By Sabrina Almeida

One thing I would never say to my kids is “don’t worry you did your best”. Perhaps my kids will grow up thinking I was too hard on them, but I’m willing to risk that in the pursuit of excellence. Over the years I have observed that in North America we are too generous with the pat on the back, most often in cases that don’t deserve praise. Why do we feel the need to take this conciliatory approach? Aren’t we promoting mediocrity? What will be the outcome?

No room for excellence
I remember a certain 5-year-old staring me in the eye and saying that he didn’t have to be perfect. I was amused by his candour but saddened by the attitude. I asked him who told him that and he said it was his teacher. While I understand she had the best of intentions this was not the life‘s lesson I wanted him to learn. I wanted him to understand that being the “best” mattered. And that he had to be among the best if he wanted to be counted. I wanted him to strive for perfection so that  he would maximize his potential. To teach him not to be satisfied with anything less. And that ‘doing your best’ was only relevant to the outcome. That way he would lead a fulfilled life and be proud of his achievements. Isn’t that what we want for our children, students and country?

Promoting a loser attitude
As I look around the house I see all the sports trophies lined up. Honestly, more than half of them were awarded for participation. “The feel good” experience that has taken over our lives. As the years passed I wondered what it did for my kids’ morale or “self esteem” ( a much overdone phrase).  They after all “North American” having come here as babies. I was pleasantly surprised therefore to hear my first born remark “we (North America) have a loser attitude” when I asked him if he got a certificate for participating in a recent provincial competition. What he meant was that only winner should receive acknowledgement. I was proud that he understood what really mattered and hoped it would become his “mantra” in life.

An absence of healthy competition
I believe in healthy competition.  It’s good for the mind and for the soul. And it brings out the best in us. The emphasis in schools seems to have shifted from “reaching for the top” to “at least I tried”. What’s wrong with wanting to be the best. I don’t see any university scholarships being handed out just for  signing up. Who gets picked for the job if not the best candidate?  Too often I have heard a teacher say to his/her students that they shouldn’t talk about their marks “because the other’s will feel bad”. As an above-average student my son has heard it virtually all his life. It is a miracle that he hasn’t begun to associate “being exceptional” as a negative trait and underperformed to fit in.

Correcting the mistakes
You may reduce the number of report cards and and push the children up year after year in order not to damage their spirit. But at what cost? So many students struggle through high school because of mistakes that were not addressed in their elementary years. It all seems so easy till you reach the work force. Which job lets you make mistakes? It’s like getting a half-done burger at MacDonalds. And imagine telling your boss it doesn’t have to be perfect! Let’s face it. If you were never taught to excel in “your formative years” where is it going to come from.

In the words of Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit”. So buckle up Canada! Let’s accept responsibility for our shortcomings and cultivate and nuture excellence. Whether it is in school, on the playground, at the workplace or in your relationships.

The recent poll which revealed 63 per cent of Canadians favor restrictions on family reunification should be a presage of things to come. It shows that finally Canadians are coming to their senses, doing the math, looking around their community and hospital waiting rooms and what they are finding shocks them. I suspect that within the next five years, polls will show that a majority of Canadians will start to favor restrictions on immigration as well. The fact that recent changes to the Parent and Grandparent Program failed to elicit the usual howls of protests has startled even Federal NDP immigration critic MPP Jinny Sims who wondered why the press had not gone on the offensive. There are many possible reasons why there is a growing and general sense of immigration fatigue in this country. Last week parents of an acquaintance flew in from India earlier than usual, the timing I am told was to coincide with appointments with medical specialists. Now these parents like thousands of others were sponsored by their children, looked after the grandkids, now collect a pension which pays for their annual visits to India, they come back in the summer for health checkups. Others come back for operations, hip replacements, surgeries and things like that, all courtesy of the taxpayer, new and old Canadians alike.

Free health care makes us want to bring in our parents
We South Asians love to perpetuate the myth that we are family oriented. Love for family doesn’t necessarily mean everyone lives under the same roof, in the same town or even the same country. Cheap air travel, Skype and great telephone lines make separation a lot more bearable. In India, millions of young Indians move from small towns and villages into big cities away from their parents or to get away from them. Thousands move to countries all across the globe to work for decades, but they don’t take their parents with them. Why? There is no free health care. It is cheaper for them to visit India every year instead. But when the same South Asian immigrates from say India via Dubai or Singapore, he suddenly starts to experience pangs of guilt and longs for family reunification.  Why not, health care is free. The parents can provide free daycare for their grandkids that can be written off, and the pensions that the parents are entitled to at the end of ten years goes into the family kitty, used to pay down their mortgage.

