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The following are excerpts from newspapers throughout Alberta. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the ATA.
Cheques before checks might be the problem
“Bishop Routhier School on the Peavine Métis Settlement, north of High Prairie, held its official grand opening last week. … Due to complicated legal wrangling between the Métis Settlement, a local property owner and the Northland School Division, the shiny school sat vacant and unused for a whole year, while local children were forced to attend classes in a cramped, cold and dirty old building, with a faulty furnace, a leaky roof and poor air quality. Meanwhile, the school division still had to pay for heat and security services for the new and vacant building. … [October 26], Alberta’s auditor general, Merwan Saher, issued his own independent analysis into some of the financial mismanagement that plagued the troubled school division. … The report reveals that the Northland School Division went ahead with the construction of Bishop Routhier school before it had any kind of long-term lease or right-of-access agreement in place. … More troubling yet? The AG’s report reveals that Peavine isn’t the only Métis settlement with this problem. … Now it would be easy to point fingers at the fired trustees of the Northland board, who went ahead and built schools without negotiating legal access first. But it was the province that advanced millions of dollars to build these schools without checking to be sure Northland had land on which to build—a pretty big oversight given how complex it is to acquire property in a Métis settlement, where land is held in common.”
—Paula Simons,
Edmonton Journal, October 28, 2010
Adequate funding ... now that would be a miracle
“Three cheers for Archbishop Richard Smith or doing his job. The fact that his ban on [Edmonton] Catholic schools fundraising through gambling—which was to take place Oct. 1—had to be postponed until they can figure out how to make up for all the money they’ll lose tells you just how slippery the slope has gotten. ... As many as 5%—one in 20—of all social gamblers are addicted. They’re the people who go deep into debt, neglect their families and sometimes commit crimes to feed their compulsion. That’s a lot of social damage spreading through communities, and for Catholic schools to benefit from that is beyond hypocrisy. … But the issue is much bigger than Edmonton’s Catholic schools. It’s a sign of just how ineptly our public education system is being funded and managed. … As the archdiocese puts it, “What is needed is a sustainable funding source that does not lead schools to have to accept funding from morally objectionable activities such as harmful gambling, and which is available and distributed to all schools with equity.”
—Andrew Hanon,
Edmonton Sun, October 20, 2010
Sinner takes all
“It’s been estimated that about 4% of Albertans are moderate risk gamblers and about 1% are problem gamblers. But how much of a duty of care do we have to protect deviant gamblers from themselves? ... For the vast majority of people, gambling is harmless entertainment. Why should Catholic students and organizations suffer because a small minority has gambling problems?
Remember that booze and cigarettes cause far more harm than gambling, and those proceeds—$1.5 billion a year—go into the province’s provincial revenues. Like it or not, society profits from our ‘sins.’ Banning gambling fundraisers in Catholic institutions will hurt far more people than it will help. How moral is that?
—Mindelle Jacobs,
Edmonton Sun, October 20, 2010
