Ms. Le Pen with Frédéric Chatillon, right, and Axel Loustau, second from right, at the start of the National Front’s campaign for local elections in 2013
PARIS — Little more than a week before France’s presidential election, Marine Le Pen remains a front-runner after working hard to sanitize the image of her party, the National Front, and to distance it from the uglier associations of Europe’s far right.
But descriptions of the inner workings of her party by present and former close Le Pen associates, as well as court documents, raise fresh doubts about the success and sincerity of those efforts.
Even before Ms. Le Pen’s remarks this week denying France’s culpability in a notorious wartime roundup of Jews, recent revelations in the French news media, including a well-documented new book, revived nagging concerns about the sympathies of the woman who would be France’s next president.
Two men in her innermost circle — Frédéric Chatillon and Axel Loustau — are well-known former members of a violent, far-right student union that fought pitched battles with leftists and took a turn toward Hitler nostalgia in the mid-1990s.
They have been associates of Ms. Le Pen since her days in law school in the 1980s and remain among her closest friends, according to numerous accounts. (more...)
The Saskatchewan Catholic School Boards Association says it will appeal a judge’s decision to ban funding non-Catholic students in Catholic schools.
The ruling released last week said the province can’t provide Catholic schools funding for students who aren’t Catholic.
Association spokesman Tom Fortosky says there have been a lot of concerns from parents and adds funding will not be received for non-Catholics if the appeal is lost in court.
The association plans to file its appeal within one month.
It could not provide an exact number of non-Catholic students attending Catholic schools.
Justice Donald Layh ruled that provincial government funding of non-minority faith students attending separate schools infringes on religious neutrality and equality rights. (more...)
Outside the offices of the Peel District School Board in Mississauga, secular-school advocates, many from South Asian backgrounds, protest religious accommodation in Peel schools last Tuesday.
Two large paintings of the Hindu god Krishna are mounted on the wall of Ram Subrahmanian’s living room, but he doesn’t want to be labelled as a Hindu.
What’s his religion? “Canadian!” he says, his eyes lit up behind his glasses, punctuating his pride with a fist pump. It’s Tuesday evening, and many of the dozens of South Asians he’s standing with outside of the Peel District School Board offices in Mississauga also worship at the altar of the maple leaf and love singing that ancient hymn, O Canada.
Someone begins a call-and-response chant through a megaphone: “No religious practice!” A group of protesters reply: “In public schools!”
Mr. Subrahmanian is touting a sign that says “There is no such thing as ‘religious accommodation’ in the Ontario Human Rights Code.” For months, Mr. Subrahmanian and his cohorts have protested the school board’s policy on religious accommodation. Muslim Friday prayer, called Jummah, has had a place in Peel schools for decades, but the issue became a point of contention in the wider community late last year when the board revisited how the service was conducted and tried to provide more consistent guidelines to schools.
Last month, a meeting to discuss the matter devolved into chaos when protesters shouted anti-Muslim remarks and tore up a copy of the Koran. Later, an inflammatory video posted to YouTube offered a cash reward for a recording of Muslim students using hate speech in Friday prayers.
To the school board, the debate is over. They’ve moved on to other topics at their meetings. But protesters say they’ll be back to picket the next board meeting and the one after that.
Some have threatened to take the school board to court. And notably, at this protest, as with others before it, the majority of the crowd is South Asian – members of a community that makes up half of Peel’s population. (more...)
The York Region District School Board has approved a plan for extensive equity and governance training for trustees and senior staff to meet the deadlines for the first set of directives set out by the education ministry after a scathing report that documented widespread dysfunction in the board.
At a special meeting Thursday night, the board’s 11 trustees — who were described in the report released earlier this month as dysfunctional, unaccountable and lacking “a basic understanding of their roles and responsibilities” as elected leaders — approved a plan that would see them receive retraining in governance, and three three-hour sessions in equity training.
The board also outlined an extensive multi-year plan for “rebuilding trust and re-engaging with communities in the board,” which includes the implementation of the “every student counts” survey to collect race-based data, town halls with parents, and increased collaboration with community and faith groups.
“Today we are making good on that commitment by delivering thorough and concrete plans to address the first set of her recommendations,” said Board chair Loralea Carruthers. “Our detailed plan to rebuild trust with the community demonstrates our commitment to rebuild our board in an open, transparent and collaborative way.” (more...)
For the first time since 2011, Canadian businesses pulled their money out of tax havens, ending a five-year run when more than $120 billion was stashed in the 10 most popular low-tax or no-tax countries.
