Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Edmonton Journal, May 12: “No one tells us what specialists we can or can’t see, as some American HMOs do.”
Edmonton Journal, May 13: “The Royal Alexandra Hospital will cancel 15 per cent of elective surgeries after receiving a directive from Alberta Health Services to cut costs.”
{Nicely done, Norman.)

Star Phoenix;

High school students and their families might be surprised to learn that computers at the Ministry of Education take every final grade of 48 and 49 per cent and bump it up to a passing grade of 50.
Furthermore, explains Darryl Hunter, executive director of accountability, assessment and records with the ministry, when a student obtains a grade of between 44 and 49 per cent in a class, and that one mark stands in the way of graduation, the ministry will also nudge it up to 50 per cent.
The point, Hunter says, is to give students who are extremely close to passing the benefit of the doubt.

It’s odd that nobody asks why knowing only 50% of the required material should get you a passing grade in the first place.
Via John Gormley Live

Sandy Bay Indian Reserve story that everybody but The Black Rod missed.
h/t Mike W.

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and from each, according to his wins; to each, according to his losses;

The Government is demanding a radical overhaul of English football finances to break the domination of the “big four” clubs.
Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, is calling for Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool to share their winnings in Europe with other Premier League teams.
Mr Burnham, an Everton fan, is pressing for several measures to redistribute the wealth of the richest league in the world to its lower reaches. He wants the league’s £1 billion revenue from television and sponsorship rights to be shared out more evenly among its 20 clubs. He also wants smaller squads and compulsory quotas of English players in team line-ups.

h/t old Lori

Brian Lilley;

Here in Ottawa, were I to lose my job, I would have to prove that I was employed at a job that paid into the system for 700 hours, or about 4 ½ months of full-time work. If I could do that and show that I was not fired for taking money out of the till, I would be eligible for 41 weeks of EI benefits equating 55% of my “best 12 weeks” of work; it’s not lucrative, but I could get just over $400 per week. Now if I lived in rural Newfoundland, I would only need 420 hours of work (just over 10 weeks of full-time work) and would be eligible for up to 50 weeks of benefit payments.
The reason for the difference in qualifications is that unemployment rates vary, in Ottawa where help wanted signs are still posted on the side of the road, the unemployment rate is 5% while in rural Newfoundland the unemployment rate is 20.4%. One would assume it is easier to find a job in Ottawa that in Goose Bay and so the system adjusts each month based on local conditions.
What the opposition parties and the assorted commentators are calling for is EI to be enriched and expanded with what is called a national standard. Instead of different qualifications, the idea is that all Canadians will be eligible for EI after 360 hours of work, or 9 weeks of full time employment. In a vote on an opposition motion in the House of Commons in March, the Liberals, Bloc and NDP also supported getting rid of the two-week waiting period, allowing the self-employed to participate in the EI plan and expanding payments from 55% of your best work weeks to 60%.
What this would do in essence is give some Canadians 52 weeks of EI payments for 9 weeks of work. Someone who worked during July and August could get EI payments until the end of the next summer.

h/t Shipped Out

Under “things I didn’t know, but might have guessed“…

Like the more famous Teach for America, the New York Teaching Fellows program provides an alternate route to state certification for about 1,700 new teachers annually. When I met with a group of the fellows taking a required class at a school of education last summer, we began by discussing education reform, but the conversation soon took a turn, with many recounting one horror story after another from their rocky first year: chaotic classrooms, indifferent administrators, veteran teachers who rarely offered a helping hand. You might expect the required readings for these struggling rookies to contain good practical tips on classroom management, say, or sensible advice on teaching reading to disadvantaged students. Instead, the one book that the fellows had to read in full was Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.

h/t Peter G.

QOTW from Michael Caine;

“The Government has taken tax up to 50 per cent, and if it goes to 51 I will be back in America, We’ve got 3.5 million layabouts on benefits, and I’m 76, getting up at 6am to go to work to keep them.”

