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On October 16, 2017, over 12,000 faculty, librarians, and counsellors in 24 independent postsecondary colleges in Ontario, Canada went on strike for the fourth time since they organized in 1971 as members of the Civil Service Association of Ontario and won their first collective agreement the next year. Begun as an apolitical, self-consciously quasi-colonial, and decidedly elitist "professional" body in 1911, the CSAO has transformed itself in name and in nature into an increasingly class-conscious and intermittently militant Ontario Public Service Employees Union with current membership of approximately 180,000 including: clerical staff; community and social service workers; corrections officers; healthcare, transportation, and natural resource workers; as well as college academic and support staff employees. Relations with their employers have become increasingly adversarial and rarely greater than in the college sector. This paper explores this strike.

As a postsecondary educator with most of my experience teaching in colleges, but with some also in undergraduate and postgraduate studies both in Canada and the United States, I have been teaching politics and government for close to fifty years. That time has been spent not only undertaking empirical analyses of political behaviour and the normative analysis of political theory, but also in the practical activity of promoting understanding of what is frequently called "civic life". The authorities who develop broad educational goals seem to have it in mind that promoting ideas of good citizenship and suggesting ways in which this citizenship can be enacted should be among the several goals of faculty members involved in "general education." As we live in a liberal democracy, it follows that a good part of that mission should involve the both cognitive knowledge (how governments work, issues of policy development, elements of the political process, etc.) and what are sometimes called affective and behavioural traits--habits of attitude and action that encourage and exemplify good citizenship. Specifically, we are expected to teach something about democracy.

Postsecondary teacher, Howard Doughty, has been teaching politics and government for close to fifty years. That time has been spent not only working with the empirical analysis of political behaviour and the normative analysis of political theory, but also in the practical activity of promoting understanding of what is frequently called civic life. In line with current standards and educational goals for faculty members involved in "general education," Doughty asserts a good part of that mission should involve the both cognitive knowledge (how governments work, issues of policy development, elements of the political process, etc.) and what are sometimes called "affective" and "behavioural" traits--habits of attitude and action that encourage good citizenship. More specifically, these educators are expected to teach something about democracy. Herein, Doughty discusses the historical controversy that follows the concept of democracy in theory and in practice. Next, he highlights four primary concerns about the current state of democracy and electoral system. Doughty goes on to explore briefly one set of criticisms of contemporary democratic politics as they are practiced in the United States of America, Canada and the United Kingdom. A description of the First-Past-the-Post (FPP) electoral system and its overall flaws are then discussed. Three cases are then presented to illustrate why some people regard FPP as an unfair and even an undemocratic way to elect presidents, prime ministers and legislators of various descriptions. Doughty concludes with several arguments demonstrating why FPP should be replaced with the Proportional Representation (PR) electoral system.

Innovation should be about procedures and methods. Little thought is given to proximate, much less ultimate aims. In this article, the authors invite educators to take a break and explore the educational enterprise to which they devote their life's work. They discuss two bits of excerpted writing, both over half a century old. One comes from Jack Kenney, a high school English teacher whose career in Port Colborne and Collingwood, Ontario spanned the years from 1938 to 1974. The other was composed for the September, 1957 issue of the "Royal Bank of Canada Monthly Letter" by James Muir, then Chairman of the Board and President of that venerable financial institution. The first gives advice to students about to enter high school. The second offers counsel to those concerned with even higher education. They argue that education is in trouble if it is not "both" fun "and" practical. They then offer some observations on Jack Kenney's mantra, "The only object is intellect", for reflection.

