaign is suggestive of the political stakes and dangers bound up with cause-related marketing as a mode of governing desire.

—————————————————————————

Reaganomics and the Rise of Strategic Philanthropy

It was during the tenure of the Reagan administration, according to Elizabeth
Boris (director of the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy), that
“nonprofit organizations were propelled to U.S. public consciousness”
(1999, 2). In 1981, Reagan had created the Task Force on Private Sector
Initiatives to encourage private-sector activity in social programs and
increase nongovernmental sources of support for nonprofits. “Volunteerism,”
Reagan declared, “is an essential part of our plan to give government
back to the people. I believe the people are anxious for this
responsibility. . . . We can show the world how to construct a social system
more humane, more compassionate, and more effective in meeting its
members’ needs than any ever known” (Reagan 1981, 1085). Concurrently,
the administration introduced incentives by reducing corporate
taxes and increasing the limits on charitable deductions for corporations
from 5 to 10 percent of taxable income.

At the same time that the nonprofit sector was called upon to partner
with corporations to develop private-sector alternatives to public welfare
(which was said to stifle “the volunteer impulse of private citizens and private
business”), the nonprofit social service saw their budgets reduced significantly
and their client rolls increase as a result of the administration’s
cuts in welfare spending and an ongoing recession (U.S. Senate 1982,
2).5 These cuts, combined with the considerable public attention focused
on private-sector initiatives prompted by the launching of the task force,
coincided to produce a substantial increase in the number of requests on
the part of nonprofits for aid from corporations.

Over 75 percent of the executives surveyed for a 1981 Conference
Board report said that requests for aid had jumped substantially, with
some reporting a 300 percent increase (Muirhead 1999). Although these
changes appear to have had an impact on corporate giving in the short
term (that is, until 1987 and the onset of the recession), there was no significant
increase in contributions favoring human services. In other words,
the increased level of corporate contributions facilitated by Reagan’s tax
cuts and incentives (which anyway fell far short of the estimated $29 million
needed to “bridge the gap”) did not flow to those areas of provision
—economic development, hunger relief, or job training, for instance—
most affected by cuts in expenditure (Grønbjerg and Smith 1999; Muirhead
1999; Salamon and Abramson 1982; Zetlin 1990).

Large corporations such as AT&T and leading business organizations
such as the Business Roundtable linked their support for the Reagan
tax and spending cuts to increases in corporate philanthropy (Levy and
Oviatt 1989; O’Connell 1983; Shannon 1991). If business was serious “in
seeking to stem over-dependence on government,” the Roundtable contested,
it had to “increase its level of commitment” to the nonprofit sector
(O’Connell 1983, 386). However, when the cuts were actually instituted,
business leaders did not express enthusiasm or intent to fill the gap set out
by administration strategists (Muirhead 1999, 35). Executives claimed
that although their contributions had tripled between 1976 and 1985 from
$1.5 billion to $4.5 billion, the $29 billion gap left by Reagan’s cuts was
too large for corporations to realistically close (Muirhead 1999). Positioning
business as an isolated entity that had been called upon by the
state to respond to a problem in which business was not seen to be implicated,
corporate leaders were said to “resent the transfer of the social
burden and responsibility to the private sector” (Muirhead 1999, 36). In
this vein, one unnamed corporate executive told the Conference Board,
“We didn’t start these programs . . . and we shouldn’t be responsible for
their continuation if federal money is not available” (quoted in Muirhead
1999, 35). And an unnamed “public affairs vice president” said, “Our
company supported [President Reagan] because we believed in the elimination
of a number of these programs. Naturally, we’re not too enthused
about continuing the programs and shifting the burden to the corporate
sector” (quoted in Muirhead 1999, 36).

As pressure increased for efficiency and restraint in corporate contributions,
a key shift occurred. Staff in these areas began to look for ways
to make philanthropic activities profitable, and strategic philanthropy
emerged as the solution. Thus, when Kodak’s community relations and
contributions program faced a decrease in its budget, its staff strove to
make “community relations a strategic resource in gaining revenue for the
company” (Muirhead 1999, 41). Kodak’s new strategy involves partnerships
between the contributions department and other units of the business
so that these units learn “the value of investing in urban markets,”
“promote business-to-business relationships—not just philanthropic ones
—with nonprofits,” “leverage contributions to enhance sales opportunities,”
and “make grants that enhance global access” (Muirhead 1999,
41). Thus, Kodak’s philanthropic and profit-making functions have
become inextricably intertwined, as philanthropy is viewed as a possible
route to gaining access to new markets at home and abroad, finding new
partners with whom to do business, and enhancing sales.