Canadians are not willing to ignore abuse
In the past, Canadians ignored the systematic abuse of the system because there was plenty to go around. India and China were both poor countries so if its beleaguered people greedily lapped up all the free goodies it was understandable. Not so today. Canadians are waking up to the spectre of their own jobs being outsourced to a country which is fast turning into an economic powerhouse-India.  And then all around them they see thousands of South Asians and their sponsored parents strolling around their neighborhoods or driving expensive cars. Envy, irritation and xenophobic passions are simmering just beneath the surface. And if the economy goes into a tailspin like it has in Europe, the backlash will get severe and more open.

South Asians can expect more hostility
South Asians are now being viewed with a degree of fear, suspicion and hostility in certain sections of Canadian society, especially among those who’ve been directly impacted as a result of  jobs which have gone to India. Naturally then Canadians, even of South Asian origin are worried about their own jobs,  standard of living  and the prospects for their own children which at this point seems to be slightly uncertain. I have heard plenty of Canadians saying that it is time we take care of our own people here before we put out the welcome mat for asylum seekers, bogus refugees and more immigrants who are widely seen to be driving down wages and taking away scarce jobs. If new immigrants are seen as threats and sponsored parents and grandparents considered a drain on health care, then there is a problem. How do seniors who’ve worked and paid taxes into the system feel when they have to compete with sponsored seniors who are qualifying for public housing and welfare payments? How do many Canadians feel about overcrowded hospitals, the amount of time it takes to get an appointment with a specialist or to get surgery? I am sure that if the question whether Canada should halt immigration temporarily was asked in a poll, a majority would say agree. I know many South Asian immigrants who believe that there are too many immigrants being let in despite the slackening economy. Some liken it to a Ponzi scheme. And while Canada is still open for business and immigration as usual, new immigrants will feel less welcome and visible minorities will experience a more chilly reception from Canadians.

How mobile are you? I don’t mean ‘transportable’ but ‘cellular’? If you consider yourself a technologically superior North American think again. India not only produces all those smart IT professionals by the hundreds but is also far ahead in the cell phone world. Having entered the mobile age fairly late has proved to be their trump card. Not only did they get the advanced infrastructure but they also don’t suffer the prohibitive costs like we do. The result, everyone from your street vendor and domestic help to the tweens and dignitaries (and even some mendicants and panhandlers I’m told) has a cell phone. All I could do was sit back and be amazed during my trip last summer at how cellular technology has transported India into another era.

In the know
Our taxi driver was definitely not impressed with our Canadian status , ignorance of worldly matters and lack of connectivity. In his place, I wouldn’t be either. The burning issue (literally) at that time was the killing of Muslims in Assam and Myanmar. Coming from North America where many of us are oblivious of many world happenings we had no idea what was going on. A big protest was to take place that day and he was advising us to avoid the city as “anything could happen”. Seeing the blank look on our faces he decided to educate us. Out came his smart phone on which he quickly pulled up some news items about the goings on for us to read. I didn’t know whether to appreciate his enthusiasm and friendliness or be ashamed of our lack of it. Suffice to say there was trouble during the protest and a police vehicle was burned shutting down Mumbai’s main CST station and trains for a couple of hours just as he predicted.

The SMS business
Our next brush with the cell phone India came when trying to rent a car. The lady listened to our requirements and then told us (very matter-of-factly) that she would ‘SMS’ the details. She seemed surprised (actually it was more disbelief) when we said we didn’t have a mobile. Everybody in India (and I’m not exaggerating) conducts business on the mobile. So SMS are flying around all the time, even to inform you that your rental car or taxi service has arrived. It is almost impossible to get anything done without it. I have to admit that I’m relieved this is not the case in Canada.

