Letters
It's all free in New Brunswick!
To The Editor:
Yes friends, the poor and the challenged, the old and the young; all are amply taken care of in New Brunswick. Why just look at these generous programs and give-aways!
Cost of Energy Rebate: Yup, $100, if you qualify! Wow! That's 25 to 30 loaves of bread, even at today's prices. Now of course you do have to spend some $3,000 per year on home energy to survive, but that's OK, the government knows best, and clearly their massive rebate will make all the difference.
The Tuition Rebate: You may have noticed the car-like ads the government is running with a big $10,000 Cash Back on your tuition costs. Indeed, if the student returns to New Brunswick and works here and has taxable income, the government will deliver up to $2,000 per year for five years. This ultimate generosity to attract and keep your children in New Brunswick may have a few stipulations that reduce its impact somewhat. For example: No tuition costs qualify prior to 2005 and the rebate is applied only after the student has filed and had their tax return approved. As some of you may recall, going to school is costly so most students have student loans. The interest on student loans is tax deductible. Likewise, so is tuition. So the student really only qualifies for the New Brunswick rebate if after filing he/she still has New Brunswick tax payable. And friends, if the student is still paying some $2,000 per year to the Government of New Brunswick after utilizing all personal tax credits, all tuition credits, months in school credit, books credit, and interest credits on student loans, then that student does not live and work in New Brunswick.
The thing is, we pay for the government's advertising bill, we employ many civil servants to explain and implement these rebate programs and the programs do not deliver sufficient help to those in need.
It would be fair to say that our elected officials do not like to be called liars, cheats, swindlers, carpet baggers, bull-duty artists or fraudulent scum. So, I won't.
Might I suggest, however, that we adjust their compensation by paying them through a rebate program?
Ronald Fry,
Moncton
(Via e-mail)
Tuition fees must be linked
To The Editor:
As I came home from the gas station to read the Times & Transcript, imagine my surprise when I found out that university tuition fees would not be going up this year.
I smiled to myself while I paid my property taxes. I couldn't wait to pay my electric bill. Grinning, I left the grocery store. I happily put away my 12 pack of beer and headed off to buy some furnace fuel. . .
Tuition fees for a school of any kind must be linked to the market, like everything else. To do otherwise is to undermine logic. Wages reflect real demand in the labour market. Are our students, guidance counselors, or parents not able to determine the return on an educational investment?
I am not prepared to continue subsidizing our future generations' earning power. We must let them carry themselves, as we did ourselves, or we will suffer the consequences.
Peter MacLean,
Sackville
(Via e-mail)
Addressing the N.B. oxymorons
To The Editor:
I think we remember our younger years when we first heard the word oxymoron. We giggled as we associated that someone was being called a moron . . . until we learned how it usually refers to a figure of speech using contradictory terms. Examples: a fine mess or government intelligence.
In 1969 an act was passed to make New Brunswick officially bilingual. They did so by trying to integrate New Brunswick's two official languages. How? Through the segregation of our school system into two linguistic groups. I think we can establish that you can't say "integrated segregation" and not think of oxymorons.
Governments have a way of taking something even with the best of intentions and twisting it into some horribly disfigured mess. Look at the sheer difference in numbers between English students enrolled in French immersion compared to French students enrolled in English immersion. Yes this was meant to be a light-hearted jab at a system which clearly doesn't have parity.
As someone who attended French school in my younger years (not French immersion), I guess it was due to my exceptional grasp of the French language. Nope, in this society of equals I got in because of my French heritage. Anyone who can't see how this would have caused problems from the get go has got to be wearing blinders. Another attempt at integration through segregation. We can't keep on this path.
Don't fret. I have a solution to a few of the province's problems. It addresses the failure at building a bilingual population, it addresses the resource problems facing our educational system, and it also finds a solution to the French immersion problem.
In all seriousness I propose that we eliminate all English and French schools and make all schools bilingual. You would have a standardized educational system with a single curriculum; whether in Saint John or Edmundston all children will get the same education.
I initially thought that this wouldn't work; that it would be impossible. It isn't!
In each grade you would keep a full year of instruction in each language at the required grade level. For the remaining classes you would split them in half. For the first part of the year half the classes would be instructed in French while the other half of the classes would be instructed in English. The second half we simply switch them around. For example, for the first half of the year your math class would be in English and the second half of the year it would be instructed in French.
It sounds radical but if we think with intellect and not with our emotions, deep down we know this would work. Isn't it about time we grow out of our antiquated ways and develop a policy which reflects our changing province and not linger on policies decades old? The province wants to increase it's bilingual population, well under my proposal every student graduating school would be bilingual.
Isn't it ironic? I wasn't some fancy lawyer holding an educational portfolio with the provincial government. I am just your average Joe. Someone who every day gets overlooked by government because I don't fit in their system. In my opinion maybe being an average New Brunswicker is all it takes. Who knows maybe we can remove the oxymorons from government, or at least the morons.
Jason Foote,
Shediac
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I believe that every voice in N.B. should be heard on the language issue. It is through
a meeting of the minds that we will reach a working solution or solutions.
is the issue. It may well be that what we need is revolutionary, and maybe Mr. Foote is
on the money, but how many would take this into consideration?
I don't understand, however, this notion that francophone children do not take English
immersion. In my own case, I took English in a francophone school as early as grade
one. All of my francophone peers mastered English effectively, and that was before
the age of mass media, so no one can say it was because of that influence that we
picked up a second language.
One thing about the old days, though, was that we learned about such things as
syllables and sentence structure from the get-go. What's happened with that system?
model, surely that would not be such a shocker. While it is true that people already have heavy burdens
in classrooms, should a second language not be deemed of sufficient import that we would implement
the study of such as most desirable?
Jason's comment may also be associated to the recent announcement to make two (2) Regional Health Authorities (maybe with the 'hidden' goal of going with one body in the future). Hospitals service patients very capabily in clients' native tongue today as I have experienced.
A major amount of our tax dollars would likely be better utilized having 'one of this' or 'one of that' particularly at the administrative level. Operationally, why should larger centres with 2 hospitals duplicate departments (both with heart, both with cancer, etc) when one specializes in one -- we get better value for our money!!