When I entered the Public School Trustee race in
Trinity-Spadina, I did it because the Toronto District School Board is plagued
with major problems which have not been properly addressed and I wanted to
raise awareness about them.
Those issues include exposing the politicization of the
school curriculum, the decline in standards, and that the TDSB has infused what
is actually racist ideology into the school system by promoting the idea that
children should be treated more as part of a collective and less as an
individual and that the Board needs to focus more on race. And of course the gross waste, mismanagement,
and incompetence at the TDSB.
But as it so often happens in life, things didn't go quite
according to plan.
The NDP ran a candidate as part of their ticket that
included Mike Layton and Joe Cressy named Ausma Malik, a person with an
extremely questionable past.
There are numerous reports in the University of Toronto's
newspaper, The Varsity, pertaining to
when Ms Malik, as a union official tasked with investigating a disputed student
union election was, according to those articles, shown to have colluded with
the people she was investigating to produce the results they wanted. That scandal led to the University's Provost taking the extraordinary measure of freezing funds to the student
union.
That is the more serious of the controversies regarding someone
seeking a position of trust that would be involved in overseeing a $3 Billion
budget that is supposed to be devoted to public school students' needs.
Unfortunately, another controversial aspect of Ms Malik's
past has become the media focus. In 2006, Ms Malik delivered an anti-Israel speech at a rally
filled with supporters of the terrorist group Hezbollah, at which the deaths of
Israeli soldiers were cheered. That 2006 event was organized by the so-called
"Canadian Peace Alliance," a group that is intimately involved with
the annual anti-Semitic al Quds Day rallies. At one such rally, Ali Mallah, a Steering
Committee member of the Canadian Peace Alliance, shouted at the Khomeinist crowd that he supports "resistance ..by any means necessary!"
While the U of T election scandal is I believe a far more
serious issue, the Hezbollah angle became the media's sole interest. I have
spoken to reporters at the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and the National
Post about The Varsity articles and
they are all aware of them, but they prefer to write about Hezbollah because
they think it's "sexy" and
easier for their readers to comprehend.
Recently some idiots attended a debate in which they heckled
and tried to shout down Ms Malik, at which point I and other Trustee candidates
had to intervene and stand up to tell them to respect her right to speak.
Some idiots have been distributing inflammatory flyers in
Trinity-Spadina trying to link Ms Malik directly to Hezbollah. The prevention
of a candidate from speaking at a public debate and the flyer distribution are
deplorable and reprehensible. Ms Malik is not a member of Hezbollah or any terrorist
group. Moreover such actions are counterproductive to shedding light on the
real issues facing Trinity-Spadina.
At this point, the TDSB Trustee race in Trinity-Spadina needs
to be one that is about integrity and credibility. Because if a Public School
Trustee lacks those attributes, then the serious issues at the School Board
will never be properly addressed.
The facts about the
candidates in Trinity-Spadina's TDSB race and the truth behind them are matters
of public record and can be easily accessed by online research, both through
Google and at thevarsity.ca.
It is my hope that the voters selecting the next TDSB
Trustee look into the facts and make an informed choice based on them.
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