On the go
It was even more amazing (and amusing) to take in the scenario in the local trains where it is often difficult to breathe during rush hour let alone get a proper place to stand. But people are resilient and innovative. So after entering the train and finding a place to park themselves out comes the cell phone for a chat or SMS. In the midst of vendors selling their wares, people singing ‘bhajans’, talking and laughing loudly with their ‘train friends’ there’s a constant ringing of somebody’s mobile followed by some loud chatter. To someone in India this might be a regular scene but to me it was unreal almost like watching a movie.

Speed dial
I have to say I wouldn’t mind some of the conveniences that cell phone India affords her people. Like sending the local grocer a list of my requirements and having him bring it home, right to my doorstep for instance. Or ‘SMSing’ my maid (that would be myself in Canada) to find out what time in her busy day would she would make an appearance?

Mobile India has arrived. According to bloomberg.com India had 925 million mobile phone subscribers in 2012. Perhaps this prompted a UN study statement in 2010 that people have more phones than toilets (366 million in 2010 and I’m sure things have not changed much since). Good news or bad, that’s not really the point. If mobile technology has shaped a generation, then India is next generation and we can certainly take a page out of her book. And people like me should be able to thumb their way through life without batting an eyelid. We might not have our grocers or maids on speed dial. But! We can certainly hope to stop the cell phone service providers from burning holes in our pockets.

When Devender (name changed) and his wife, both highly educated professionals emigrated to Canada 20 years ago, caste was the last thing they thought they’d have  to deal with. “I was warned about racism in this country, but I am a victim of casteism,” he said. It started some months ago when he started placing matrimonial ads seeking a partner for his physician daughter and being a progressive and forward-looking person, he did not specify caste. Enquiries soon poured in  and invariably the question about caste arose and this is what he said to me: “Every single person asked our caste and if we weren’t of the same caste, my daughter was rejected. As an educated professional, to see a bunch of rejection letters from equally highly educated NRIs on the basis of caste alone hurt me.” Last week I asked a few South Asians if casteism was equally bad as racism or worse. One individual dismissed caste as a non-issue that  was important to older members of the South Asian diaspora but their children growing up here consider caste irrelevant. While that is true to a large extent  there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Caste has migrated from East to West
Dozens of news reports and studies suggest casteism is in decline in India- factors affecting this profound social change are-industrialization, wealth, urbanization, social reform movements backed by government initiatives, the increasing importance of wealth. But what has driven this social change is the spread of modern education. The South Asian diaspora who’ve settled in the first world are exposed to the best education systems on the planet, live in progressive societies based on equality and tolerance. Why then is caste flourishing under the radar? Racism in the West on the other hand is dealt with harshly and there is zero tolerance for anyone found guilty. Casteism  happens  pretty openly, under the cover of culture and multiculturalism.

Caste-compatibility triumphs everything else
Take a look at South Asian matrimonial sites and count the number of classifieds where the bride or bridegroom is seeking not just someone from their own caste, but the sub-caste or their endogamous group. In the US, dozens of organizations exist with the sole purpose of bringing  young people from the same caste together. Here in Canada,  a significant number of South Asians belong to some organization or the other specific to their culture, race or creed. Since such segregation is not only  socially and politically acceptable but  even encouraged in multicultural Canada, such organizations are multiplying and one of the intended or unintended consequence is that young people often end up meeting and marrying within their community. Now on the other hand how would South Asians react if the remaining Whites in Brampton for example were to form an association for Canadians of British ancestry only? Back in the 50s when the first South Asians started arriving in the UK and later the US and Canada, caste was never an issue because many hailed from lower castes, and the Laws of Manu forbid higher upper caste Hindus from residing in a land outside of their birth. But that soon changed and the divisions set in.