Although, taking one’s wealth from Tony Blair’s Britain to Big Owe’s America is like an egg leaning out over the edge of the pan, threatening to jump.
More…“it’s always heartening to see a successful man from a humble background being badmouthed by a Stalin groupie from a privileged background. “

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is calling for the federal government to shut down the department of Western Economic Diversification;

Since 1987, the department has handed out over $3.9-billion in funding to various organizations, businesses, governments and individuals through a number of grant and loan programs. A mere 51.8% of “loans” have ever been paid back.
“Over the years there has been a striking correlation between the department’s spending spikes and the timing of federal elections,” said CTF Manitoba director Colin Craig. “It’s too bad that legitimate projects have to wait for an election in order to receive funding. The fact that the department funds everything from airport lighting to cemeteries doesn’t help its reputation as a ‘catch all’ political slush fund either.”
“It’s quite a stretch to call some of these payments ‘loans’ when the government barely even collects half of the dollars back,”

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and the Ministry Of Silly Walks puts its foot down;

Larry Dewitt, Health and Safety adviser to the circus, believes that wearing clown shoes is “stupid” — especially in light of a Moscow State Circus clown who fell down and hurt his foot. The practice is therefore forbidden.

h/t Peter G.

Renowned documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve entered North Korea by posing as a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory. Despite 24-hour surveillance by North Korean minders, he took arresting photographs of Pyongyang and its people—images rarely captured and even more rarely distributed in the West. They show stark glimmers of everyday life in the world’s last gulag.

h/t EBD, Via David Thompson

IBD Editorial Cartoons
h/t Ron

“We’re from the Nanny State, and we’re here to kill you.”

Canadian researchers have discovered that folic acid consumed during pregnancy can alter the gene function of offspring, potentially affecting their susceptibility to disease.
The finding is part of a growing – and controversial – body of research that raises serious questions about whether long-term consumption of folate and folic acid may increase the risk of developing certain cancers in some people.
The debate is far from benign. Food manufacturers are required to add folic acid to enriched flour and grain products under federal regulations that came into force in 1998. The premise behind fortification, which was also mandated in the United States, is to ensure that women receive adequate levels of folate in order to reduce the risk of birth defects in their offspring.
A decade later, however, new research and scientific studies have found evidence that increased consumption of folic acid may help trigger the onset of colon and other types of cancer.

I have a simple request of those politicians, career bureaucrats, and other professional public policy meddlers who believe they have a special obligation to their fellow citizens to legislate what we eat, what we drive, what we say, how we play, and when to come in from the midday sun – would you please kindly go f%$# yourselves, now?
My only consolation is the knowledge that once in a while, the family member you kill might be your own.
(Note: the comments section at the G&M is particularly critical of the quality of reporting on the article quoted. It’s a fine example of nanny mentality in action – public policy by lowest common denominator bureaucratic consensus, communicated by the best that uncomprehending journalism has to offer.)
h/t nv53

h/t Bill D. Cat

Trouble brews for Winnipeg’s shrine to identity politics…

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is set to tackle the thorny issue of whose story to include and whose to leave out — a process that is causing controversy before it’s even begun.
Construction of the $265-million project in Winnipeg is now underway and the museum will soon announce a cross-country “story gathering process.”
“We will be talking to community groups, individuals, academics and researchers, to really start identifying what the stories are, and who the storytellers are as well,” said museum spokeswoman Angela Cassie.
But some groups are already raising concerns their stories will be excluded.
[…]
“It needs to be inclusive and equitable. If it focuses disproportionate attention to some cases over other cases, then what it is actually teaching us is that there is a hierarchy of human suffering, and that some human suffering is more important than other cases of human suffering; and on that basis, the museum would not be teaching us anything about human rights, it would be teaching us about racism,” Kafieh said.

Here’s hoping they tear each other apart.

Tammy Robert’s Portrait of a City in Needles

I’ll say it again – if the so-called “Health” regions wish to continue shoveling millions of “free” needles into the dead-ender community, they should be legally obligated to have each and every one identified with a bar code.
Then, when the day comes that someone or their child suffers a needle prick they didn’t sign up for, the source can be traced and the enlightened progressives responsible for transforming the city parks into free range infection zones can be sued into the oblivion they so richly deserve.
One little bar code, and I guarantee the current drug dealer support and subsidization program dressed up as “needle exchange” would come to a screeching halt.
Call your city counselor, call your MLA.
Via John Gormley Live.