The newly released Statistics Canada numbers provide the most concrete evidence yet that the Panama Papers may have had a chilling effect on the use of tax havens to minimize corporate taxes.
“This could be a sign that global efforts to curb corporate profit shifting to tax havens may be paying off,” said Dennis Howlett, executive director of Canadians for Tax Fairness, a group that lobbies for the closure of loopholes that encourage the use of offshore tax havens.
According to the government’s official foreign direct investment statistics, Canadian businesses reduced their holdings in the top 10 tax havens from $272.4 billion in 2015 to $261 billion at the end of last year, bringing home $11.4 billion.
This reversal could be due to a number of different factors, including reforms in Ireland that make it harder to exploit that country to avoid taxes, Howlett said. But investment reductions in Luxembourg and Bermuda point to a wider trend. (more...)
A Mississauga mother of four says she fears for her eldest son's safety after a number of high-profile incidents targeting Muslim school prayers at the Peel District School Board.
"This topic is starting to enrage a lot of people and, I think for community safety, there is definitely heightened security across the board," Shireen Ahmed told As It Happens host Carol Off.
The PDSB has held voluntary Friday prayers for Muslim students at its schools for 20 years. Ahmed's 17-year-old son attends them every week, sometimes leads the service with his own sermons on topics like exam stress or youth engagement, she said.
"He's been going most of his life on Fridays," Ahmed said. "There's more than 300 students that go. They go hang out after. Like, it's just sort of like something they do together."
But in recent months, these routine prayers have ignited a firestorm of controversy, sparking a series of anti-Muslim incidents after the board sought to review whether students should be allowed to write their own sermons or instead be required to use pre-written ones. (more...)
Upper Canada College says it is treating an alleged “anti- Semitic” incident between students “extremely seriously” but cautions the public shouldn’t rush to judgment until all the facts are in.
“There was an incident and it is being actively investigated,” Marnie Peters, UCC director of marketing and communications, said.
Peters would not offer specific details but confirmed Toronto Police were contacted.
But sources close to the school say it revolves around students in Grades 6 and 7 and a locker being sprayed with anti-Semitic insults and drawings.
Peters confirmed prestigious UCC did send a letter home to parents. (more...)
Hopes were riding high yesterday that UK parliamentarians might seize the opportunity to take historic action to end decades of financial secrecy in the UK’s Overseas Territories. We blogged about this yesterday highlighting the fact that a lot of ongoing Parliamentary business was at risk of being shelved because of the sudden general election called by British Prime Minister Theresa May. There’s a phenomenon known as the wash-up period which “refers to the last few days of a Parliament before dissolution. Any unfinished business is lost at dissolution and the Government may need the co-operation of the Opposition in passing legislation that is still in progress.”
An amendment was tabled for the Criminal Finances Bill some months back which would have obliged the UK’s Overseas Territories (including such secrecy havens as Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and the Caymans) to create fully public registers of the beneficial ownership of companies. As we asked yesterday in our blog, will the UK parliament step up to the mark? Unfortunately, today we have the answer. No. Defeat has been snatched from the jaws of victory. (more...)
Friday is a day where millions of Muslims worldwide pray and worship together – the word for the practice, Jummah, literally means “Friday prayers.” Together, they pray for peace, for stability, to ease burdens of famine and illness, for relief from war, systemic oppression and justice. Locally, at NHL and NBA playoff time, there are sincere supplications for select teams to advance.
It is a time to see our neighbours and to recharge spiritually. It is a time to be reminded of our duties and responsibilities. At various schools in the Peel District School Board (PDSB), Jummah prayers have been happening for almost 20 years.
My eldest son is in Grade 11 and attends Jummah at his high school every week. On Fridays, he gets up early, showers and wears clean clothes, usually jeans and a shirt that does not require ironing. Some weeks he is the khateeb, the person who delivers the sermon (or khutbah). He loves it and I am happy he has an opportunity to practice his faith in a safe space.
Jummah attendees are students and staff who are Muslim and choose to attend. They are exercising their right to freedom of religion, one protected in Ontario, where public and Catholic schools are required by law to accommodate religious practice if requested.
Lots of Muslim students don’t attend Jummah at my son’s school and sometimes non-Muslim friends peek in. Afterward, everyone heads to the plaza nearby to hang out at Tim Hortons or grab a shawarma. (more...)
