“Well, mommy, I learned that Stephen Harper is a…”
Two of Canada’s largest unions paid to bus hundreds of school kids to Parliament Hill on Tuesday to rally against what they call government inaction on First Nations education.
Officials with the Public Service Alliance of Canada and Canadian Union of Public Employees denied the elementary school students were enlisted as props in the unions’ ongoing public battle against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government.
Lisa Howell, a teacher at Pierre Elliot Trudeau School, deadpanned –
“I don’t feel like we’re advancing an agenda.”
Of course not. Don Moran, a senior officer with CUPE:
“We sponsored the bus to bring them…CUPE and PSAC. We kind of had a joint venture to bring them down so that all the voices could be heard here…I think (the kids) are speaking from their hearts. I don’t think there’s any brainwashing.”
h/t ET
Lowest of the low…
And the parents? Did they know? Approve? or was this just a school trip to visit the parliment buildings?
Those kids should unionize. I hear they didn’t get paid a living wage for that.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Is is not the Liberals that have been in power for most of the last Century and came up with the policies that currently govern First Nations?
The kids already get TOO MUCH FN FANTASIES AND MYTHS in their middle school classes here on the left coast.
How does learning “Raven in sky” make them better scientists and technicians? The kids think its stupid and dumb.
Kids are known for being brutally honest.
The problem with FN, is…..the FN. Pogo was completely right. They are their own worst enemy, but the left buys into the victimization game.
Hence the flunky unions.
Listen to the language folks…classic leftard. All feelings…
“I don’t feel like we’re advancing an agenda.”
and
“…I think (the kids) are speaking from their hearts. I don’t think there’s any brainwashing.”
What passes for thinking in the lefty elite is little more than the emotional reactions of three year olds.
Sentient, well balanced folks, feel, think and do.
These idiots just feel and do…no need to think…*puke*
I wonder about that too, Harry (11:09), whether the parents might have been told that it was just a field trip to visit the parliament buildings.
How low can a organization go. The teachers should be fired. If it was my kid, I would have marched down to the school and demanded someones head. This is not part of the school curriculum, but indoctrination. Leftists are creepy.
This incident shows the extent to which they have control of our systems.
Good question Harry, I expect taht some of the parents might be upset.
northernont, there is nothing that the left will not do to advance their agenda.
“Mr. Harper, have a heart,” the group sang. “Reconsider what you’re doing.”
The implication is that Mr. Harper has no heart, in other words is HEARTLESS.
Thus we are back to the evil, meanspirited dragon man Mr. Harper meme; which of course is anything but POLITICALLY motivated when the children are in grade 5-6 according to the SPECIAL ED teacher.
Why heavens no, Mr. Harper has horns…!
Every grade 5 special ed student would know this…oh please.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
Future NDP voters. You can never get enough brainwashing in to guarantee that the gravy train won’t derail. Trying to make natives smarter through activism and incentives has a poor track record. As long as the natives can play the victim the cheques will keep rolling in without ever having to work for a living and the 10 billion a year we spend on them will keep all the drones at Indian affairs in the lifestyle they are acustomed to. Just a co-incidence that they are members of PSAC and CUPE.
If there was no parental consent, this was abduction from the schools. That sounds like a criminal offence to me.
I expect Lisa Howell has no idea who Anders Breivik is.
If someone used my child for political purposes I would run up the command chain and beat the first male I encountered unrelentingly in a calm, methodical manner.
Agree with Aviator – there should have been parental consent given for what is clearly a purely partisan political act. The RCMP should be investigating. This is no different than the actions of a pedophile in getting kids cooperation.
What concerns me is that the Prime Minister’s office hasn’t condemned this action immediately and launched a criminal investigation. At the very least, the teachers involved should be fired and forbidden from coming into contact with children again. If the kids were holding up signs asking why the Indian chief’s lived in large houses and other people didn’t, the protest might have some validity but what occurred is clearly an example of child abuse and should be prosecuted aggressively.
Infinity
I would hope this would include an emphatic talking to…
dedicated to all the youn minds being enslaved to nanny state indoctrination in the public/union system :
What did you learn at school today?
Jack shit
Texting the minute teacher turns away
That’s it
How many times were you truly intrigued?
Not any
Is boredom a symptom of system fatigue?
Ask Nanny
Have you ever thought different than the rest of the class?
Not once
What will you do when you’re out on your ass?
