$150,000 Investigation Bill Should Be Sent To The Saskatchewan Party For Payment

The cost of the investigation into former Saskatchewan Party MLA, Serge Leclerc, has now been identified at $150,000.

Rather than the taxpayers of the province paying this amount, the bill should be sent to Brad Wall and his political party for reimbursement of the provincial treasury.

It was the Saskatchewan Party who authorized and endorsed Serge Leclerc as their candidate.

Premier Brad Wall signed the nomination papers and told the Chief Electoral Officer that Serge Leclerc was a duly certified representative of the Saskatchewan Party.

So why are we taxpayers paying for Brad Wall's error in judgement?

The Saskatchewan Party should send a $150,000 cheque to the Province as soon as possible.

A brief history of Unions

The people from the Saskatchewan Party caucus office who operate their very own blog, don't like unions very much. Perhaps they just don't understand the history of why trade unionism has flourished over the last many decades. Although this little video was produced in the USA with American references, it still provides a good snapshot of how trade unionism has created a middle class in both the US and Canada. They've made this very simple and easy to understand!

Saskatchewan students rank 7th in Canada for literacy

Brad Wall's Spring Budget should include a huge funding increase for education in order to try and remedy this shocking finding. Unfortunately, you only need to listen to the speeches of certain government MLA's to understand the problem.

The following article was written by James Wood and appeared in the January 4, 2011 Leader Post

Saskatchewan students trail many of their counterparts in other provinces in literacy levels, according to the recently released 2010 Education Indicators report from the provincial Ministry of Education.

But one piece of good news is that the province's students still have a strong showing at the international level.

The annual education indicators report is a broad-ranging compendium of various statistics and rankings, including achievement levels.

According to the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP) cited in the report, which compiles data from across the country on 13-year-olds, Saskatchewan has the smallest proportion of high-performing students in reading in the country.

"Less than one in 10 Saskatchewan students achieved level three, whereas an average of over one in five students in Canada achieved this level. The proportion of students who performed adequately (at level two or level three) in Saskatchewan was two percentage points less than the Canadian average," according to the indicators report.

Saskatchewan ranked sixth among provinces in the proportion of students who performed adequately.

And with female students generally outperforming males, the report notes that Saskatchewan does have one of the lowest gender gaps even as the female students' average score was 16-per- cent higher than males in Saskatchewan.

The indicators report also cited the 2009 Programmene for International Student Assessment (PISA), an assessment of 15-year-olds worldwide conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Reading literacy was the major domain assessed, with mathemathics and scientific literacy were assessed as minor domains.

"Saskatchewan student results were significantly higher than the OECD average in all the subjects of this assessment. However, the Canadian average performance was significantly higher than Saskatchewan's performance in all subjects assessed," reads the indicators report.

In the reading assessment, Saskatchewan had 84.5 per cent of students reach what the PISA report defines as "baseline proficiency." That was below the Canadian average of 89.8 per cent but above the international average of 81.2 per cent.

Saskatchewan's proportion of high-performing students at 8.7 per cent was also lower than the Canadian average of 12.8 per cent but was higher than the OECD average of 7.6 per cent.

The province's report also shows that Saskatchewan has gone from having performances similar to Canada on the 2000 PISA report to posting performances "significantly below" the country since then.

Saskatchewan ranked seventh in the country in reading and scientific literacy and sixth in mathematics.

A government news release when the indicators report was made public said it "shows the need to bring student performance on national and international assessments to meet or exceed the Canadian average."

leaderpost.com

Rawlco Radio's 'John Gormley' show panders for the Saskatchewan Party

I continue to wonder what the motivation is for Rawlco Radio owner, Gord Rawlinson, to continue with the money losing, ratings deprived 'John Gormley Live' radio call in show. The daily right wing call in show is obviously intended to slam Saskatchewan's NDP and to praise up the Brad Wall administration.

I wrote on December 30th about the dismal, basement dwelling ratings that NewsTalkRadio and Gormley rack up. Here is a little snap shot of how bad the show is. Gormley was back on the radio waves this morning after a week away for Christmas and New Year. You would think that after his absence, his 'fans' would be chaffing at the bit to call in to the show. Not really! Here is the show's stats for the first hour of Gormley's return:

9:07 - Gormley opens the call line
9:15 - 1st caller (whines about SGEU)
9:25 - 2nd caller (not happy with Regina garbage pickup)
9:39 - 3rd caller (not happy with Saskatoon garbage pickup)
9:43 - 4th caller (unhappy with snow removal at bus stops)
9:45 - 5th caller (wants private liquor stores)
9:54 - 6th caller (mad at a contractor for messing up his basement)
9:57 - 7th caller (hates icy Victoria Ave in Regina)

In the long spaces between callers, Gormley monologues endlessly. During the first hour he tried to get the calls to come in by:
-praising Brad Wall
-slamming NDP Leader Dwain Lingenfelter
-insisting that George Bush isn't a dummy
-telling people that Harper is wonderful and Ignatieff and Bob Rae are terrible

Gormley also managed to promote his own book with 3 shameless plugs.

That's show business I guess!