Black children begin kindergarten with ambition, confidence, excitement to learn, and high self-esteem, but are "gradually worn down" by the attitudes of teachers towards them and the education system in general, participants told researchers.
Black children in the GTA may start kindergarten feeling confident and excited to learn, but too many are “gradually worn down” by schools that stream them into applied courses and suspend them at much higher rates than other students, says a new report from York University.
The report found that while academic streaming was supposed to have ended in 1999, black students are twice as likely to be enrolled in applied instead of academic courses compared to their counterparts from other racial backgrounds. And they are more than twice as likely to have been suspended from school at least once during high school.
“Black students face an achievement and opportunity gap in GTA schools,” says the study led by York University professor Carl James.
“All evidence point(s) to the need for action if the decades-old problem is to be addressed.” (more...)
Yaron Svoray was born in 1954 in Israel and spent his childhood in a small kibbutz in the Israeli desert. Upon the completion of his primary education, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces as a paratrooper, seeing action in the 1973 Yom Kippur War as well as in many commando raids into hostile territories. Following his military service, Yaron conducted his undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, later completing his master’s degree in New York.
In the early 80’s Yaron worked as a detective sergeant in the Tel-Aviv Yamar, the Israeli equivalent of the FBI. He then employed his investigatory skills as a journalist, working for Israeli and American publications and television networks.
The most explosive of his journalistic exploits occurring in 1995 when Yaron infiltrated the Neo-Nazi movement in Germany. His undercover operation received worldwide attention which resulted in a book and a movie entitled “The Infiltrator”.
For the last 20 years , Yaron leads an International team of dedicated men and women who specialize in the discovery and recovery of jewels, diamonds, artifacts and personal property hidden at the end of WWII by the Nazis these treasures were found in Italy, Germany, Austria, Poland, and South America. All of the finds are given to charities and museums.
For those who believe that the Nazi atrocities and the rise of Hitler are impossible in our time, "In Hitler's Shadow" summons a monumental wake-up call. The book follows the true story of Yaron Svoray, a former paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Force and detective in Israel's Central Police Command.
While on a personal hunt for hidden World War II treasure in Germany in September 1992, he stumbles across a neo-Nazi contact who introduces him to an old SS officer who served at Buchenwald concentration camp. Returning home, Svoray decides to go uncover as a journalist and explore the German underground of National Socialism. What he found will profoundly disturb you, and Svoray has taped conversations and pictures to back up his story. Posing as a right-wing journalist from America, Svoray infiltrates the darkest depths of the modern Nazi Party, proving that the Nazis never went away, they simply moved underground. Along the way, he befriends a number of committed Nazis, some of them members of the European Parliament, some of them office holders in city governments, and all of them with their eyes on the Reichstag and the Chancellorship of Germany.
This book will mesmerize you because it reads like a spy-thriller, yet it's a true story with no names changed! All those who cherish freedom and loathe bigotry and racism need to read this book. It will remind us all of the personal role we must play in making sure that the horrors of the Holocaust are "never again"
The Ontario Public School Boards Association has a handy explainer on its website for anyone wondering why these archaic entities even exist in 2017. “School trustees play an indispensable role in preserving our democratic heritage,” it says, ignoring the elephant in the classroom.
The truth is that most school boards offer a sorry spectacle of Canadian democracy in action. They cannot even govern themselves, much less look out for the students in their charge. They are plagued by petty ideological battles, personality conflicts, incivility and sheer incompetence.
So few Canadians actually turn out to vote in school board elections that mobilizing your friends and relatives to get to the polls is often enough to become a trustee. If you are strategic and win the backing of a teachers’ union or church group, you are all but guaranteed a board seat for life.
That will allow you to travel to Europe on the taxpayers’ dime to participate in “exploratory learning opportunities” no matter how farcical that description. It will allow you to throw your weight around, bully board staff and swear a blue streak at the office with relative impunity.
Sure, the pay’s not great. But you can’t beat it for the free trips, be they of the European or power variety.
That is, until someone higher up clues in to the obvious: You need adult supervision. (more...)
