In My World

Today's Prompt: Cruel or Offensive What's the most offensive thing you've ever heard anyone say? Any time I hear "If the ____ (enter any non-British nationality here) don't want to follow our Canadian traditions they should pack up and move back to ____ (wherever they lived before moving to Canada)" it takes every bit of willpower I have not to offer to help the annoying speaker pack his or her bags. One of our "traditions" is the Canadian Bill of Rights. Hey, annoying speaker, have you ever read it? Here's just a little piece of it: Recognition and declaration of rights and freedoms 1. It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely, (a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the ...

From the back cover: On any given night, there are over 643,000 homeless people residing in shelters and on the streets across America. What can we do to help?"Levy crafts stories of characters who sear the memory: Old Man Ray, the World War II veteran who resents the VA system and regards himself as the de facto night watchman at Port Authority; Ben who claims to be a prophet disowned in his own country, crucified by the government and enslaved by poverty finds a bridge to the mainstream services and a path to housing through the common language of religious metaphors, including redemption and forgiveness; and Andrew who has been 'mentally murdered' is helped to understand his own situation and gain disability benefits through the language of trauma; among others. These stories are deftly interwoven with theory and practice as Levy constructs his developmental model of the engagement and pretreatment process. The outreach worker strives to understand the lang...

Today's Prompt: Politics Please note . . . this is about the voting process and current issues -- not about politicians or political parties. Thank you. What one issue is the most important to you when it comes to voting for your representatives? I have to say my biggest concern or issue is low voter turnouts. People seem to bitch and complain about governments but when they have the opportunity to voice their concerns and effect change they just don't. They just don't vote. I cannot understand it. I think all active voters should get a pin that says "I voted so I can complain. Where's your pin?" The turnout for the last very boisterously and sometimes viciously debated local municipal election was 35%. SERIOUSLY!?!?!?

Remembering Alma College By  Pam Hedden View this Author's Spotlight Paperback, 68 Pages  Price:   $27.08 Prints in 3-5 business days Twelve years ago an historic landmark in St. Thomas ON burned to the ground. I spent two days taking photographs. I would like to share them with you.

Thursday, November 14, 2019 Hello, #onpoli people, Canadians in other parts of this great country often find Ontarians a bit arrogant. Perhaps our f...

These millennials didn’t vote in 2015. But they say this election is different By Sahar Fatima  Staff Reporter Sat., Oct. 5, 2019 Four years ago, the federal election didn’t captivate Sakeena Mahmood much. She tends to lean left, and was sure the wave of excitement around Justin Trudeau would land him the prime minister’s job, with or without her vote. “I was a bit younger too and didn’t understand that every vote actually matters a lot,” the Barrie, Ont., resident, now 26, says. “I never thought that this is going to be something which is going to impact me so much.” But then the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shooting happened, and Mahmood was shaken. The suspect’s manifesto mentioned French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen and also praised U.S. President Donald Trump as a symbol for white identity. For Mahmood, that hit home the connection between politics and the hateful ideologies that can lead to violence. That realization is part of what’s now motiva...

Declining your ballot: Not in the next federal election The federal government has no interests in changing the federal elections law in the near future to allow voters a chance to register a declined vote, a form of protest vote that hit record numbers during the recent Ontario election. JORDAN PRESS, OTTAWA CITIZEN   Updated: June 25, 2014 Voting  ASHLEY FRASER  /  OTTAWA CITIZEN SHARE ADJUST COMMENT PRINT The federal government has no plans to change its elections law so that voters can register a declined vote, even though that form of protest hit record levels in Ontario’s recent election. The Conservative government made sweeping changes to the federal election law this year through the Fair Elections Act, including detailed rules around voter identification at polling stations. However, the office of Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre said this week that the government “has no plans to amend...

https://us18.campaign-archive.com/?u=bcc5290810a7316d184d3ce54&id=1c81ed6861&e=b25edef455 Monday, September 16, 2019 Hello, #onpoli people, Last week, the #onpoli podcast returned with our first episode of the season. Today, the wizard of wonkery John Michael McGrath is back with an explainer on one of the biggest policy issues you’ll need to know about in this election. This week, we’re talking about carbon pricing. The writ was drawn up just last Wednesday and campaigns can be unpredictable, but what’s certain is that the carbon tax will be front and centre until the Oct. 21 vote. In today’s #onpoli episode, John Michael breaks down how carbon pricing works, then charts its long, strange journey in Canada. He also speaks with the Insurance Bureau of Canada and Bracebridge Mayor Graydon Smith. They share how we are, in a very real way, already paying for climate change in the form of rising insurance premiums and increasing damage fro...

Thursday, September 12, 2019 Hello, #onpoli people, Over the course of our lives, we all get to talk to people who are smarter than us. (If you disagree, then congratulations. You are amazing.) Talking to people smarter than me has basically been my job description at  The Agenda  for the past seven years: calling up experts and posing questions that are very easy to ask and seemingly impossible to answer. How has Russian identity changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union? 1  Why do people become violent extremists? 2  Are science and religion compatible? 3 On this season of the podcast, I wanted to explore another simple question with a complex answer: how has political advertising changed? This time around, though, I had to answer it myself — or at least try to. In the process, I realized this was far too big a question for a single episode to tackle, so we decided to dig into one aspect of it. ...