In the early 1980s, it was not sub-prime mortgages and toxic assets, bank failures and factory closures that crowded the pages of the business section of the daily newspapers. It was something called "stagflation," a noxious combination of inflationary pressures on currency and stagnating levels of production. Still, the effects were roughly similar, and the growth of unemployment was almost identical. Politicians called upon both academic economists and the leaders of business and industry to come up with a plan to solve the crisis, just as leaders are doing today. In the midst of the emergency, however, something else happened. The bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada came out with a bold document. Excise the references to God, Jesus and the Gospels and one would find a rather radical economic manifesto. Keep them, and one will read a test of faith, hope and charity. The Bishops proposed that the interests of labour be put ahead of the interests of capital, that the dignity of work supersede the quest for technology, that economic justice be recognized as the overarching social goal and that the "preferential option" be for "the poor, the afflicted and the oppressed" be exercised in all actions. In short, these high-ranking members of the largest religious denomination in Canada spoke eloquently about making the economy about morality and not money. In time, prosperity of a sort returned. Whether the recovery was a predictable consequence of the business cycle or won on the backs of the poor, the working and the middle classes through draconian cut-backs in social services and other efficiencies is a matter of debate. What is clear, however, is that the counsel of the clergy was totally ignored. The author does not reclaim this document and disseminate it as a cure-all. In some ways, he thinks its diagnosis and recommended therapies are utterly naive. He also does not endorse its religious premises. However, he thinks that the Bishops were on to something important, and he thinks teachers would do themselves and their students no permanent harm if they were to consider the ethical context for whatever they teach since, in one way or another, the various global tensions--ecological, ideological and economic--cannot forever be ignored and, as teachers, they surely have some responsibility to raise the truly important questions. In this article, the author presents the document and his views.

This article offers a skeletal critique of the pedagogical theory and the teaching practices arising from the work of educational innovator, Benjamin Bloom. Professor Bloom's theory and method have overtly and covertly insinuated themselves into North American educational practice over the past half-century. Their impact and influence have been felt in almost every aspect of teaching and learning, and at almost every level of education. This critique narrowly speaks to certain elements in Bloom's pedagogical paradigm. It specifically addresses the matter of learning objectives and, more particularly, the admonition to write learning objectives using "action" verbs in the construction of course outlines. This article demonstrates how even the selection of the words to be incorporated into college course outlines are connected to larger domains of ideology and the overall mode of production and distribution in contemporary society.

The subject of this article is the report, "Ontario: A Leader in Learning" (Rae, 2005), presented to the government of Ontario by its principal author and key public face of the document, Bob Rae. The presentation is divided into four main parts: (1) the authors attempt to summarize the political philosophy of Bob Rae, the former Member of Parliament and federal New Democratic Party foreign affairs critic, former NDP Premier of Ontario, corporate lawyer, mediator, specially chosen investigator of the postsecondary educational system in Ontario and, most recently, advisor on whether or not it would be a good idea to conduct a competent investigation into Canada's most devastating terrorist attack twenty years after the event; (2) the authors discuss the process whereby Rae and his associates conducted the review of postsecondary education as a matter of political procedure and symbolic practice; (3) the authors assess the resulting report and reactions to it as matters of political discourse; and (4) the authors speak about the 2005 Ontario provincial budget as it reflects the influence of the Rae review and sets the stage for educational reform in Ontario. Finally, the authors add a few obligatory concluding remarks.

The field of Postcolonial Studies is one of the academic fashions that has arisen in an attempt to amend or replace radical theories of social power since the alleged discrediting of Marxism. The Canadian case is more ambiguous. Postcolonialism, already an essentially contested concept, is especially conflicted where Canada is concerned. Canada has certainly had a colonial past, with parts of its territory having been claimed by one European power or another since Giovanni Caboto (alias Jean Cabot, a.k.a. John Cabot) landed in Newfoundland in 1497. Canada, however, is unlike countries such as Peru, Congo, Iraq, India, and Malaysia whose indigenous populations were politically repressed and economically exploited during long periods of alien cultural domination. As Cynthia Sugars (2004) has pointed out, like other "settler-invaded cultures," the application of postcolonial methodology is problematic because of Canada's "location within the industrialized West [and] because of its treatment of its aboriginal peoples and other minorities. [So], questions proliferate: Is Canada postcolonial? Who in Canada is postcolonial? Are some Canadians more postcolonial than others?" Elements of this story have cropped up in the work of the widely respected US sociologist, Seymour Martin Lipset. The genuine and original "Canadian identity," Lipset says, is "the result of a victorious counterrevolution, and in a sense must justify its raison d'etre by emphasizing the virtues of being separate from the United States."