Young girl’s panties started to go missing; sexual assaults began to occur, and then female bodies were found! Soon this quiet town of Tweed, Ontario, was in panic. What's even more shocking was when an upstanding resident stood accused of the assaults. This was not just any man, but a pillar of the community; a decorated military pilot who had flown Canadian Forces VIP aircraft for dignitaries such as the Queen of England, Prince Philip, the Governor General and Prime Minister of Canada. This is the story of serial killer Russell Williams, the elite pilot of Canada’s Air Force One, and the innocent victims he murdered. Unlike other serial killers, Williams seemed very unaffected about his crimes and leading two different lives. Alan R. Warren describes the secret life including the abductions, rape and murders that were unleashed on an unsuspecting community. Included are letters written to the victims by Williams and descriptions of the assaults and rapes as seen on videos and photos taken by Williams during the attacks.
PANAMA CITY: The co-founder of the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal says the fallout has set off a "thriving" boom in the creation of tax shelters in the United States.
Juergen Mossack, who partnered with Ramon Fonseca to create the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, said in a document obtained Thursday by AFP that after the Panama Papers leak a year ago, the number of new tax shelters created has fallen by 30 percent in Panama and elsewhere.
"However, jurisdictions such as Delaware, Nevada and others located in the United States, where virtually no due diligence is required... incorporations are thriving!" Mossack said.
"Whilst Panama tries hard to be whiter than white, others are profiting," he wrote.
The Panama Papers, published a year ago in a leak of more than 11 million documents belonging to Mossack Fonseca, spurred fresh government action against the secretive world of tax fraud and evasion.
Before the scandal exposed the global extent of offshore tax havens, Panama was the last major financial center refusing all exchange of banking information. (more...)
She promised teenage boys sexual favours in exchange for nude pictures of themselves.
But “she” turned out to be a Scarborough man in training to become a member of the Canadian Forces.
Andrew Newman, 19, was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison after he admitted to the online preying of at least 1,300 boys between the ages of 13 and 16 in Ontario, Quebec, the U.S. and Australia in 2015.
Newman threatened to expose the boys’ images online if they refused his demands for graphic images or sex, court heard.
“It’s difficult to forget the voices of young, vulnerable victims struggling to respond to his threats to expose the graphic material online when they resisted his demands for more child pornography,” said Justice Robert Kelly. (more...)
MISSISSAUGA — The photo emailed to Ibrahim Hindy showed five men hanging by their necks. “Islamic wind chimes,” the email read. Around the same time, a message arrived calling his mosque “one of many satan safe houses that need to be burned to the ground.”
The 33-year-old reported the troubling messages to police in Mississauga, Ont., where he lives and serves as imam at the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre, but he also took to Facebook on Tuesday to say enough is enough. “We have to make this stop,” he wrote.
The threats were the culmination of months of anti-Muslim rhetoric coming from some opponents of a Peel District School Board policy that accommodates Friday prayers on school grounds for Muslim students.
Groups fighting the board have called Islam evil and its prophet a child-rapist. They have urged the banning of Islam and the mass deportation of Muslims. “It’s almost all-out war here,” one of them said after ripping up a Qur’an during a school board meeting.
As a member of the school board’s faith advisory committee who had supported the policy, Hindy has been targeted online as a radical and criminal. He was told he was being watched and that he should have stayed silent. (more...)
York Regional Police sex crimes investigators say they have posed as pimps and traffickers online to ensnare more than 100 men accused of seeking sex with minors.
Det. Sgt. Thai Truong told reporters Friday that undercover officers in York Region have created numerous online ads over the past three years, offering escorts and young women for sex.
When johns inquired about the ads, Truong said the officers indicated that they were offering children for sex.
That was enough to dissuade a significant number of johns from continuing further, but some continued on to arrange meetings.
In one instance, police allege a 25-year-old pilot asked an undercover officer for a girl “14 or 15 years-old and hot” or 13 if she was “killer.”
In another instance, a truck driver who believed he was texting with a 16-year-old girl offered for her to visit his vehicle.
“I have a really cool truck with bunk beds in the back we could have lots of fun,” the man wrote (more...)
Unaccompanied child refugees in Greece desperate to reach the UK and other parts of northern Europe are being forced to sell their bodies in order to pay smugglers to help them with their journeys, according to a new report from Harvard University.
The report, from Dr Vasileia Digidiki and Prof Jacqueline Bhabha at the university’s centre for health and human rights, reveals what they describe as a “growing epidemic of sexual exploitation and abuse of migrant children in Greece”.
The report says child refugees from conflict zones including Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan trying to make their way across Europe are being stranded in Greece, unable to afford the fees charged by smugglers to move them.
As a result some of the children are turning to selling sex to try to fund their journeys. (more...)
A Saskatchewan judge’s ruling that non-Catholic students should not receive public funding to attend separate schools could have implications in other parts of the country.