Kodak’s shift toward strategic philanthropy is typical of corporate
America’s move to “treat donations like investments” and thus to “expect
some return from them”—a move that simultaneously represents a turn
away from the understanding of philanthropy as a more straightforward
obligation of corporate citizenship (Dienhart 1988, 64). By the 1990s,
management guru Peter Drucker’s (1984) argument that altruism cannot
be the criterion by which corporate giving is evaluated had become a
guiding assumption of contributions programs as businesses discharged
their social responsibilities by converting them into self-interest and hence
business opportunities.

In practice, the shift toward strategic philanthropy has meant that
most large corporations have undertaken at least some of the following
changes in their approach to philanthropy and community relations: the
use of a narrow focus or theme, such as environmental protection, breast
cancer, or youth literacy, to maximize the impact of giving and to align
contributions with the company’s business goals and brand characteristics;
the support of programs that target beneficiaries who are or could become
customers; the integration of the company’s giving program with other
departments such as marketing, public affairs, and government relations;
the formation of partnerships with community groups, local governments,
and other companies who share a common interest in a particular concern
(Bill Clinton’s drive to build “empowerment zones” in economically
depressed communities through business, government, and nonprofit
partnerships is one prominent example of such a strategy); the development
of volunteer programs with awards, matching gifts, paid-volunteer
time, or other incentives to encourage employees to serve their communities;
the instigation of global volunteering or grant-making programs that
emphasize and attain a “worldwide” presence;7 the utilization of already
existing company resources to enable noncash forms of contributions; the
use of public relations campaigns that highlight company activities; and an
increased emphasis on the measurement of program results (Alperson
1995; Levy 1999; Muirhead 1999).

——————————————————————————-

Cause-Related Marketing

Carol Cone,
founder and CEO of Cone Communications, a firm that earns more than
$4 million per year promoting cause-related marketing, explains the turn
to this new strategy: “No one wants to compete on the basis of price or
innovation. Everyone can cut prices, and with today’s technology any
innovation can be copied within ninety days” (quoted in Davidson 1997,
37). Instead, companies and brands associate themselves with a cause as a
means to build the reputation of a brand, increase profit, develop
employee loyalty to the company, and add to their reputation as good
corporate citizens (Alperson 1995; Davidson 1997; Foley 1998; Graham
1994; Muirhead 1999; Mullen 1997; Stark 1999).

Marketing experts frequently refer to cause-related marketing as a
means to “cut through the clutter” caused by increasing competition
between manufacturers, the power of multiple retailers, technological
advances, fragmentation of media audiences, and the increase in the sheer
volume of commercial communications directed at the market (Pringle
and Thompson 1999, 12).

Marketing professionals are explicit in their belief that cause-related
marketing should be first and foremost a strategy for selling products,
rather than an altruistic or philanthropic activity. For instance, public
relations consultant Jennifer Mullen, writing in Public Relations Quarterly,
points out that cause marketing has emerged as “corporations increasingly
want added value for their charitable giving activities” (Mullen 1997, 42).

Moreover, a recent report of the Conference Board suggested that the
very idea of corporate philanthropy might be questionable in the light of
the rise of cause-related marketing and other aspects of strategic philanthropy:
“The appropriateness of the term ‘philanthropy’ to describe corporate
giving is being debated.

According to oft-quoted statistics from Mintel Marketing Intelligence, American
Express’s campaign to raise funds for the renovation of the Statue of Liberty
generated an estimated $1.7 million for the cause, a 27 percent
increase in card usage, and a 10 percent jump in new card membership
applications (Pringle and Thompson 1999). Condé Nast reader surveys
on the Ford Community Action Team breast cancer campaign found that
63 percent of readers said it “made them feel better about Ford Motor”
(Green 1999, 34) and that the number of women who would consider
purchasing a Ford product the next time they are in the market is increasing
(Connelly 1998).

In this respect, marketing discourse on the desire of the consumer to
find meaning in life through ethical consumption converges with social
science discourse on declining civic trust: “There has been an alarming
decline in the levels of trust in the traditional institutions, the pillars of
community such as the Church, government, and the police to which
people had been accustomed to ‘belonging’ or from which many had
gained their sense of social direction and moral authority” (Pringle and
Thompson 1999, 12).