“Wherever a Hindu goes, he will take his caste system with him.”- Dr Ambedkar
More than 5 million South Asians live outside of India and as Dr Ambedkar famously noted, “Wherever a Hindu goes, he will take his caste system with him.” How true. According to many South Asians I’ve spoken with recently, the issue of caste is getting stronger than ever before. Anyone who believes only first generation South Asian are preoccupied with caste is missing one crucial point. Matrimonial ads for highly educated brides and grooms most frequently insist on caste-compatible partners. The brides and grooms simply go along with such ads and never seem to protest. By succumbing to parental pressure and desire for their partner being of a particular caste, they are guilty of perpetuating the same prejudices. If you were to ask these young eligible professionals why they went along with such nonsense, they’d tell you that they didn’t want to hurt their parents and will further justify that they are just following Indian culture and tradition. It is not just people belonging to upper castes who will seek friends and partners from among their own kind, when it comes to marriage, even so-called ‘untouchable’ castes have started to seek their own kind in a form of reverse snobbery. In Britain a survey has found that 75 per cent of marriages are between partners belonging to the same caste or sub-caste. The thinking in the Indian diaspora is that if inter-caste marriages become the norm, identity and culture will be lost. This sort of pride for one’s culture and identity is what helps young South Asians who’ve grown up in countries like Canada to go along with such thinking. Young South Asians who’ve grown up in Canada should realize that it is just wrong to reject a potential partner or believe that some Indians are inferior simply  by virtue of their caste. Casteism is just as bad as racism. They are sides of the same coin.

Family violence is firmly entrenched in Canadian society and with proposed funding cuts this could assume even more alarming proportions.
Here are some statistics that bring the gravity of the problem to light:
• Half of Canadian women (51%) have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16
• Every minute of every day, a Canadian woman or child is being sexually assaulted
• One to two women are murdered by a current or former partner each week in Canada
• Spousal violence makes up the single largest category of convictions involving violent offences in non-specialized adult courts in Canada over the five-year period 1997/98 to 2001/02. Over 90% of offenders were male.
• 36% of female victims of spousal violence and less than 10% of victims of sexual assault reported these crimes to the police in 2004
• In 2009 Peel Regional Police recorded a 40% increase (since 2007) in violent crimes committed by youth
Youth crime, elder abuse and violence against women and children cross all borders of ethnicity and religion. And the South Asian community is no exception. Several cases that have made it to the news were from here. While there is no ethno-centric evidence to indicate whether the problem is intensifying among South Asians, a lack of awareness of the support services available to victims and socio-cultural barriers that prevent them from getting or accepting help might actually contribute towards perpetuating the problem.
A series of annual conferences on the Impact of Family Violence by the Social Services Network aims not only to draw attention to the problem but also how it should be handled from a South Asian perspective. In an interview to Can-India, Dr. Naila Butt , Executive Director of the Social Services Network, explained that “the individualistic approach” should be replaced “with a more family oriented or holistic one” in order to be more effective.
After all family members are an integral part of any South Asian‘s life as are socio-economic background, religious beliefs and cultural practices. Service providers need to be educated about these important aspects so that they can establish a more meaningful dialogue with community and the victims.
While the previous two conferences were directed works towards strategizing the third one held this week in Peel focussed on raising awareness in the community itself. A number of cases go unreported because victims might not be aware of the help that is available as well as the barriers to availing of them. Language being one of the greatest problems.
As Naila Butt rightly says we need to “create this awareness (from a South Asian perspective) at all levels –the community, sector and policy”. While she is not able to pinpoint whether or not family violence and youth are on the rise specifically in the South Asian community it is not hard to draw the picture when you see the changing demographics.
If population is on the rise, the problem is bound to escalate as well. According to Butt, “80% of Peel’s population is made up of immigrants. Brampton and Mississauga are among Canada‘s top 10 municipalities in terms of growth.” You only have to look around to figure out the dominant ethnicity and determine whether or not we are part of the problem. Ignoring it won’t make it go away. As Ms. Butt says, “Let’s work together to prevent high risk situations from getting to the point of no return”. More importantly let us empower victims to make their voices heard.

A week after the Boston Marathon was bombed by two young brothers of Chechen origin on April 15, a terrorist plan masterminded by Al Qaida to derail a VIA passenger train from Toronto to New York was unearthed and foiled by intelligence agencies in Canada. While the homemade bombs killed 3 and injured more than 260 innocent people on Patriots’ Day in Boston, a train derailment in Canada would have been more disastrous. But the timely arrests of two permanent residents made in Canada saved the situation. These two episodes taking place thousands of miles apart seem unrelated but the evil that led the perpetrator to commit crime at both the ends was the identical-Jihadists’ bloodshed of the innocents.
While writing this I came across the news of six terrorist who pleaded guilty to the charge of planning dreadful assault on a far-right anti Muslim group in June 2012 in UK but fortunately that didn’t materialize. Because before they drove to the site carrying weapons like machetes, knives shotguns and crude bomb in trunk of their car the gathering had broken up. Before their car could be searched by police they abandoned it but were apprehended later and brought before a London court this Tuesday where they pleaded guilty. Such happenings taking place in quick succession make us think about what really brings youth both in the East and West closer to terrorism.