The decision, released on Thursday, said the province violated equality rights set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its obligation of religious neutrality by funding non-minority faith students who enroll in Catholic schools.
The ruling will have far-reaching consequences if applied to other provinces, including Ontario, where publicly funded secular and separate school districts compete for students as birth rates decline and governments provide funding regardless of a family’s religious affiliations.
“When the government funds Catholic schools respecting non-Catholic students, which I have found is an unconstitutionally protected benefit to the Catholic faith, but does not equally fund other faith-based schools to educate non-adherents, discrimination is evident on the face of the enabling legislation and regulations,” Justice Donald Layh wrote in his 242-page decision.
Saskatchewan’s Education Minister, Don Morgan, told reporters on Friday the decision is being reviewed and the government has not decided whether to appeal. But he said following the ruling would disrupt the province’s schooling system. (more...)
When we talk about education, a “culture of fear” is not a phrase anyone wants to hear. You might expect it in Swat Valley, where Malala Yousafzai was shot by Taliban fanatics for advocating girls’ schooling. Here in Ontario, the phrase seems out of place; and yet, it crops up a frequently in reference to some public school boards.
A report from provincially appointed investigators, released this month, describes “a culture of fear and distrust” within the York Region District school board. Accusations of Islamophobia and racism have dogged the board.
It’s been even worse at the Toronto District school board, where a provincially appointed advisory panel found a “culture of fear” running so deep, some staff were too scared even to talk to them, while several who did broke down in tears.
Astoundingly, these slow-motion train wrecks barely hold a candle to how badly things are going off the rails in Peel.
Some people are very angry with the Peel District school board over religious accommodation — specifically, making space available to Muslim students for Friday prayers. Contrary to misinformation, student reflections are delivered in English, under supervision.
Religious accommodation is not a matter of discretion. It’s the law. The Ontario Human Rights Code supersedes school policy and provincial legislation.
Nevertheless, a recent school board meeting descended into chaos. Protesters tore and stomped on a Qur’an — a desecration as inflammatory as flag-burning. Peel’s board condemned the act and respectfully collected the shreds (more...)
A Mississauga imam says he's become the target of online threats after working with the Peel District School Board (PDSB) on religious accommodation issues.
Imam Ibrahim Hindy says he opened his email inbox on Friday to find an image of hanged Muslim men.
He's also received messages that refer to his mosque, the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre, as a "satan safe house" that needs to be "burned to the ground."
"I have thick skin. I kind of expect to get threats," Hindy said in an interview Wednesday with CBC Radio's Metro Morning. "But I didn't expect to get them from people who walk on my streets and call themselves Canadian." (more...)
Peel District School Board’s religious accommodation for students is falling under fire again.
A group of parents are planning a protest at the suburban Toronto school board next week calling for the annexation of all religious practices from Peel schools.
The protest comes weeks after the school board issued a fact sheet to quell misinformation regarding religious accommodation.
CP24 reached out to Peel District School Board who on Thursday declined to comment, saying in an email, “we are not participating in any further media interviews on this issue.”
This isn’t the first time Concerned Parents of Canada has staged an event, calling for an end to Muslim prayer service in Peel region schools.
The group describes themselves on Facebook as opposing “discrimination, hate, segregation and religious practices in public school.” (more...)
This is an example of the astroturf groups that undermine conservative parents in the province. By taking up media bandwidth and luring support away from authentic issues, this activity blunts the efforts of any real conservative movement. Catholics settled the issue of religious accommodation long ago. Suck it up.
It’s long overdue. But at last York Region District School Board trustees have taken their first step to come to grips with the fear, racism, unprofessionalism and disregard of taxpayer dollars that have festered there for years.
On Tuesday evening they ousted the board’s controversial director of education, J. Philip Parappally.
That’s no surprise, considering the scathing criticism aimed at the director in a report released last week. “We do not see evidence of the strong principled relationships that are expected of a director of education,” wrote authors Patrick Case and Suzanne Herbert.
That was an understatement. Case and Herbert, hired by Education Minister Mitzie Hunter to look into complaints about the board, found most senior staff they spoke with had little confidence in Parappally. Some even said he had fostered a “culture of mistrust” by asking them to spy on one another.
They were not alone in their concerns. Some parents, too, complained he was unresponsive and disrespectful.
Now that Parappally is gone, the real hard work of rebuilding respect and trust among staff, parents, trustees, and students at Ontario’s third-largest school board begins.