The historical failures of Marxism in the twentieth-century came in three forms: the inability to account for the rise of fascism and Nazism; the establishment of authoritarian regimes where "communist" revolutions had occurred, largely in pre-industrial societies from barely post-feudal Russia to peasant-based China and "developing" nations such as Vietnam; and the incapacity of the proletariat to develop class consciousness and foment class conflict in advanced industrial societies, where Marx and his followers knew capitalism to have arisen and where they assumed it would first be transcended. Seeking to understand these failures, yet to preserve and apply foundational elements of Marx's thought, the "critical theorists" of the Frankfurt Institute--at home and in exile--drew on additional sources including Hegel and Freud to diagnose the pathologies of modernity, though rarely to offer restorative treatments for Enlightenment values or Marxian transformation. Jürgen Habermas, the acknowledged leader of the "second generation" of critical theorists refused to succumb to the pessimism of his elders and reached out to increasingly diverse scholars in an effort to redeem the goals of reason, democracy and equity in modern life. His theoretical work--often abstract and dense--remains almost as marginal to mainstream thought as that of Adorno and Horkheimer before him; yet, it has influenced a minority of philosophers and social scientists still interested in education as an emancipatory human project. Using the specific context of contemporary community colleges, this contribution seeks to build bridges between Habermas' combination of basically Marxian, often Kantian, and always eclectic thought to show how educators could profitably reflect upon their professional lifeworlds, better comprehend the neoliberal ideology and power relations that entrap them, and find new inspiration and advice should they wish to interrogate and confront the corporate world in which they ply their trade.

The author expresses his views on the concept of academic freedom in Canada. He mentions that topics of discussion related to academic freedom include semantics and he offers information on the impact of the growth of post-secondary schooling on academic freedom. He also talks about the visions of employer-employee relations that have been generated by college administrators and teachers.

The article discusses a document, titled "Ethical Reflections on the Economic Crisis: From The Episcopal Commission for Social Affairs Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1983." According to the document, the interests of labour should be prioritized ahead of the interests of capital and that the dignity of work should supersede technological innovation. The bishops are concerned that the economy are not based on any specific political options. One of the principles presented by the bishops addresses the special value and dignity of human work in God's plan for Creation.

Background: We aimed to determine whether sepsis is associated with neurocognitive outcomes 4.5 years after congenital heart disease surgery in early infancy., Methods and Results: A secondary analysis from a prospective inception cohort included all children having congenital heart disease surgery done at ≤6 weeks of age with cardiopulmonary bypass at the Western Canadian referral center from 1996 to 2009. Follow-up at the referral center determined the primary outcomes at 4.5 years with full-scale, performance, and verbal intelligence quotients on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence. Perioperative variables were collected prospectively, and confirmation of blood culture-positive sepsis was done retrospectively. Multiple linear regression models for neurocognitive outcomes and multiple Cox proportional hazards regression for mortality were determined. Sepsis occurred in 97 of 502 patients (19%) overall and in 76 of 396 survivors (19%) with 4.5-year follow-up. By 4.5 years, there were 91 (18%) deaths, and 396 of 411 survivors (96%) had follow-up completed. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was associated with worse scores on all neurocognitive outcomes on multivariable regression; the association between extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and full-scale intelligence quotient had a regression coefficient of -13.6 (95% CI -21.3 to -5.9; P=0.001). Sepsis perioperatively was associated with performance and verbal intelligence quotients, with a trend for full-scale intelligence quotient (P=0.058) on multivariable regression. The regression coefficient for sepsis was strongest for performance intelligence quotient (-5.31; 95% CI -9.84 to -0.78; P=0.022). Sepsis was not but extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was associated with mortality by 4.5 years., Conclusions: Perioperative sepsis and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation were associated with adverse neurocognitive outcomes on multivariable regression. Quality improvement to prevent sepsis has the potential to improve long-term neurocognitive outcomes in infants after surgery for congenital heart disease., (© 2015 The Authors. Published on behalf of the American Heart Association, Inc., by Wiley Blackwell.)