——————————————————————–

Race, gender, cancer donations, run for the cure

In April 1999, the National Football League became the latest corporation
to sign on as a national sponsor of the Susan G. Komen Breast
Cancer Foundation’s Race for the Cure.

This new approach to marketing was created, in part, in
response to a survey that found 40 percent of the NFL’s weekly television
viewers are women and, of those 45 million, “20 million call themselves avid fans” (Yerak 2000).

Beginning in October 1999, to coincide with Breast Cancer Awareness
Month, the NFL aired a selection of six different TV spots featuring
NFL players to “help raise awareness and encourage fans to join in the
fight against breast cancer” (NFL 1999c). The spots, entitled “Real Mean
Wear Pink,” aired during NFL games and primetime and daytime programming
on ABC, CBS, ESPN, and FOX.

Five of the six spots feature a different high-profile player—Jamal
Anderson, running back with the Atlanta Falcons; Tony Gonzalez, tight
end with the Kansas City Chiefs; Hardy Nickerson, linebacker of the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Kordell Stewart, quarterback for the Pittsburgh
Steelers; and Jason Sehorn, defensive back of the New York Giants—
describing their experiences as volunteers at the race. The sixth spot is a
compilation with music but no voice-overs. The commercials are visually
similar: hundreds of white, middle-aged women (along with smaller numbers
of white men and children) decked out in pink and white athletic
apparel walking and jogging along the tree-lined streets of Aspen. Interspersed
with these images is footage of the featured players (four of whom
are the only people of color visible in the commercials) erecting banners
and signs, handing out water to participants as they run by, shaking hands
with the men, holding hands with the children, and hugging the women.

———————————————————————–

Real Men Have Character: Race and the Criminalization of the NFL

While the significance of the Real Men Wear Pink campaign lies partly in
its capacity for attracting new consumers, we cannot reduce its significance,
or that of cause-related marketing in general, to the production of
new markets. Nor can we begin to understand its implications simply by
undertaking a close textual reading of these commercials. Instead, I want
to suggest that we must read Real Men Wear Pink as indicative of the psychic
dimensions of broader historical conditions, conditions shot through
with the normalizing and exclusionary logics of race and gender. In order
to explore this claim in more detail and read the Real Men Wear Pink
campaign contextually, I want to take what may seem like a detour through
contemporary debates about what has come to be known as the “character
issue” in the NFL—that is, the alleged propensity of NFL players to
criminality—and concomitant debates among officials, coaches, players,
academics, and media critics about how best to screen out “undesirable
characters” when recruiting new players to join the league.

Public discussions about the world of professional basketball and football
have long been a site for the expression of cultural anxieties about
race, crime, and violence. Cheryl Cole (1996) argues that during the
1980s, popular knowledges about the inner city, urban problems, and
black masculinity were produced and rendered visible through the categories
of “sport” and “gangs”: where sport appeared as the locus of “conventional
values” such as a healthy lifestyle, productivity, and discipline,
and gangs as the site for those “behaviors” that were thought to threaten
such values—out-of-control violence, insatiable consumerism, and a
refusal to take proper and meaningful employment. In turn, such behaviors
were deemed responsible for the devastation and “disorder” of America’s
inner cities. The sport-gang dyad, while ensuring that the values
articulated to both sport and gangs remain unquestioned, does not guarantee
black athletes an escape from the discourse of racism. For the sportgang
dyad also works as a normalizing lens within the world of sport: the
criminalization and pathologization of black masculinity is so deeply
inscribed and so utterly pervasive as to make African American athletes—
like all African American men—always potential criminals. Hence, the
mass media present the American public with a constant flow of stories
detailing the lives of professional athletes who have apparently been
unable to abandon the modes of conduct allegedly instilled in them from
a young age. Sports author Jeff Benedict makes this point explicit when he
claims in an interview with Sport that “you can take the boy out of the
inner city but you can’t take the inner city out of the boy” (quoted in
Keteyian 1998).

