cutbacks

Rory Brown is President of the Vancouver Secondary Teachers' Association, a local of the BCTF. He has taught in Vancouver since 1999 and witnessed firsthand the effects of years of cutbacks.

Since 2002, the Liberal government has been cutting education funding in B.C. resulting in program cutbacks, overcrowded classrooms and now, for many children, the loss of their neighbourhood school.

Patti Bacchus had been a Vancouver School Trustee for eight years when B.C.’s Education Minister fired her and the rest of the Board on October 17. Patti Bacchus tells the story of what happened.

In 2009, the B.C. ministry which provides social assistance implemented a major technological upgrade. Now clients face complex online forms to claim assistance and 30-minute phone waits to get help.

On May 11, about 30 doctors marched into the Toronto office of the Federal Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver and occupied the office while another 50 doctors waited outside.

OpenMedia.ca's Lindsey Pinto on Harper's online spying bill, columnist Tom Walkom on Ontario's Drummond report and professor David McNally on the rise of Communist China as a state capitalist power.