It won’t be easy. That’s because the trustees assigned the task of cleaning up the mess were themselves found to be “far from strong and ethical” leaders. Indeed, Case and Herbert described the board as dysfunctional and unaccountable. (more...)
Gradually, I learned about the intricacies of the international black market for gold and discovered it was habituated by shadowy individuals who had intelligence connections and backgrounds. Others seemed to rub noses with members of organised crime or to be part of an international network of scammers and confidence tricksters. The involvement of the Sicilian Mafia is of considerable importance, also. By and large, honest business men don’t stand a chance in this world, as the circling sharks are sensitive to every morsel that isn’t properly anchored and protected and consume it in voracious frenzy.What follows is the result of over four years of often tedious work. It is my belief that the Secret Treaty story you are about to read unveils financial secrets so large that many will find it just too incredible to believe. But true it is.
Former school teacher Neil Joynt has been sentenced to jail time after being found guilty of sexual assault on two young boys in the 1960s and 1970s.
Justice Robert Scott sentenced Joynt to eight months in custody after hearing victim impact statements as well as submissions from Crown attorney Robert Corbella and Joynt's defence lawyer, Michael Woogh, on Wednesday.
"It was a breach of trust," Scott said, referring to Joynt's career as a teacher.
Scott noted that if not for Joynt's age and health, he would have sentenced him more severely. In addition to jail time, the 76-year-old received a 10-year weapons prohibition, his DNA will be submitted to the National DNA Data Bank and he will be on the Sex Offender Registry for the rest of his life.
At the end of October 2016, a jury of 12 people found Joynt guilty of assaulting a boy, now 69 years old, in 1962 while sharing a bed with him, and assaulting another boy, now 56, in 1973 or 1974 during a camping trip near Big Rideau Lake. Scott sentenced Joynt to eight months for both the crimes, to be served concurrently. (more...)
Any granny or pop-pop sitting at home trying to decipher what IBM (IBM) said on its earnings call Tuesday evening would have a hard time -- most of it may not have been in the English language. Talk about corporate speak (and attitude -- the tone of the call sounded as if IBM smashed estimates and is close to curing the common cold) in its finest form.
Here is the bottom line, for those old folks collecting IBM's quarterly dividend: put the stock in the trash and light it ablaze. It's very likely, after the quarter IBM just had, that shares will get re-rated by the market, for one simple reason: Investors are likely to more closely scrutinize the tech giant's transition from a hardware entity to a software and services provider. How could one not do this?
IBM's sales have declined for 20 straight quarters, in large part due to weakness in hardware. For the first quarter, sales from IBM's hardware and operating systems segment plunged 16.8% to $1.4 billion. Meantime, revenue at the company's consulting business dropped 3% to $4 billion.
The cloud business fell short of Wall Street's estimates, as IBM blamed the timing of contracts being signed. Despite cloud sales rising 33% to $3.5 billion, you didn't get the sense the business -- which has been built up through acquisitions -- is poised to grow at a rate that soon wipes out softness in hardware. Not when Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet (GOOGL) are also major players in cloud. (more...)
The York Region District School Board has dismissed its director of education.
J. Philip Parappally is no longer at the helm of the province’s third largest board, according to an internal memo obtained by the Star, that was sent to all staff Wednesday morning — a week after trustees passed a unanimous motion to begin the “laborious and complex” process to dismiss him with cause.
On Tuesday, trustees dealt with the personnel matter in a private meeting that ran late into the night, leaving parents and staff wondering about the outcome.
But the memo put some of their questions to rest.
“York Region District School Board announced today they will be seeking a new director of education,” says that memo, issued just as a board-wide equity symposium was underway.
“We wish to acknowledge Mr. Parappally’s 17 years of service with our board and wish him the very best on the next chapter of his life,” said Chair Loralea Carruthers in the memo.
“In the interest of ensuring the education of students is not affected during this time, the YRDSB has already begun its search for an interim director,” she said (more...)
When assessing the latest controversy over prayer in schools that is taking place in the Peel District School Board, it is important to remember that the issue of religious accommodations has a long, acrimonious history in Canada.
Each incident is presented as a life-and-death struggle over the fabric of Canadian identity. On one hand there is typically a minority group that requests an accommodation it believes is required to freely practice its faith. But these demands are almost always met by a chorus of opposition that demands our institutions stay secular.
But make no mistake, in Canada, secular means maintaining the traditions of the Christian [correction: Protestant] majority.