What attracts young people to terrorism?
Opinions differ. It is religious fervor, poverty or illiteracy or a combination of reasons that turn youth into suicide bombers as in Afghanistan or Pakistan or other countries in Asia, Africa many opine. Others contradict saying that the terrorists who killed others by blowing up the buildings or roads filled with innocent people were neither poor nor illiterate. Some were aircraft pilots; others highly gifted and qualified technocrats, scholars and analysts with affluent family connections.
But social experts see the phenomenon differently and suggest that immigrant children on their arrival in Western countries face the problem of social alienation here in their schools, play grounds and neighborhood because they fail to integrate in the new environment that is totally different from what they had left behind. Their prolonged stay here or even when they are best looked after by their parents at home and school teachers in their class rooms didn’t change their outlook. They continue to suffer from alienation silently and won’t share their melancholy even with their parents. To come out of that paranoia some may decide to establish their own identity among their friends and others by doing wrongful things. Perhaps that worked on the minds of the Chechen brothers, even though the younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s who is in custody told FBI interrogators that they did that to take revenge against America for killing Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tsarnaev brothers’ psyche
Let us briefly look at background of two Boston bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who got public attention but totally for wrong reasons. They migrated to US along with their parents from the Chechen region of Russia as refugees and stayed back while parents returned. As per Maret Tsarnaev their Toronto based aunt, the brothers had a happy life and ‘within the family, everything was perfect’. While talking about 26-year-old Tamerlan she disclosed that even with his long stay in USA he did not find himself yet in ‘America, because it’s not easy.’ Even Tamerlan confessed to have no American friend as he didn’t understand them. He mostly went around with his Russian buddies. His psyche didn’t change even after he married a girl in Boston from a Christian family, “so you can’t tie it to religion”, Maret told reporters. To their friends, the boys were just normal American kids, though they did keep links to their Chechen and Muslim past and the younger, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev 19 was totally under influence of his elder brother and followed him like puppy.

Canada beware
But the arrests of two permanent residents Chiheb Esseghaier, a Tunisian-born from Montreal and Raed Jaser a Toronto-based Palestinian made in connection with their plan to derail VIA train in Canada has raised many eye brows here. Thanks to timely arrests made by the RCMP a terrorist tragedy on Canadian soil has been averted. But Canada, in the process received a notice to remain vigilant. Richard Fadden, the CSIS director has already cautioned in February that Canadians are involved in ‘every single case’ of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups and that these groups have mentioned Canada as their future target. Al Qaida today may not be a centralized terrorist organization that it once used to be under Osama bin Laden yet it is not a spent force and some say with its tentacles spread ubiquitously, it has become more flexible and aggressive now than before. Let Canada beware of this reality because as per CSIS, dozens of Canadians — many in their early 20s-have travelled or attempted to travel overseas to engage in terrorism-related activities in recent years”. This age group is skeptical, needs special attention of parents and vigilance by law enforcing agencies.

In the end
Who could be a potential terrorist threat to Canada was best analyzed by CSIS director Richard Fadden while deposing before Senate Committee on National Security and Defense in February. He said, “You have a range of people (a) who want to seem self-important among their own groups, (b) are motivated by a deep sense of religious wrong doing. (c) Largely the individuals who feel that the Muslim world is under attack and that somehow Canada is contributing to that.”