Although the alleged propensity of athletes to criminal behavior has
been well established in the popular imagination for some time, the past
four years have witnessed a proliferation of discourse on the “character
issue.” When Lawrence Phillips, a player known for his “past bad behavior,”
was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in 1996 and subsequently arrested
on a number of occasions for a variety of offenses—all the subject of
intense media coverage—NFL team owners introduced a violent-crime
policy by which players arrested for such crimes would be subject to therapy,
fines, suspension, or banishment, depending on the type of crime
committed and the verdict reached by the courts (Attner 1997, S2; Freeman
2000a).

The NFL’s response to the book was to commission its own survey of
crime in the league (Freeman 2000a). And when the debate over crime,
character, and the NFL reached new heights in the early months of 2000
with the arrest of two high-profile players (Rae Carruth of the Carolina
Panthers and Ray Lewis of the Baltimore Ravens) on charges of murder
within the space of a few weeks, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue had
the survey findings on hand.14 Professional football players, Tagliabue
declared, committed crimes at a rate commensurate with the general population
“of the same age and racial background” (quoted in DeFord
2000). Thus, as the NFL attempted to undermine the notion that athletes
are somehow predisposed to criminal behavior, their response only served
to confirm the notion that young black men are predisposed toward crime.
It suggested, that is, that the NFL is no different from the “general population,”
in which crime can also be predicted by age and race.

The theories proffered as explanations
ranged from the violent nature of the sport, to the dangers and temptations
of women (the “evil that lurks in skirts” according to Diane Shah
[2000] of the Chicago Sun-Times), to the background or “environment”
from which the players originate, to their upbringing in female-headed
“welfare” families. The solutions put forward included more intense education
for rookies, therapy for violence-prone players, more thorough
character screening during the drafting process (NFL teams already perform
extensive background checks and psychological testing on potential
recruits), and a greater emphasis on character-building practices such as
volunteerism.

The NFL has also proposed “dealing” with the “character issue” by
emphasizing, through mass media campaigns, “the positive deeds players
do in the community” and encouraging “wives and girlfriends to participate
more in the programs designed to help players stay out of trouble”
(Freeman 2000a). Thus, in line with the recommendations of cause-
related marketing experts such as Jennifer Mullen who, as we saw previously,
suggests that such campaigns may give corporations the “benefit of
the doubt” during moments of negative publicity, the NFL views marketing
tools such as Real Men Wear Pink as vehicles for repairing their public
image. Moreover, the league looks to women, who are thus reaffirmed
as the moral guardians of men, as key to the ethical transformation of their
“troubled” players.

————————————————————————-

Building “Proper” Citizens: The Pedagogy of Volunteerism and the Racialization of Generosity

How then should we read the Real Men Wear Pink campaign? What does
this campaign suggest about the United States’s preoccupation with volunteerism
and philanthropy? About its relationship to breast cancer as a
charitable cause? And about the “character” debates in the NFL?
At one level, the Real Men Wear Pink campaign promotes an alternative
version of masculinity—one that is sensitive, compassionate, and
charitable—from that with which the NFL is more commonly associated.
For a culture obsessed with role models and citizen education, the image
of five professional football players who are suitably “diverse” and who
are engaged in genuine and meaningful service to their fellow citizens is
surely ideal. However, as the preceding pages have stressed, the meaning
of these images and the ways in which they operate are more complex and
more dangerous than a decontextualized analysis might suggest.
The Real Men Wear Pink campaign is problematic not because there
is something inherently wrong with sensitive or compassionate masculinity,
but because the brand of masculinity the campaign produces gains its
very meaning, legitimacy, and appeal from its implicit difference from a
demonized masculinity that is constituted through the inscription of criminality
and “bad character” on the bodies of black men. It seems important
to clarify here that my argument is not that the Real Men Wear Pink
campaign creates a myth of compassionate masculinity in order to detract
public attention away from the “true” deviant masculinity that “really”
characterizes the NFL. I am not interested, in other words, in adjudicating
the “characters” of NFL players. Instead, my argument is that the campaign
is inevitably part of a discursive formation in which a player’s character
is judged—at least in part—on the basis of his involvement in volunteerism,
and in which participation in volunteerism is articulated to
good character and understood—like race—to be predictive of a player’s
propensity to crime.