When seeking to understand the current anti-Muslim paranoia, it is instructional to look at how public ire used to be directed at Sikhs. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sikhs were the minority group du jour in the public spotlight. For example, in 1988, John Morris, a federal candidate from the seemingly progressive NDP, went on television and stated that his Sikh opponent, Liberal Harbajhan Pandori, was unfit to become a member of Parliament because “his culture is really aside from much of the culture of Canada.” (more...)
It should be noted that, along with Sikhs and Native Canadians, Catholics have also been raked over the coals by those who have appropriated the name of "Christian". Protestants have made two claims that do not hold up: 1) they have ownership of so-called Canadian norms and values and 2) they define what it means to be "Christian". Catholics should make very clear that we do not share those assumptions and that we make our own accommodations with newcomers to our communities. Our values are not national or racial. They are universal. We embrace the whole world and invite its inhabitants to full communion with us, in Truth.
During a Peel District School Board meeting on April 12, a supporter of religious accommodations wears a t-shirt with the saying ‘Respect existence or expect resistance.’
Tensions over a suburban Toronto school board providing space for Muslim students to pray as a group every Friday have bubbled into a death threat and an online call to burn down a mosque.
Ibrahim Hindy, an imam in Mississauga, said he received an e-mail on Friday with a death threat that included a picture of men being hanged. He also received a message on social media that called the mosque “one of many satan safe houses that need to be burned to the ground.”
Mr. Hindy said he contacted police, who promised patrols around his home and the mosque. A spokesman for Peel Regional Police said he could not immediately provide further information.
Mr. Hindy is a member of the Peel District School Board’s multifaith group, which meets four times a year and advises educators on how to accommodate students on significant faith days.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric has intensified in the area in recent months over schools providing space for prayer. Some residents in this quiet suburban community, west of Toronto, have been left shaken and concerned for their safety. (more...)
Schools teach children life skills: how to think critically, behave respectfully, act ethically, assume responsibility.
Choose your own checklist. No matter the variations on the above themes, a recurring question arises: Why can’t school trustees, entrusted with educating our children, aspire to similar standards?
Yet another special report, ordered by the Ministry of Education on a delinquent school board, arrived this month. Another devastating post-mortem on the life skills and work habits of elected trustees.
This time it’s the York Region board of trustees guilty of gross incompetence in managing money — and themselves. Measured against the above checklist, they failed on every count.
A botched hiring of the board’s director granted him employment-for-life. Bungled responses to homophobic and racist incidents. Untrammelled travel by untrustworthy trustees. Playing games, playing politics, playing trustees off against one another. Patronizing parents. Abdicating ethical responsibilities and leadership roles. (more...)
A protester of religious accommodations in Peel Region schools who was barred entry to the Peel District School Board meeting April 12 in Mississauga, shouts at a group called Brampton Against Fascism.
Hamza Aziz makes sure to stay close to a friend at all times, and his parents have told him not to be outside after dark – precautions the student never imagined would be needed in his quiet corner of suburban Toronto.
But recent tensions between his school board and some members of the community, including anti-Muslim groups, over providing space for Mr. Aziz and other students to pray as a group every Friday have heightened concerns about safety in the Peel region, just west of Toronto.
“[My parents] are afraid of hate crimes towards the Muslim community, especially since that’s been on the rise lately,” said Mr. Aziz, a high-school student in Mississauga.
That anxiety forced the Peel District School Board to step up security measures at its most recent board meeting on Wednesday evening. Police and security guards were present, guests had to sign in and show identification at the door and the meeting was videotaped. Outside, a group who covered their faces with bandanas to prevent nearby protesters from identifying them said they were there to escort people into the board office safely. (more...)
An IBM Canada staff member jumped to his death at the company's Markham headquarters, according to police.
The man, 48, from Toronto, was on mental health leave, according to a police source, who said he returned to the workplace and climbed to the seventh floor Tuesday.
Before police were called at about 11:30 a.m., the service said the man plummeted off the ledge, located above the building's indoor atrium at 3600 Steeles Ave. E.
The man was taken to hospital, according to police Const. Andy Pattenden, who explained he eventually succumbed to his injuries. The coroner has since confirmed the death was the result of suicide. (more...)
The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse has decided to go ahead with a wide ranging inquiry into allegations that the late Greville Janner was involved in child sexual abuse and whether the Labour Party, the intelligence services, Parliament and government departments could have been involved in a cover up.