Pogue dunce
What are your prospects of doing quite well?
Too small
And what will you have at the very last Bell?
Frig all
You can’t steal another’s beauty, you can’t emulate their grace
You can’t network through life’s mystery, occupy another’s space
You can’t do another’s duty, or take a special place
In another person’s history when they’ve sunk without a trace
What’s the reward for being a jerk?
Don‘t spank
Thick as a plank with a brain that won’t work
Union wank
What do you think of the Welfare State?
It’s a fake
What have they handed you on a plate?
Dung cake
Are you constantly told how smart you are?
Well shucks
What do you think of the system so far?
It sucks
Aren’t you progressive, anti homophobe?
Go fish!
Don’t you feel smart enough to conquer the globe?
I wish
You can’t steal another’s thunder, you can’t fill a great divide
You can’t steer another’s fancy, you can’t change another’s side
Not undo another’s blunder nor pretend another’s pride
You can’t offer necromancy until all free thought has died
You’re a second-class person intellect-wise,
This is something you must recognise
It’s not my place to make complaint,
But are you a thinker? No, you ain’t
You missed your big chance when you were young,
Now you think below the bottom rung
You were put on earth to discover your niche;
It’s about reason and thinking entitlement bitch
(my deepest apologies to the late Ian Dury for butchering his fine work)
I hate teachers.
There’s this little girl. She’s 7. I’ve known her for almost two years. She is a sweet, quiet, shy little thing, very sensitive, loves to draw. I was chatting recently with a teacher who has some involvment in her life (not her classroom teacher). I was saying that it would be nice if the kid could be coaxed into being a bit less timid – she’s always so nervous. Well, it turns out she’s on a cocktail of medications, evidently has been since I’ve known her, and God knows how long before. She’s being “treated” for – get this – “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” – as is her brother (who I know less well, but who’s also very withdrawn).
Totally sounds like a real thing, doesn’t it? “Oppositional Defiant Disorder”. The teacher, this well-meaning, wide-eyed moron, was explaining to me with baited breath that, untreated, kids with ODD could turn into “criminals!”
People need to stop lying to themselves about this stuff. Idiots and fools go into teaching – easily led twits who aren’t fit to educate and care for hamsters. There are some good teachers. Not very many.
Oh, and remember kids, don’t do drugs.
test.
So the kids attended a political demonstration during school hours against a government that more parents support than any alternative. WTF is going on here. Don’t teachers know what they are supposed to do at school?
Perhaps the brilliant teachers in Ottawa and Gatineau need to get their asses out of the city into the reserves where their enthusiasm might convince some of the parents to actually send their kids to school.
School vouchers please.
I dated teachers in the past. Each and every one just wanted to “make the world a better place”. This distills down to: make children have the “correct” thoughts.
Ergo we are in year 8 of homeschooling.
It’s killing me to teach Marx et al to my boys, but they will hear both sides, not just the lefty hymnal.
Kids are not political. They have not reached a point in their lives where politics matters to them. When these union ghouls tell you the kids are motivated and from the heart on the issues, they are LYING. Everyone knows that.
I’ll bet if you asked any child who took part, what the purpose of the event was, he or she couldn’t put 5 words together to explain it. They got a bus ride and a day off school. What could be better than that? That they were pawns of the left wingers won’t occur to them for a few years yet. But by that time, if this kind of crap continues, it may be too late.
all members of the schools involved should be charged with kidnapping if no parental consent to using their kids as demonstrators were given. And they should be fired for endangering the children.
And they should stand in front of the parents to apologize for brainwashing the children.
Let them Come to Me! – Matthew 19:13-15
Then the people brought their little children to Jesus so that Jesus could put his hands on them and pray for them. When the followers saw this, they told the people to stop bringing their children to Jesus. But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me. Don’t stop them, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to people that are like these children.” After Jesus put his hands on the children, he left there. (ERV)
Nuffield said. This is abuse forget the church listen to the message. There is no innocents BEHIND these children they are being used and abused as political pawns.shame on all adults involved.
“the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery”
– Disraeli –
DanBC at 11:26 PM gets it. The government needs to review FN “education” to see just how well it prepares the kids for life outside the reserve, and scrub what doesn’t apply.