The character problem in the NFL, if we remember, was also blamed
on the absence of a father figure in the players’ childhoods. While anxieties
about absent fathers are most obviously anxieties about the disintegration
of the disciplinary mechanisms of the heteronormative nuclear
family, these anxieties are linked, in important ways, to contemporary
discourse on volunteerism and philanthropy. Like the youth who are cur-
rently the target of Colin Powell’s highly publicized volunteerism crusades,
many NFL players have grown up in households headed by a “welfare
mother” and have thus, it is implied, been deprived of “generous”
and “independent” role models. In this context, it is notable that the official
aim of the President’s Summit on America’s Future—the 1997
extravaganza at which Powell and Clinton launched their campaign to
“make volunteerism part of the definition of citizenship” (Clinton, quoted
in Hall and Nichols 1997)—was to provide 2 million underprivileged
youth with “five fundamental resources” by the year 2000: mentors, adequate
health care, safe places to go after school, job skills, and the opportunity
to do volunteer work. Thus, the underprivileged youth who were to
be the beneficiaries of the newly invigorated individual and corporate generosity
that was to emerge from the summit were also to be trained as volunteers—
trained to avoid, that is, the life choices taken by their implied
and figurative parents, the “welfare queen” and the absent black father. In
an era in which “neither the government nor the private sector can adequately
address the needs of the nation’s 15 million disadvantaged children”
(Clinton in Hall and Nichols 1997), these children were to learn
how to give as well as to receive; to become a generation of adults who are
not dependent.

In the context both of contemporary discourse on volunteerism and
responsibility and the debate about character in the NFL, Real Men Wear
Pink might best be read as an advertisement for the promise of personal,
private philanthropy in the post–welfare reform era. Because at the same
time that the emergence of cause-related marketing is an effect of social
developments associated with the rise of Reaganomics and neoliberalism
in the United States, marketing strategies such as Real Men Wear Pink are
also mechanisms for the production of ideals of citizenship.

The players who appear in these commercials and whose participation
in philanthropic and volunteer activity is the stuff of an endless
stream of press releases are the exemplars of “good character,” where the
latter is defined by a willingness to embrace bourgeois, humanistic values
such as the need to perform organized, charitable works. The particular
form of compassionate culture that the campaign represents and for which
the “American people” are currently supposed to strive is one in which
acts of organized volunteerism signify both concern for others and selfresponsibility
and fulfillment. However, this is most definitely not a culture
that recognizes the informal networks of support and care upon which
poor urban and rural communities often depend as (American) generosity.
At the same time that the Real Men Wear Pink campaign offers a
model for the ideal practitioner of American generosity, it also offers a
model for the ideal recipient of volunteerism. Unlike the welfare queen—
the quintessential antimother and the symbol of all that threatened the
moral guardianship, selflessness, and good health on which nationally
sanctioned motherhood depends—the breast cancer survivors we see in
Real Men Wear Pink and in discourse on breast cancer more broadly are
the embodiment of a white, heteronormative, nationally sanctioned womanhood.
As survivors, they are ordained with an inherent wisdom and
morality. Through their participation in the race they are at once recipients
and purveyors of charity and bearers of the moral worth bound up
with healthy discipline. Moreover, they appear as beacons of hope who
through their individual courage, strength, and vitality have elicited an
outpouring of American generosity—a continued supply of which will
ensure the fight against breast cancer remains an unqualified success.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090317.wassess17/BNStory/National/home

Minister cites need to create jobs, stimulate economy in broadening exemptions from federal environmental regulations
Article Comments (93) DAWN WALTON

From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail

March 17, 2009 at 3:56 AM EDT

CALGARY — For the next two years, certain public projects will be excused from the rigorous federal environmental assessment process in order to get Canadians working and stimulate the sluggish economy, the Conservative government announced yesterday.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice told a receptive business audience in Calgary that the move is intended to streamline the approval process, and insisted that projects won’t go ahead at the expense of the environment.

“These new regulations will help focus our resources by eliminating unnecessary assessments for public projects where we know from our accumulated experience that there are no adverse environmental consequences – in fact, where there are net environmental gains,” he said.

“We will also avoid duplication with provincial and municipal processes, and the end result will be projects that begin much sooner creating much-needed jobs more quickly.”

Conservationists and critics fear that this is part of Ottawa’s plan to overhaul the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and dramatically reduce the number of reviews done each year to perhaps 200 or 300 from the current case load of thousands, according to leaked government documents.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May called the changes announced yesterday part of the Harper government’s “bulldozers first, questions later kind of approach.”

“There’s a full-scale assault on the environment and they are using the economy as a cover,” she said.