The decision, announced on the inquiry’s website, comes despite strong objections from Lord Janner’s family and a plea from retired Assistant Chief Constable Tony Butler, from Leicestershire Police to halt investigations immediately.
The terms of the inquiry are set out in a full statement from Alexis Jay, chair of the inquiry...but the full terms are worth repeating in full.
1. The Inquiry will investigate institutional responses to allegations of child sexual abuse involving the late Lord Janner of Braunstone QC (“Lord Janner”).
2. In particular, the Inquiry will consider
2.1. the adequacy and propriety of law enforcement investigations and prosecutorial decisions relating to allegations falling within paragraph 1 above;
2.2. the extent to which Leicestershire County Council and the Kirkwood Inquiry were awareof allegations falling within paragraph 1 and the adequacy of their response;
2.3. the extent to which the Labour Party, Parliament, government departments, and/or the security and intelligence agencies were aware of allegations falling within paragraph 1 and the adequacy of their response;
2.4. the extent to which any other public or private institution may have failed in its duty to protect children from sexual abuse in respect of the allegations falling with paragraph 1;
2.5 whether any attempts were made to exert improper influence in order to hinder or prevent an institution from effectively investigating or otherwise responding to allegations falling within paragraph 1.
3. In light of the investigations set out above, the Inquiry will publish a report setting out its findings and recommendations to improve child protection and safeguarding in England and Wales. ” (more...)
The Old Etonian John Julius Norwich, asked for a memory that he thought summed up the spirit of his school, offered the following: after a boy had killed himself “the housemaster summoned the whole house and asked if anybody could suggest a reason. The young David Ormsby-Gore put up his hand and said, ‘Could it have been the food, sir?’” This strikes me as appallingly funny; or funny and appalling. It captures – in its black bad taste and high-stakes insouciance – some of what public schools teach their students. Nothing is so serious it can’t be a joke – and the joke, as Alex Renton notes, both fences with authority and obscurely reinforces it.
In 2014, Renton wrote in the Observer about his experiences in the boarding prep school Ashdown House, describing how he was sexually molested by a teacher; and how, when his contemporaries complained about abuse, they were themselves savagely punished for sneaking. In response to his article, he heard from hundreds with similar stories.
Here is a wide-ranging inquiry into the phenomenon of boarding schools in the UK. Renton paints a picture of class-based groupthink, made-up traditions, contagious snobbery and – in Larkin’s phrase – man handing on misery to man, and it deepening like a coastal shelf. It is striped with pungent quotations from those who have been through the system and been hurt by it. What’s most odd is that parents who had themselves been deeply unhappy at school went on, generation after generation, to send their children to the same places. Renton suggests that “normalisation” – rationalising the pain by deciding that it was good for you after all, or that your parents knew best – may be the psychological mechanism at work. (more...)
J. Philip Parappally, director of education at the York Region District School Board
The day after a scathing report detailed the dysfunction, “culture of fear” and a lack of leadership at the York Region public school board, trustees went beyond what was asked of them by the education minister and told embattled director J. Philip Parappally to step down, sources told the Star.
At a special board meeting Wednesday night, trustees said they had already met the first deadline put forward in a letter from Education Minister Mitzie Hunter outlining her 22 directives, and were making progress on many others.
Board chair Loralea Carruthers opened the meeting with strong words, and an apology.
“I’m so sorry, so very sorry that so many of you have been hurt so deeply and I’m sorry that our staff . . . have been hurt, too. And I’m so sorry that our kids, in particular have been exposed to the worst in people instead of the best,” she said. “I am sorry, and my colleagues are sorry. I apologize.” (more...)
They’ve been called the “puppet masters” by the World Bank. Indeed, the Panama Papers shed light on how beneficial owners, or the real people who own/control companies, sometimes go to great lengths to keep their identities hidden. And according to Transparency International, Canada’s opaque laws on beneficial ownership make it an ideal breeding ground for tax evaders and money launderers.
Canadian law permits the use of nominees—essentially custodians—for directors and shareholders, thereby masking the beneficial owners of a company. For in-house counsel, navigating this environment can be complex, especially within a company’s due diligence program.
According to the World Bank, anonymous companies are the most common way US$1-$2 trillion are lost to money laundering each year. They are also used to finance terrorist activities and line the pockets of drug traffickers and corrupt politicians. While no company means to aid those with illicit intentions, the absence of any sort of national registry of beneficial ownership can make it very difficult to determine who you are actually doing business with. (more...)
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