NCIC breaks silence on cancellation of International Languages
TORONTO – Responses in the political world are sometimes slow in coming, but like a tide they are inevitable, or so it seems. This has not been a particularly happy week for the provincial government of Ontario given the delays re the Gordie Howe Bridge, the unwelcome erosion of its manufacturing sector as Trump beats up on Canada-located producers, and as the Federal government eases itself away from provincial initiatives like the expansion of Billy Bishop Airport. Partisan motivation, some say, yet the damage will get progressively worse for “incumbents”.
In Education – a provincial responsibility – after months of silence on the issue of elementary school curriculum in general and the rejection of the formative value of “third language” instructional programs after fifty years of offering in schools where the numbers warrant, the National Congress of Italian Canadians (NCIC) has finally said “enough is enough”.
In a letter (here below) addressed to Media and most provincial politicians in the GTA, save one glaring omission, it buttresses the rationale for the International Languages integrated program, decries lack of public dialogue pre and post decision to cancel and questions the wisdom of preferring balancing budgets – a goal not yet achieved – to goals that serve the immediate and long-term goals of stakeholders; those would be the parent-taxpayers who are concerned about the cultural, social values developed through the infrastructure of native language validation.
It is a moderate, objective intervention following the [by comparison] brave and firm positions put forward by Trustee Teresa Lubinski, from Ward 4, the area immediately to the south of Minister Kinga Surma (see Lubinski’s letter here: REINSTATE I.L. DAY PROGRAM).
The NCIC calls for accountability, apparently seeing none in the process of cancellation, no accountability to the interests of the children, even less to the parents who pay taxes.
The severity of the intervention yesterday by the NCIC is seen in their implied and explicit criticism of the economic rationale posed by the Supervisor (with an Italian last name, and an officer of the Saint Thomas More Society of Advocates), the tacit approval of same by the Minister of Education (also of Italian descent), the apparent unconcern of Associate Minister for Mental Health (also of Italian background, former President of the NCIC and a member of the NCIC’s extended family) and the approval of the TCDSB’s associate Director of Academics, Adrian Della Mora.
Lubinski, born in Poland, has been carrying on the struggle for curriculum responsibility in the exercise of her obligations to the denominational rights of Catholics vested in the Constitution. She has been reaching out, and responding, to the other ethnic communities like the Ukrainian, Portuguese, Philippino and Italian, in the Catholic board.
This is a first encouraging sign that someone may in fact be listening.