Mr. Prentice said he was astounded to learn the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency conducts more than 7,000 assessments a year, and that any time Ottawa sinks as much as a loonie into a project, the agency must conduct an assessment even if the province or the municipality has already done so.

The federal legislation already exempts scores of projects, including the decommissioning and demolition of buildings, repairs to sidewalks and boardwalks, and removal of signs and benches. But the rules can also exclude from assessment certain types of changes to wind farms, power lines, pipelines and nuclear facilities.

Mr. Prentice said yesterday there is no limit to the value of projects that may be exempted under the new rules, which take effect immediately, but he would not say what additional types of projects will be excused.

Critics complained of the lack of transparency.

“I’m not opposed to reducing the number of environmental assessments,” said Stephen Hazell, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada. “But we’ve got to think it through. I don’t believe the government is all-knowing. … Even in a time of economic crisis, the government should be talking to people.”

The act is scheduled to be reviewed next year.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090317.wgrants17/BNStory/National/home

JEFF GRAY

From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail

March 17, 2009 at 3:43 AM EDT

Despite the crumbling economy and the city’s cash crunch, Toronto Mayor David Miller’s proposed budget calls for a $2-million boost – a 4.8-per-cent increase – to the city’s controversial grants program for arts and community groups.

The proposed budget, which must be okayed by Mr. Miller’s executive committee next week before city council debates it, increases the budget for the city’s community partnership and investment program to $45-million for 2009, up from $43-million in 2008. If this year’s budget is approved, the cost of the grants program will have risen $12-million since Mr. Miller was elected in 2003.

Much of the proposed 2009 increase would go toward youth outreach programs in “priority neighbourhoods” plagued with gang crime, and for an expansion of a school meals program. The rest is accounted for in a 2-per-cent increase meant to cover inflation.

But Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, a right-leaning critic of the mayor, says that with property taxpayers looking at a 4-per-cent hike in the proposed operating budget, cuts to the grants program should be made.

“Every single year, the grants program continues to grow while every single department is asked to cut and make do with less,” Mr. Minnan-Wong said.

He said the city used to fund only “direct programming” but now allows groups to apply for funds to cover their administration costs: “It’s reached absurd levels that we have actually hired staff to teach them how to ask for more money.”

The grants, a favourite target of another outspoken right-wing councillor, Rob Ford, support small community agencies that run anti-racism programs and training for immigrants as well as major cultural institutions.

Arts groups, drop-in centres for the homeless, “harm-reduction” drug strategies and AIDS prevention programs were among the causes that received funds from the city’s $43-million grants budget last year. Others included $4.8-million divided among a list of major institutions and events, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canadian Opera Company, the Pride Festival and Caribana.

In an interview, the mayor was quick to reject criticism of the grants, saying they are needed more than ever in a recession since the people many of these community agencies aim to help are likely to be hit hard.

“It’s a deliberate, strategic choice, because those programs are always important, but they are essential at a time when people are losing work,” Mr. Miller said, adding that the “shoestring” programs “work literal miracles in people’s lives.”

He argued that cutting funding to community agencies that provide free meals or computer training now could see more people slide into welfare or homelessness, leaving taxpayers with a much higher bill, and that he would like to spend more, if he could.

Critics of the grants program this year may zero in on the issue of city funds – $25,000 last year with another $25,000 pledged for 2009 – for the Canadian Arab Federation. The money is meant to pay for a “public media campaign” to combat the “dominant misrepresentation” of Arabs and Muslims.

But the group is embroiled in a public feud with Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, which came to a head after its president, Khaled Mouammar, called Mr. Kenney a “professional whore” for supporting Israel. Mr. Kenney then ordered a review of the nearly $500,000 in federal funding the group receives to provide for services to immigrants.

City officials say the group, whose website is largely devoted to the Palestinian cause, has not violated any of the conditions of its funding agreement with the city. The grants program demands audits of groups receiving funds, along with progress reports, and asks groups to abide by the city’s anti-discrimination and human-rights policies.

Toronto’s grants budget

The city gives out millions each year for community agencies and arts groups. If approved, the budget will have grown by $12-million since Mayor David Miller was elected in 2003.