It was Eleanor Roosevelt who famously said that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people. On Saturday 27th, I attended the IIT Alumni’s annual lecture series at a banquet hall in Mississauga and spent the next three hours listening to great minds discussing ideas. Big Ideas. IIT which is the Indian Institute of Technology is among the most prestigious education institutions in the world, comparable with MIT in the US. As one of the speakers Paul Gilbert, CEO, Quanser Consulting who spoke about robotics in education noted that over 512,000 students attempt to get into IIT each year but less than two percent succeed. In that room were dozens of IITians and their partners, contributing their sought after skills and talents to Canada. The honorary Reza Moridi Minister of Research & Innovation was the Guest of Honour. He spoke about how IITians could be a conduit to help trade grow between Ontario and India which is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. This rapid growth presents Ontario with many opportunities to provide infrastructure and technology. Of particular interest was nuclear energy. Minister Moridi devoted a significant amount of time talking and fielding questions about nuclear energy. India is looking to invest in nuclear energy to address its shortfall in energy production by setting up 54 nuclear plants. Canada has both the technical expertise as well as the uranium. Some of the IITians work in the nuclear industry. Other areas Ontario could help India was in water conservation and renewable energy. The Minister also revealed that a delegation specializing in urban infrastructure would be visiting India in the next few months. MPP Dipika Damerla was one of the speakers who felt extremely proud to be an Indian. “There was a time no one wanted to admit being an Indian, today everyone wants to say we are Indian,” she said. Dipika’s father is a retired IITian and in a way she felt connected with this group. She spoke about Canada’s nanosatellite which was launched by Israel.  “Countries like India eat our lunch in the satellite world. If India can launch satellites more cheaply than Canada, how can we compete and protect our standard of living?” According to Damerla, what we in Canada can export to India is good governance. “Poor governance in India is costing the country dearly,” she added. The other speaker, Deepak Manchanda spoke about empowering oneself and eliminating stress. It was a subject that concerned everyone in that room. What is striking about IITians is that they are on a constant learning curve. I spoke to one person who prior to immigrating to Canada a couple of years ago, did a part-time course in Canada while he lived in India. How was that possible? A lot of the course work could be done online and every three months he flew for a few days to attend classes at the University. The IITians I spoke with at this event were well-read, well-travelled and up to speed with the technological advancements in India. At the end of the evening, it seemed as if Ontario needed more out of India than the other way around. The province is looking to attract Indian entrepreneurs to launch their start-ups here and create jobs as well as promote trade in India which will create more jobs here. “Ten years ago, Indian government officials would come pleading for investments from Canada, today it is the other way around,” one IITian observed. This lecture series  was in contrast to most other South Asian events where much importance is placed on dance, fashion, jewelry and culture. The emphasis was more on India‘s promising future rather than on India‘s rich cutural heritage going back hundreds of years.

The news that made waves across Canada last week was about Justin Trudeau winning the top Liberal Party post hands down in an election held this April 14. MP Joyce Murray, the contender closest to him lagged far behind and she scored only 10 per cent of votes. What favoured young Justin to accomplish such a feat at this juncture needs little probing.

How it happened
Two aspects seemed to have worked simultaneously enabling Justin Trudeau to win the Liberal party leadership with a huge margin. First destiny tagged ‘Trudeau’ to his name and he shined under the reflected glory of his father, the late Pierre Trudeau who is considered one of the most popular prime ministers Canada had had.  Secondly a strong undercurrent to support young Trudeau swept the rank and file of liberal party after infighting between senior leaders like Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin had shattered its image in public eyes and brought frustration among membership. They therefore, voted in Trudeau’s favour in the hope of his bringing factionalism to its end and improving the image of the party in the next Federal poll due in 2015. Soon after getting elected he presented existing portrait of party without mincing words and said, “Canadians turned away from us because we turned away from them, because Liberals became more focused on fighting with each other than fighting for Canadians”. Though it was the Liberal party’s internal affair, yet Trudeau’s election has raised political fever across the country. Many assumed that under his leadership the political equilibrium in Canada would swing in favour of the Liberals in next federal elections. But it would be too early to conclude that as much depends on Trudeau’s performance as the new President of the Liberal Party both inside as well as outside Parliament in the days to come. But the ruling Tory and opposition NDP bosses became apprehensive of their positions after the news of Justin Trudeau election caught the imagination of people and the media in a big way.

Feelings of friends and foes
Thousands of supporters gathered in Ottawa to congratulate him, Joyce Murray the liberal MP from Vancouver who lost the leadership race to him also congratulated and said, “I’m going to be supporting Justine as part of his team” Trudeau’s victory has made rival political parties a bit itchy. While formally congratulating him on his success, Conservatives unleashed absurd video attacks against Trudeau even before he assumed his place in the House of Commons. They expressed their doubt about his capacity to lead the country and stated, “Justin Trudeau may have a famous last name (of his father’s), but he doesn’t have the judgment or experience to be prime minister in a time of global economic uncertainty.”  But on the other hand Mulroney, one of the former Tory Prime Ministers warned Trudeau’s political rivals, “Anybody who treats Justin Trudeau with scorn or derision or underestimates him does so at his own peril. We’ll see what happens in the future; it’s a long way from here to there. But no one should underestimate Justin. He is a man of some consequence.”