This is another glaring example of why government “workers” should be forbidden to unionize, unless their services are offered by a private sector alternative. I am getting sick of funding these propaganda exercises by a bunch of lazy, stupid shlubs who hide behind their public sector union to keep from being productive members of society.
mhb23re
‘Funny, I don’t remember any such demonstrations at Parliament Hill during the 13 years of Liberal majority government. Blame everything on Stephen Harper … or Mike Harris … or George Bush … or fill in the _________________ .
I want to see more responsibility/accountability/blame put where it belongs: directly with the Native chiefs who preside over a feudal system, where they and their families live like royalty while the rest of the band live like serfs.
It’s unconscionable for adult union members and teachers to rope in captive under-aged demonstrators to become a photo op for the ravening anti-Harper wolves of the lamestream media.
One almost despairs when so-called adults don’t understand that this is coercion and brainwashing of young children. Teachers and union members = thoughtless cretins. All you’d have to do to help them understand brainwashing and coercion is to reverse the situation: bus loads of school children brought to Parliament Hill to support the CPC government. These morons would be screaming bloody murder.
Another day, another union photo-op. Bet they had those big plastic banners and everything.
Two words, my friends: Home School.
Will money solve any problems or does it take the local people to solve their own problems? $90 million in federal money doesn’t stop homelessness in Attawapiskat so does anyone think that the sames amount would make a dent on education.
The last place teachers want to teach are violent dysfunctional communities. Even native teachers, often educated under special programs, prefer the stability of of working in white communities. A lot of these northern reserves are defaults for those not ambitious enough to leave. The half that stay have a reserve job or are simply satisfied with perpetual welfare.
Victim Toews @ 9:15 AM:
Leave it to an apologist for the Kiddy-Conclave on Parliament Hill, dupes for CUPE and the NDP, to suggest that Finance Minister Dwight Duncan “come out of the building, talk … to the kids and explain … what the government is doing.”
Dwight Duncan is the Ontario Finance Minister in McGuinty’s Liberal Government.
Jeesh.
Victim Toews at 9:15:
Dwight Duncan is a Liberal Minister of the Ontario Provincial legislature which is located in Toronto, Queens Park.
As this event took place in Ottawa his presence there, to speak for the Federal government, is a bit of a stretch.
Perhaps you should troll other sites.
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
Vladimir Lenin
“Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.”
Vladimir Lenin
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/v/vladimir_lenin.html
Unions resorting to using children to attack the CPC…how low can you go? Why would we be surprised with their actions? They take the side of terrorists over the Israelis..the side of gays over hetrosexuals..bacically they always take the opposite side of any normal thinking person. They keep doing it…so I guess it must work. Can you imagine how dumb our kids are going to be by the time they reach college? Scary times are coming.
Is there not a law against slander, libel against a person a group? Maybe Harper should sue these unions for spreading mistruths.
I read an article in the paper yesterday about Indian kids having bad teeth on reserves which implied the gov’t was doing enough to eliminate this problem? What next, we hire dental inspectors to sneak around and see if kids are brushing their teeth before they go to bed. We already have a system in place that is monitoring this now….it’s called PARENTS.
Victim Toews: “Of course, the bigots on this site hate all Indians on a good day and can’t get enough of that Tory Kool-Aid. And like the feckless John Duncan, they don’t have the guts to face some Ottawa school kids.”
What Kool-Aid are you imbibing? You make a mistake and then get hot under the collar and name-call all of us “bigots” (sic) who, apparently, “hate all Indians on a good day.”
What’s your game other than ad homineming people you don’t know — but who have shown you up for the obvious idiot that you are.
As for “John Duncan” being feckless, who is John Duncan? ‘Anything to do with the Tory government you’re trying to tar and feather?
Have you any comments to make about the Chretien/Martin Librano government who had 13 years to do some cleanup of the Native portfolio but who didn’t?
Re: cynical unionists using school kids to dramatize their demands.
This last stunt was a blatant display of the communitarian-statist mindset – your kids are not their own person, they are not sovereign individuals, they are not the ward and responsibility of their parents – they are pawns in the great unionist/left collectivist experiment. They belong to the collectivist state/movement and have been indoctrinated and utilized to serve the collectivist agenda.
I don’t know why we are so shocked at this latest stunt (although it is very bold/blatant)the teachers union in BC and Onterrible have used kids as pawns in their wage and condition demands several times before. I guess they feel bolder now because their union bought a Premier (McSquinty) that lets them roger the public at will.