GRANTS BUDGET, $MILLIONS

‘03: $33

‘04: $39

‘05: $39

‘06: $40

‘07: $41

‘08: $43

‘09*: $45

*proposed

TONIA COWAN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090317.wtaser17/BNStory/National/home

Policeman accidentally jolted in head has symptoms a year later; report suggests publicizing warnings
Article Comments CARLY WEEKS

From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail

March 17, 2009 at 3:54 AM EDT

A jolt from a taser could trigger a seizure in certain circumstances, according to a new report by Canadian researchers.

The finding is based on a case study of a police officer who was accidentally hit with a taser in the upper back and head, and had a seizure with long-lasting side effects. The case report, being published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, highlights a little-known risk of brain complications if a person is shocked on or near the head by a taser, lead author Richard Wennberg said.

“I think it’s quite different from the vast majority of the taser usage,” said Dr. Wennberg, who works at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre at Toronto Western Hospital and is associate professor of neurology at the University of Toronto. “We should be using them more judiciously.”

He said that strong warnings about the chance of seizures should be publicized to help reduce the risk of serious brain complications.

In Canada, only police organizations are authorized to use stun guns. Their use has been the subject of major controversy, particularly since the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, who suffered cardiac arrest after being hit with a taser multiple times by the RCMP in October, 2007. The incident is the subject of a public inquiry. Stun guns have been associated with numerous deaths in Canada.

The new report examines the case of a healthy police officer in his 30s who was chasing a suspected robber, when a second officer accidentally hit him with a taser shot. The officer fell to the ground and began foaming at the mouth with his eyes rolling back in his head. His movements and behaviour were consistent with a generalized seizure. He returned to work five days later.

He had no more seizures after the injury, which occurred more than a year ago. But he still has headaches, dizziness, irritability, difficulty concentrating and anxiety.

“Until now, most reports of taser-related adverse events have understandably concentrated on cardiac complications associated with shots to the chest,” the report said. “Our report shows that a taser shot to the head may result in brain-specific complications.”

Peter Holran, vice-president for public relations and government affairs at Taser International, said police officers are trained to deploy tasers on parts of the body with large muscles, such as the front, back and legs.

Tasers come with a warning that clearly state they should not be used on sensitive areas, including the head, face and genitals, Mr. Holran said. However, because stun guns are often used in chaotic situations, accuracy can be difficult.

Although the company will take the findings into consideration, he cautioned the study involves only one person.

http://www.thestar.com/GTA/Columnist/article/602295

Mar 14, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (12)
Royson James

Add “horticultural infrastructure” to the road and sewer projects that form the traditional backbone of the government-funded stimulus for our failing economy: Green roofs, solar panels, urban forestation, wetlands restoration, energy retrofits, electrical and plumbing fixes that reduce energy consumption, recladding buildings so they are better insulated and energy efficient.

That’s the way of the future, we are told, with a tsunami of jobs flowing along the green wave.

New York’s charismatic leader of the green-economy movement delivered the green gospel in Toronto yesterday, and the 60 or so civic leaders present hung on every inspiring utterance from Majora Carter, the black woman from the South Bronx.

Still, they left pondering, though not solving, the challenge of our time – one that could tragically waste the opportunity the economic crisis affords. If going green is a preoccupation of white folks, and the gathering accepted that as fact, while perennial job deficit and poverty have a distinctly coloured tinge, how can green jobs end up anywhere but in white hands?

This being the polite company of the city’s socially conscious elite, the words weren’t quite as blunt, but the subtext was just as direct.

“You produce jobs when you green the ghetto,” Carter said, and everybody nodded. After all, she’s proven it in the South Bronx, transforming barren landscape into lush livable space, and creating jobs for residents in the process.

Carter pointed to Sweet Beginnings, a Chicago project that hires ex-inmates to make and sell honey-based products to restaurants and hotels. Only a tiny fraction of the ex-prisoners so employed end up back in prison. The recidivism rate in the general population is near 70 per cent. So it works.

But how to get green jobs into the hands of the marginalized, already disproportionately and negatively affected by economic downturns? And how to do it in a recession bordering on a depression?

The task of survival is usually enough to exhaust all but the supermen in poor neighbourhoods. Calls for “citizen engagement” in environmental causes ring pretty hollow when the toilet hasn’t been fixed and the bedbugs bite.

So, the same privileged folks who saw the green-jobs tsunami coming stand to catch the wave early and ride off into financial security.

Franz Hartmann, of the Toronto Environmental Alliance, posed the challenge environmental groups face in connecting with racialized groups – the very ones who are the poster children for poverty.