Tasks awaiting Trudeau
Viewing his landslide win in the Liberal party’s presidential race, someone rightly said that Trudeau had landed in Federal politics with a thud. But the tasks awaiting Justin Trudeau are not easy to accomplish. Thanks to prevailing factionalism Liberal Party having remained in power for 69 years in the 20th Century and came to be known as Canada’s natural governing party has been relegated to third position in Commons in 21st century.  Lifting a political outfit from shambles was easy said than done. But looking at the grit Trudeau displayed in public soon after his win, he may possibly achieve that difficult goal. The first challenge as Liberal president however, awaits him in Labrador, where hopes are running high among party colleagues to take away a seat from the Conservatives in the May 13 by-election.

In the end
Justin Trudeau proved to be an astute politician and decided his own time to jump in the fray and not when others desired him to do that. He twice declined to take charge of the party that poorly performed in the Federal polls of 2008 and 2011 and waited for an appropriate time to come for that. The popularity of the majority Tory government started waning after it imposed job cuts and cuts in unemployment benefits of workers in the name of recession but at the same time offered big tax concessions to giant financial and business houses that made people weary of them. The Stephen Harper government’s foreign policy as also new immigration policies disgusted many others. Looking at people’s growing apathy with Tories, Trudeau thought it was the time to make his presence on national political horizon. He announced in 2012 to join the presidential race of his party and won that hands down last week. But would the awesome support that Justine got within the Liberal party forum in 2013 translate into votes of Canadians at large in next federal poll of 2015 to make him Prime Minister, or even leader of opposition, could be any body’s guess. With his zero experience as the new boss of Canada’s ‘natural ruling party’, Trudeau must exercise some restraint while making comments on key issues-national or international, some felt. Already some of his statements that appeared in media about the Quebec government’s failure to sign the Constitution or his reaction over recent Boston terrorist attack had invited controversies that were avoidable at this juncture.

By Pradip Rodrigues

Back in the 60s, Bombay or fittingly Mumbai as it called now, was a cosmopolitan and well-planned city, but then day after day,  year after year 500  people often from rural India  started to move into the city every day, housing became an issue so they took over pavements, open spaces and in time slums made up 75 per cent of the city. How did such a thing happen? Politicians looked the other way as slums proliferated and slumlords ruled the roost, many either threw their support behind politicians or became politicians. Residents living in legal dwellings could rarely get elected officials to crack down on illegal constructions and slums because for politicians, these were vote-banks. In time the Mumbai’s infrastructure was bursting at its seams which led to long-time residents like myself to leave the city I loved and move to Canada. So when I see what is going on in Brampton and to some extent Mississauga, where I live, I get really alarmed. Long-time residents are leaving or considering leaving in droves. No one is saying so openly but it is because of what South Asians in particular are doing to certain neighbourhoods. It starts from the time a South Asian goes out house hunting. The desi realtor will suggest they consider buying a rentable basement or convert it into a basement apartment in order to create a tax-free revenue stream. The landlord wins, the city loses. In other cases, big homes have been converted into rooming houses where up to six or more families live in the same place. These to me are the equivalent of slums in Mumbai. In some cases garages have been turned into living quarters. This issue has been going on for years now. Visit some Brampton neighbourhoods at night and the streets resemble parking lots. There are cars parked haphazardly all over the place.  And it isn’t that the city is unaware of what is happening. Unlike in Mumbai where corrupt politicians created the problem, here it is political correctness and the reluctance to enforce rules on a politically active and an aggressive South Asian community. Furthermore  we constitute a vote-bank so many of the councillors depend upon. Everybody knows that the demographics will soon sweep away White incumbent councillors who will then be replaced by South Asian councillors who will presumably look after the interests of the ‘community’. At the recent Brampton council hearings about a plot of land where a plan for townhouses was being opposed by residents of Springdale, who favoured a plaza or big homes more suited to joint-family living, residents prodded on by some wannabe politicians threatened to unseat politicians at the next election after council went ahead and approved the plan. Incumbent politicians were reminded of the looming South Asian demographic time-bomb that would ensure that happened. As South Asians turn into a majority in more and more cities in Canada, it is essential to ensure that when we take over the reigns of political power, we do not turn them into the kind of cities many of us fled from in India. What is happening in Brampton may one day happen in dozens of cities across Canada. Brampton’s reputation is such that many non-South Asians will not consider living there and a significant number of sophisticated South Asians as well would prefer living anywhere but there. In Canada, residents who choose to live in single-family homes in the suburbs do so for the peace and quiet as opposed to high-density living in big cities. For this privilege, they pay high taxes. According to unofficial figures, Brampton has tens of thousands of illegal basements that are rented out to a second family. While this is a great revenue stream for the homeowner, the city gets starved of taxes. It has to provide services and expand infrastructure. As a consequence, the city has one of the highest property taxes in the province. Home and auto fraud in the city has resulted in shockingly high premiums. Overcrowding in schools and hospitals is something I hear about as well and this is simply a result of more residents accessing city services that aren’t being counted and aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. There is evidence to suggest parts of Brampton are turning slum-like in appearance, especially in summer. Clothes being hung out to dry in the front lawn, in some cases on trees. Backyards overrun with weeds or used as outdoor kitchens. The sight of trucks parked on driveways or on quiet residential streets. Men playing cards and talking loudly in their garages or in parks, sometimes drinking and making lewd jokes. This is certainly not what many suburban residents of Brampton signed up for when they moved here, at least the ones who aren’t inclined to renting out their basements or turning it into offices .Before the councillors are all swept away. It may be a good idea to enforce all those laws and bylaws or else risk ruining what I think is a wonderful city.