Victim Toews – I disagree with your comments.
First, the children should not have been there. The unions had no right to use them – and it was indeed, using them. Children of this age cannot think critically for themselves; they are not able to abstract and compare and evaluate.
You allowed your child to be used in a political demonstration. Why?
Second -no Minister should have come out to speak to the kindergarten and grade school children to ‘tell them the truth’. You don’t explain these issues in a five-minute assertion – to children much less to adults. After all, do you seriously expect that the children will have the data base, the economic analytic perspective, and the political awareness – to be able to evaluate the Minister’s assertions?
These young children can’t grasp the economic and political infrastructure of a reserve, of the Indian Act, of the hierachies of political authority within the Reserve.
As for your comment about the lack of federal funding to rebuild the school, you are ignoring the millions given to this same reserve for their own use and the fact that the reserve chiefs and council make these internal decisions on their own. Why didn’t the chief/council repair the school?
The scandal around this reserve asks: where has all the federal money given to this reserve gone? Why didn’t they use this money to repair the homes and school? What have they used the money for?
You’ll note that the Reserve has refused a third party examination of their accounts. Why? The vast amount of federal funds given to this reserve begs the question: what are they doing with the money? No private business could functionally operate with such a lack of accountability and such a lack of obvious results of this input of money. Where has the money gone?
As for your comment about bigots and etc – that’s a retreat from reality. We have to consider reality, and the reality is: the reserve is given enormous amounts of federal money over which they have sole discrectionary use.
The reality of substandard housing and buildings on the reserve means one must ask: What are you doing with the money? Why aren’t you repairing and maintaining the buildings? Do you, Victim Toews, ask this question – or – do you mindlessly allow your young child to be used by a politically bigoted Union?
victum toews………..accroding to Ezra Lavant and his fact checking, the money to rebuild the school was put into a skateing rink and zambonie…. rather than rebuilding the school.
maybe you should do some fact checking yourself.
The major problem with education I encountered on the reserves I worked on and around was not a lack of funding, it lay in the fact that the children would not attend school consistently and it was very hard to hire and retain teachers who, if they were initially interested in working there, soon lost interest due to the apathy of the students and parents.
Maybe the teachers’ union and natives should look inward to fix the problems with native education. Oh, sorry, I’m talking about liberals here — all problems have an external cause — I forgot.
My point being the ‘RAVEN’ stories, is, in normal middle school and elementary classes, they spend far too much time on the myths of FN stories. I can understand the odd class (3 or 4) regarding some FN history, so long as they also teach about BCs history, but they don’t. OUR history isn’t told, but the myths and fantasies of FN is taught for whole semesters, oblivious of studies that will help make them productive. Instead, our kids are soft sold on the victimization culture.
If the FN want to teach that, day after day in THEIR reserve schools, they have that right, although the same applies, that kind of ‘education’ is not preparing them to be productive in the real world (which sure appears to be the end game of the FN, why be productive when you can victimize yourself and coerce the gubmint for mo money?)
A key economic and social problem for natives – is the Reserve System. Effectively, it inhibits and prevents individual development because it guarantees housing, food, education, health care – all of this – without a day of work.
You are expected and indeed, encouraged to reject not merely work, but also, individual development. It isn’t the federal govt that encourages this perpetual adolescence; it’s the Indian Act. And the native chiefs/councils do NOT want this Act changed, do NOT want this lifestyle to disappear. After all, think of it, this Act gives the Chiefs/Council supreme authority – an authority over their fellows never found in pre-Indian Act days.
So, no wonder there is no incentive to go to school – the Reserve cultural mode is to simply live off the govt. To achieve anything, either in individual intellectual development or economically, the individual MUST leave the reserve.
Remember, there’s no individual economic devt allowed on the Reserve; everything is ‘communal’. No private enterprise – by law.
You can’t start your own business there, you can’t open your own private shop or farm or factory on a Reserve. Everything is determined by the Chief/Council (all his relatives) – and corruption is the norm.
So- to do something in the world, privately, whether to be a lawyer, doctor, shopkeeper or simply to explore history – you must leave the Reserve. The Reserve becomes confined to corruption, and to those who are entrapped within this dependency lifestyle.
The principal and the teachers involved should be terminated for thid ouyrage. Period!
“I think (the kids) are speaking from their hearts. I don’t think there’s any brainwashing.””
What a bunch of arrogant,socialist union bull crap!!
