Climate change in the age of Doug Ford
Creating a climate if mistrust and suspicion is not what a real leader would do
Climate change. It’s a real thing. It is especially real right now in Ontario. The climate change we have experienced in the last three months has been fast and furious just like the fires, floods and frigid ice storms which seem to disrupt and displace human life more frequently these days.
The premier in this province is provoking a climate change of his own through various and sundry cuts, too many to name, and most recently covered up with the hoopla over cheap beer to aid and abet alcohol addiction in an Ontario with less and less help for people facing more and more demons.
Now, instead of a cut it’s an addition, announced by ‘himself ’ last week, that has resulted in a further depletion of trust and respect that was already tenuous for a group of community leaders in our province, elementary teachers.
Through the invention of a “dedicated submission platform” (his words — “snitch line” to almost everyone else) parents are being asked by our “leader” to contact him anonymously if they are concerned about how the health and physical education ‘interim’ curriculum is being taught to their children.
The curriculum being implemented next week from kindergarten to Grade 8, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, is taking us back to a simpler time and space known as 1998, when the internet was still mostly a military or government tool and mobile phones were the size of a bread box and used only by adults for making emergency calls. Although the tag line of the curriculum document is “Reach Every Student,” at least 10 per cent will be missed when samesex relationships are virtually ignored. “Same-sex” is named six times but it only refers to whether a class is instructed co-ed (girls and boys together) or same-sex (girls and boys separated).
Why? Because parents who carried signs protesting the updated curriculum in 2015, spreading messages like, “Tell Kathleen and her imps in government, do not inject their satanism lifestyle into young children,” are the kind of people the current premier values. They will be instructing him on what goes into the next version of the curriculum. They will be the ones incessantly calling and emailing their concerns to the new “imps in government,” unless you and I contribute more.
And how, exactly, are they going to know what their kids are being taught? They are going to instruct their children on the way out the door in the morning and interrogate them when they arrive home at day’s end. “Now don’t forget your lunch, honey, and if your teacher says anything about homosexuality, you print it down and show it to Mommy and Daddy when you get home so we can call Mr. Ford.”
Of course, this is not the first time “snitch lines” have been used by the Ontario government. We still have the “welfare fraud hotline,” courtesy of Mike Harris, and the Workers’ Safety Insurance Board’s anonymous reporting system. In Hamilton, a “Fraud and Waste Hotline” was proposed in June by the director of audit services, Charles Brown, citing the need for a formal channel to submit anonymous or confidential reports. “The loss of anonymity deters potential wrongdoing reporters as they fear reprisals for reporting on co-workers and management,” he says.
Sounds like that will bring about a nice climate change, too.
The Canada Revenue Agency also has a very highly used “snitch line,” despite the findings from their own recent focus groups which reported Canadians aren’t big on snitching, and participants declared they didn’t think people should be encouraged to “rat” on another person.
At least one teacher has already been threatened to be snitched upon for his commitment to using the 2015 curriculum, while another teacher is trying to change the conversation on Twitter by encouraging the hashtag #SnitchPositive about the good work teachers are doing.
Meanwhile, back at Ontario’s “centre for climate change,” the leader threatens the minions: “Make no mistake, if we find somebody failing to do their job, we will act.”
Please look in the mirror to find somebody failing to do their job, Mr. Ford. Encouraging co-operative communication in inclusive school communities is what a real leader would do, not creating a climate of suspicion and mistrust which ignores the needs of students.
Deirdre Pike is a freelance columnist with the Hamilton Spectator. If you agree with using the 2015 curriculum, go to fortheparents.ca and use the tools there to clog up the government hotlines and overflow their inboxes with your opinion. Tell her all about it at dpikeatthespec@gmail.com or tag her @deirdrepike.