The Peel District School Board has announced that it is going ahead with its plans to allow parents and community volunteers to coach school sports teams and supervise other extracurricular activities. This forward-thinking step is laudable on many fronts.

Ransom no more
For starters it offers a hope that extra curriculars will not be held to ransom in the forseeable future. The withdrawal of these activities has affected students more deeply that teachers would care to acknowledge. Take university applications for instance, where participation in non-academic events are considered the hallmarks of an active and well-rounded person. It is not hard to understand why many concerned parents at a recent open house asked that this criteria not influence acceptance in the absence of these activities this year.
Then there are those children who may not be that academically inclined but are gifted in sports or the arts. To have taken away their opportunity to showcase their talents has got to be simply cruel. To say the least it also created a lopsided learning process that put all the focus on academics. It was also a major blow for students who were expecting to carry their non-academic laurels to the next level of education, be it elementary or secondary.

Removing the fund barrier
Allowing parents and community volunteers to get involved could also prove to be a boon for schools that do not have the required resources (or can’t afford them) to run extracurricular activities. When in a crunch for funds, sad to say music, art and drama programs are usually the first to go on the chopping block- justified or not.
Having been part of a similar initiative in US schools I can only reiterate the advantages of opening these important activities up to community volunteers. My children’s school had an excellent art program that was run entire by parent volunteers as they didn’t have the budget for an art teacher. The resources and materials were provided by the school, and every week volunteers went in to classrooms to introduce different art mediums and have children create their very own masterpieces. From still life to Picasso the students were exposed to a variety of art forms they might have been otherwise oblivious of. Another volunteer group prepared students for prestigious interschool competitions like Destination Imagination.

Reducing disparities
Many schools here in Peel also have reading programs that are supported by volunteers as the need far outweighs the teachers and resources. Extending these to sports or drama would give our children the opportunity to take part in activities within the school rather than being forced to look elsewhere. Having to pay huge sums of money for sports and arts puts it out of the reach of a great number of students. Participation in sports or the arts should not be reduced to financial capabilities.
I am also miffed when I hear that there are some schools that have a ton of activities while others barely have anything at all. Perhaps if some of the burden was taken away from the teachers it would it could greatly reduce this disparity while improving the quality of education our children receive.

Giving back to the community
That being said it would also give professionals and interested individuals in the community an opportunity to be involved and share their talent and expertise with the future generation. A lot of the much-sought-after sports club coaches are volunteers why not extend these facilities for the community at large. So let’s roll up our sleeves and give a hand to the Peel District School Board’s brilliant idea.