Frances Lankin of the United Way suggested Hartmann’s people and hers connect, since the United Way is involved in on-the-street contact in Toronto’s poorer areas.

Turns out poor people care about a safe place for their kids to play, jobs that don’t destroy their health, but really, any job that restores self-esteem. So, link the green movement to jobs and the people who most need the jobs will become ardent tree huggers.

Some 80 per cent of green jobs will go to workers redirected from old-economy jobs, says Carter. It’s the remaining 20 per cent that can be gobbled up by the enviro-sharks, if advocates aren’t clear in their intent and goal.

“It takes regulation and legislation,” Carter said, following her breakfast presentation. “That’s where your mayor must focus. He has to say, `These jobs are going to these people in these communities.’ You have to be that deliberate or else it won’t happen.

“What we are talking about is crafting a whole new class of workers; maybe there’ll be a green union, for all I know, around horticultural engineering.”

Let the revolution begin.

Email: rjames@thestar.ca

http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/article/603396

Needy schools redefined
More accurate measure of hurdles students face ignores where they live and if they are immigrants
March 17, 2009

Comments on this story (0)

Louise Brown

EDUCATION REPORTER

The map of poverty across Toronto schools no longer counts apartments and immigrants.

In a new way of measuring the socio-economic hurdles faced at different schools, the Toronto District School Board now takes a deeper look at family income and parent education than ever before, but ignores the type of housing students live in and whether they are immigrants.

Experts say living in an apartment does not mean a student is necessarily at risk of struggling at school, nor does the fact they are new to Canada or that they switched schools in the past year.

The changes have redrawn the map of educational risk across the city with some schools, such as Scarborough’s Woburn Junior Public School – whose rating has fallen from the most needy of all 475 grade schools in 2007 to 122nd under the new scale – now eligible for less money for students at risk.

Others, such as Dorset Park Public School – up to 101 from 223 in 2007 – are eligible for more funding.

“Will some schools be upset? Yes, but only until they realize these factors really paint a more accurate picture of which communities need more help,” said Scarborough trustee Scott Harrison, who represents both Woburn and Dorset Park schools.

The board gives extra money to schools at the high end of the needs scale – the Learning Opportunities Index – to allow smaller classes and more help for students.

But you can’t gauge need by apartment blocks, warned Peter Gooch, the board’s director of strategy, policy and planning.

“We now know a sea of apartment buildings can include high-end condos, while a single-family dwelling may house a number of families, so we’ve dropped housing from our calculations altogether,” he said.

Moreover, immigrants from some regions such as South Asia and East Asia often do better at school than many born in Canada, he noted, so being an immigrant cannot be seen as a roadblock in itself.

“Some immigrants speak English and some can’t. Some are poor and some are not. Some are educated and some aren’t. It’s too broad a factor to predict how a child will do,” says economist Enid Slack, of the University of Toronto, who helped redesign the yardstick the board uses to measure students at risk.

“And the board also has stopped counting students who have switched schools in the past year,” she said, “because it proved to tell us very little about how students perform.”

The Ontario government gave school boards $413 million this year in Learning Opportunities Grants, of which Toronto’s public schools got about $123 million.

Thorncliffe Park Elementary School, tucked in a burst of highrises 10 times more crowded than the average Toronto neighbourhood and housing families from Pakistan, India and the world, is now ranked 175th most needy, down from 14th place in 2007, when apartments and immigrants were part of the equation.

“Thorncliffe Park still ranks as a school with high need, but because of its stable, two-parent families with university degrees and low rate of social assistance, it has fallen down the list relative to other schools,” says Gooch.

Harrison said Woburn Junior Public School fell in ranking when the immigrant factor was scrapped, “partly because the majority of parents have high levels of education even though they may be immigrants, and many have low income,” he said.

“They can be lawyers and doctors who aren’t accredited here in Canada, but that doesn’t mean their children face particular burdens,” he said.

“The new index better reflects the social and economic world students live in.”

Based on neighbourhood data culled from the Canadian Census and Canada Revenue Agency, the board has sharpened how it tracks students’ family background to include:

The percentage of families who live below Statistics Canada’s “low income measure,” which is half the median income of all Canadians.
The percentage of families who earn at least some income from social assistance.
The percentage of families whose parents do not have a high school diploma.
The percentage of families whose parents have at least one university degree.

Toronto Star