Noah D. Arney

Author: Noah Arney

  • Canada’s Response to the Refugee Crisis

    This post has been percolating for over a month now. So sorry it’s a bit long but I like giving facts and doing my best to not misrepresent people. I don’t often include Bible verses on my blog but today I am.

    Matthew 25:34-36

    Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

    A few weeks ago I asked my local MP (the Honorable Ed Fast) about Canada’s response to the war against ISIS and the refugee crisis that has been made immeasurably worse because of it. I agree with MCC on this in that a lasting solution needs to be a non-military solution that removes or reduces the reasons for radicalization and works toward peace. I was concerned that the Prime Minister seemed to be advocating for more military action because of the refugee crisis.

    His response was:

    “With respect to the Syrian conflict, let me correct you by saying that the Prime Minister has not advocated for MORE military action (as you have suggested) but for a balanced approach which includes three pillars: humanitarian assistance (of which Canada is one of the world’s largest donors), military intervention and resettlement of refugees. We do not have any plans to increase our military presence in Syria and Iraq.”

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  • “Old Stock Canadians”

    *update at the end*

    So in the debate today Stephen Harper said “Old Stock Canadians” and it’s taking twitter by storm (in that no one outside twitter cares yet, but they might tomorrow).

    So I decided to find out what it means. I thought it was a minor dog whistle like “real Americans”. I wish that was it.

    Recently it’s been used mostly by Conservatives with the attempted implication that they just meant not recent immigrants.

    From Jason Kenny’s speech on Immigration and Multiculturalism at University of Western Ontario in 2009:

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  • Dispelling Myths about First Nations Chief’s Salaries

    First nations chiefs are essentially CEOs these days. And with the First Nations Financial Transparancy Act we can see how much they’re making – see here for the data.

    Now that list includes counselors so I pulled only chiefs and based this on the results.

    Remember, these are CEOs. In addition to managing Treaty & Indian Act money coming in from the government they also manage various band run businesses, land and many other organizations.

    Average salary: $80,00
    Median salary: $75,000 (median Canadian salary is $70,000)

    # paid less than poverty line: 76 (11%)
    # paid less than canadian average salary: 179 (26%)
    # paid less than middle class salary: 230 (34%)
    # paid less than canadian median salary: 286 (42%)
    # paid middle class salary 185 (27%)
    # paid more than canadian middle class salary: 264 (39%)
    # making it into the top 100 highest paid CEOs: 0

    The highest paid chief made $930,793 but remember most of that (86% to be exact) was a bonus for negotiating a $8 million land deal for the band.

    Only 15% of chiefs are even classed as “rich” (earning over $125,000 per year). To put that into perspective, more chiefs are earning less than $30,000.
    So it looks like in general the “rich chief” myth isn’t just misleading, it’s completely wrong.

  • Who’s Buying Your Candidate?

    This info is from the New York Times’s article here. I just played with it in excel.
    Have you ever wondered where all the money comes from in the US election? Well, here’s seven of the top raising candidates and how much of their super pac money is coming from donations greater than one million dollars.
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  • Trades Shortages and Unemployment Rates

    The BC government has announced $75 million in funding for trades training programs for the next year. This is because:

    “Our goal with the Skills for Jobs Blueprint has been to ensure British Columbians are first in line for jobs in our growing, diverse economy,” said Premier Christy Clark. “And as we move closer to realizing the generational opportunity of LNG, thousands more of those jobs are just around the corner.” (source)

    Which makes you think there’s a major skills shortage in BC. Except there isn’t. Not for trades anyway.
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  • Education and the Indigenous wage gap

    The National Post had an article this morning titled “Government stumped as report shows aboriginal wage gap widening, unemployment growing”

    The federal government touted a number of initiatives Wednesday for improving First Nations’ well-being but could not explain why a new report showed the prosperity gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people was widening in some cases.
    source

    There are a lot of reasons for the wage gap but I’m going to focus on one. And yes, it’s education. I discussed this earlier but I want to go into a bit more detail.

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  • An Ideal First Year?

    I think a lot about what students need to know to be successful.  And more and more I feel that the old elective model does a huge disservice to first year students. I was reading this article about the differences in perspective between educators and employers. I think that we need to think less of education as being discipline specific and think of it more as being general leading to specific. So the first year would be a more general education, the second being general within the chosen discipline, and the third and fourth years being the same as they are now.

    I’d like to propose a standardized first year regardless of program. This curriculum assumes that the student is attending an English speaking university.

    The guidance behind this is taking a liberal arts concept and applying it to the key soft skills of oral communication, written communication, reading, basic math, working in teams, thinking skills, and computer use.

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  • Disrupting Higher Education?

    Talking about the university system as if it’s doomed is fairly common. Here’s an article from three years ago outlining some common metaphors about the end of the post secondary system. The author’s disdain for them has been proven right so far. And yes, there are some for profit colleges running into problems because they were going for the quick money and shareholder support rather than looking at the long view the established PSIs have. And yes a small liberal arts college decided that it would rather close than leverage their endowment to reinvent itself. Whether that was a good or bad idea isn’t the point here.

    The most important thing to remember about all of this is that we wont wake up one day with the university system crumbling or even disrupted. There will be warning signs.

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