CUPE members and supporters picket at Queen’s Park in Toronto, after education support workers across Ontario walked off the job on Nov. 4.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
Number crunch
Re CUPE’s Initial Wage Demand Ambitious But Expected, Experts Say (Nov. 4): I’ve been involved in evaluating jobs values in an organization and setting and reviewing salary grids based on these values.
Part of this process involves external benchmarking with other organizations where job-matching is possible. Although there is a structured analytical process, there still is some subjectivity.
One of the challenges of reaching agreement with the Canadian Union of Public Employees is that the union represents a number of different jobs, each with their own external comparator. It is possible that significant wage adjustments for some jobs are warranted, but perhaps not for all.
The original ask for a 11.7-per-cent salary increase each year for four years would bring the average $39,000 salary to $60,700, and a $60,000 salary to $93,400. How does this compare to external benchmarks? Will inflation last four years?
The government’s offer has not helped with negotiations and does not represent reality. We have two sides that appear unreasonable in their expectations.
Lorenzo Biondi Oakville, Ont.
School values
Re Why Do We Allow Ontario’s Catholic School System To Violate The Charter? (Opinion, Oct. 29): I believe there is nothing “progressive” about abolishing publicly funded faith-based education.
In Ontario, Catholic schools provide perfectly good education to over half a million students and prepare them for roles as productive, ethical citizens. No large-scale organization is perfect; the demand for Catholic education by a significant segment of the electorate seems clear.
And in Ontario, funding allocations takes place on a per capita basis. If students were to switch from one publicly funded system to another, the cost of their education would remain the same. The amalgamation of school boards in the 1990s did not turn out to be the financial or organizational panacea as was originally hoped.
While lacking constitutional guarantee, I see nothing wrong in providing public funding to other faith-based schools if sufficient demand exists and, as in the case of Catholic schools, they implement all the mandates of the Ontario Ministry of Education.
Istvan Hegedus Toronto
The legal guarantees of the place of the Roman Catholic church, which ran the schools in New France, date to the Articles of Capitulation of the French at Quebec, which were signed five days after Wolfe defeated Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. It was more precisely enacted into British law by the Quebec Act of 1774.
The act included what is now Ontario in the area where Catholic rights applied. Its primary purpose was to ensure the loyalty of French Canada to the British throne. In 1780, when my great-great-great grandfather joined a Loyalist regiment stationed on the Richelieu, he came to a land where Catholic education was already legalized.
In 1867, the fathers of Confederation drafted the British North America Act, which supplanted the Quebec Act and others concerning the governance of the colony, and merely maintained a legal status quo that already had its centennial.
James Rusk Toronto
It is appropriately argued that the existence of Catholic schools is an anachronism. However, the argument of Charter violations reads like an oversimplification of constitutional reality.
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that one section of the Constitution cannot override another, even if they are contradictory. Thus, section 93 cannot be nullified by section 15 on non-discrimination. Resolving such contradictions, then, is a political, not a judicial, issue.
However, section 43 allows for amendment through resolutions in a single province and federal parliament on issues that affect only that province. In 1997, it was used by Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec to extinguish constitutional rights to denominational schools.
Ontario is free to take the same route. All that is required is an act of political will. Actions in Newfoundland and Quebec were met with widespread public support, had no negative political fallout and finally put the issue to rest.
Robert Crocker Bedford, N.S.
If they build it …
Re Ontario Needs More Housing, It Doesn’t Need More Sprawl (Oct. 31): We find that Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, enables and promotes greater density within urban boundaries, with new as-of-right provisions across existing neighbourhoods and around major transit areas.
These measures should be seen as the very definition of anti-sprawl, adding gentle density across existing neighbourhoods and greatly increased density around transit infrastructure – precisely where it should be – and enabling highest and best use of land.
To address the current housing crisis, we need both intensification in urban areas and additional low-rise housing at their peripheries. Doing both would give us the housing supply and choice we need.
Dave Wilkes President and CEO, Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD); Toronto
Re Council Should Trade Golf For Housing And Parkland (Nov. 2): Municipal golf courses are a treasure in Toronto.
I personally have played at Don Valley Golf Course for 60 years. The golf calendar in Toronto is a short one (six months or less); courses then open as parks for beautiful winter walks and cross-country skiing.
Golf courses are wonderful pieces of art. I am pleased that the left-wing element on city council has been held at bay by our Mayor as it relates to the development of golf-course properties.
Thanks to John Tory. Golf is important!
Robert Dale Toronto
Green living
Re Why And How To Plan Your Own Green Funeral (Pursuits, Oct. 29): The Denman Island Natural Burial Cemetery, opened in October, 2014, was the first standalone natural burial cemetery in Canada.
While the cemetery’s services are only open to people with a residential or family connection to Denman Island, it is a leader that other groups, such as Salt Spring Island’s, followed and consulted with closely in their own efforts to create green cemeteries.
It is an unfortunately bureaucratic process encumbered by the same provincial regulations that apply to conventional cemeteries, such as upfront financial fees to ensure maintenance in perpetuity if necessary. (These are not needed in a natural burial cemetery, where the land is intended to return to its natural state, for example.)
Hopefully governments will streamline regulatory requirements so that groups wanting to establish natural burial cemeteries no longer find themselves, if you’ll forgive the pun, buried in red tape.
Stephanie Slater Denman Island, B.C.
Eye of the beholder
Re A New Art Gallery In Vancouver Would Boost The City (Nov. 1): The Vancouver Art Gallery is located in the centre of the city, a site many other galleries or museums in Canada can only envy.
I was at the opening in 1983. It was a splendidly repurposed building. It too promised to show more of the permanent collection. Almost half of the first floor was devoted to Emily Carr.
When trying to raise funds for a new structure, art museums always complain about not being able to show more from permanent collections in the “old” one. What there should be is more storage and access to it, and better use of existing display areas.
I find nothing wrong with the height of the VAG’s second-floor galleries. Yes, some “big names” may not be seen in Vancouver due to the scale of their works. Life will go on.
There are plenty of other offerings available, including underutilized works in the VAG’s collection.
Robert Swain Former art museum director, Kingston
The real thing
Re Montrealers Lament Loss Of Liberté Cream Cheese (Oct. 29): This brought to the fore my despair and suspicions of collusion at the loss of my beloved Western Creamery cream cheese.
When news broke this summer regarding the deletion of Liberté cream cheese (I have on occasion smuggled it across provincial boundaries) I quietly took solace that Western was still standing and life would continue uninterrupted. However as existing stocks began to dwindle, then disappear from supermarket and specialty store shelves, it dawned on me that there was a connection.
I have seen this before in other sectors, where large competitors buy brands with the predetermined intention to delete them. It is to laugh that a global giant cannot find the capacity to produce this quality product that consumers have consistently paid a premium price for, in preference over the alternative industrial, processed, whipped goop.
While they’re at it, please also return the crème fraîche.
Esther Shipman Toronto
I have been schlepping from store to store, searching in vain for Western Creamery cream cheese. This now explains why it can’t be found.
So disappointing. Surely the company can reproduce the recipe.
Rhoda Kopstein Toronto
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