“victim” Toews is a perfect example of head-up-their-butts parents.All I can figure out from his/her posting is that s/he is to damn lazy to take responsibility for their “trophy” kid and is quite happy to let leftards steal them and their minds from them,and then say it is the evil conservative’s fault,and not their fault.
Why are you blaming the present government,Toews?You “feel” the crap the reserves are only happened in the last 3 years?No wonder you aren’t upset that the leftards are stealing your kids from you!You yourself can’t even let your mind think about,let alone ask, the crucial questions!
Bet next years paycheck you are either a leftard,a union member,a new teacher(within last 20 years),or all of the above.
Based on what ET said, we have another grand example of how the ‘collective’ does not and cannot work.
I find it creepy that so many highly educated people and about half of our population (America too) )are working tirelessly to move all of us into that nightmare.
We will eventually have to fight them physically you know … or face becoming … well … er … ah … umm … Indians.
An economic and societal system that is organized within a collectivist mode is ONLY functional in a no-growth, no-change, non-industrial and small population system.
A collectivist mode rejects individualism, and indeed, has many tactics to denigrate individuals and promote social cohesion. It rejects change and progress and promotes continuity of economic mode and stability of lifestyle.
As such – it has no capacity for change or adaptation. As a non-industrial mode, and in this northern envt, a non-agricultural mode (too cold for agriculture)- the economy would have been hunting and gathering. This requires a large land base, migration (no permanent dwellings) and a small population.
These reserves have increased their populations beyond the carrying capacity of a hunting/gathering mode; they can’t engage in this economic mode because they are non-migratory, and, they have chosen a sedentary and dependent lifestyle.
The Indian Act, the rejection of private ownership and entrepreneurship on the Reserve, the installation of these incestuous Chiefdoms, the lack of any economic mode of life other than dependency on federal money – it’s disastrous for the native people.
It has to end, but the movt to retain this destructive system is strong.
There are the natives-in-power who don’t want to lose that access to all that money; the generations of dependency have sapped the notion of individual responsibility from many reservists.
Then, as we’ve seen, there’s the enormous leftist ignorance of the Indian Act, of the disastrous results of the economic collectivism of the Reserves and the growth of dependency – the left and the unions – haven’t a clue about this and have instead, fallen for the shallow emotionalism of ‘they are victims of the Evil Colonizers’.
I sent an email to all three principals involved making my disgust known.
I saw this item on Sun News and at no time did anyone explain how these kids got to be there. Not how they were transported; the unions paid for that. But whether parents signed a consent form for this trip. I would like to know that and how it was described to parents.
Teaching minors how to act like a unionists, kids will go home and demand a living wage twice what they’re worth and go on strike and demand they have assistant’s assigned to them to do their homework. Make no mistake this is political indoctrination at it’s uglyests.
Didn’t the Teachers Union do something similar a few years ago at Toronto’s Sky Dome (Rogers Centre)? Bus loads of kids were brought down to see Nelson Mandela. Mike Harris was the Premier and to embarrass him and his attempt to rein in their greedy unions the teachers got their kids to boo Harris during his introductory speech. Mandela to his credit admonished the kids for their lack of respect for their Premier.
Of course this is par for the course for leftists and their unions. Nothing is sacred if it advances their personal goals.
Spent the last couple of days visiting my friend’s farm with our little group. I am the token Conservative among the teachers and my other Liberal/progressive friends. The retired teacher who owns the farm sees nothing hypocritical with having a solar panel on the barn roof selling power to our grid for 82.4 cents per kwh while buying his personal electricity for 5.4 cents. As he was cooking a fine meal I wisely let it slide.
Ah … so, Victim Toews does a hit and run: Hits us with his/her smear about our bigotry and his/her misinformed opinions about who’s to blame for the mess at Attawapiskat.
Challenged by facts, s/he runs away. How very typical of the left-liberal bully.
I have serious doubts that “Victim Toews” is actually a parent of one of these kids, as I have my doubts about whether or not the school actually sent home consent forms making it fully clear to the parents what their political agenda was — or informing them that CUPE and PSAC were involved and would be providing their kids with placards. Show me a copy of the consent form, Victim Toews. I’m a skeptic.
‘Typical leftard tactic: Use kids in their war and fail to inform parents as to their kids’ participation. ‘Had it happen to me a number of times when my children were in public school.