The British writer and director best known for Bend it like Beckham has focused her career on exploring the dualities of identity experienced by the South Asian diaspora in Britain and, by extension, around the world.
Her latest film, Blinded by the Light, kicked off the International Film Festival of South Asia Thursday. It tells the story of a Pakistani-British high school boy in the ‘80s, frustrated by forces looking to define him, who finds salvation in the music of Bruce Springsteen.
The movie’s message finds an audience in Brampton where a huge South Asian diaspora can identify with the struggles of her main character, Javed.
Michael Fenn and Ken Seiling, Premier Doug Ford’s advisers on the regional review, were at Peel Region council chambers on Wednesday to get resident feedback. While Caledon and Mississauga were represented, Bramptonians were silent.
Even though a tele-townhall conducted in Brampton last week showed that there were strong opinions on the review in the Flower City, no one at the meeting voiced an opinion on Brampton’s behalf.
Decreased funding for important services such as public health and early years childcare could cost Peel Region residents $45 million.
Peel’s director of business and financial planning says that amount alone amounts to a 4.1 percent hike, on top of current tax projections, just to keep services at current levels.
After a radical suggestion from Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown to suspend prisoner transport to grab public attention, Peel council took a milder approach: an advocacy campaign to inform the public about the effects of the province’s actions.
The International Film Festival of South Asia, the largest of its kind in North America, is set to kick-off this Thursday. Sir, a film that challenges entrenched attitudes about women in India and the staggering treatment of its underclass, set the tone for this year’s event when it pre-launched the festival.
It’s about a maid, or servant, in India and her place within the rigidly regimented caste system that girds the world’s largest democracy, where about 900-million residents are members of historically marginalized groups.
The groundwork is being laid for another showdown over the regional review in Peel. Advisers to the minister of municipal affairs, Ken Seiling and Michael Fenn, will be meeting with residents today in Brampton at Peel Regional council chambers to get their take on the review.
Meanwhile, Mississauga and Caledon have taken steps to make sure their side of the argument is known to the public, with our neighbour to the south demanding its independence and the one to the north pleading for the region to remain intact. One outlier is Brampton, as the city seems to favour the status quo of keeping Peel as is, but hasn’t clearly stated exactly what it wants for the future.
Peel Public Health is already trying to do more with less, receiving lower per-capita provincial funding than many other public health units even before the PCs’ recently announced budget changes.
But its record of accomplishment during 2018 — thousands of vaccinations, inspections to prevent water-and foodborne illness, dental screening for children, addiction mitigation programs and much more — could be threatened by a $20-million loss of support under the Doug Ford government.
Inevitably, the burden for continuing these essential services for the public good will fall back on the municipal taxpayer.
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Peel Police have failed to win their bid for $3.72 million from the National Crime Prevention Strategy, money intended to pay for a program to divert at-risk youth away from violent crime.
All five of Brampton’s MPs had signed on to the proposal with a letter of support, given the rise in violent crimes by young offenders over the past several years.
The reasons for the denial by Ottawa — and the details of the plan itself — remain murky.
The provincial housing plan has preserved development charges for water infrastructure, maintaining the long-standing principle that “growth pays for growth.”
That was one piece of good news last week for Peel Region, where leaders feared the provincial PCs were looking at making ratepayers cover the cost of new infrastructure in their water bills, rather than the development industry.
That would have cost the typical homeowner more than $500 a year.
Emily Brown came into some notoriety when she vented her frustrations with the provincial government on Facebook.
Her post, now shared over 4,000 times, talks about how she was one of 193 high school teachers in the PDSB to be declared surplus, meaning she may not have a job in the next school year.
The recent news came while she’s on maternity leave and was looking forward to going back to work in the fall.
A sparse crowd at Saturday’s City Hall gathering to talk with the mayor and councillors about the future of Brampton, doesn’t bode well for those hoping to put pressure on the PC government ahead of its decision on the future of Peel Region.
The afternoon event inside council chambers could have unified residents who don’t want Premier Ford to break up the region, possibly forcing Brampton to become part of one super-city. But the small turnout raises questions about the level of engagement over a decision that could drastically alter the city’s future.
Brampton’s confidence and civic pride has taken a beating over the years and manifested itself a half-decade ago when the city killed a chance to host the Pan Am Games. Now is the time for citizens to show how bullish they are on this city before it’s too late. The chance to boost Brampton might come at today’s gathering at City Hall.
Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark has introduced a sweeping new framework for increasing the supply of housing in Ontario.
But critics are sounding the alarm, saying a return to OMB rules included in the plan would be a gift to developers and encourage sprawl.
A plan to boost the building of secondary suites is being welcomed, amid concerns that the vague framework lacks assurances of safety and legal registration, a longstanding issue in Brampton.
Ontario’s second-largest school board, the Peel public board, expects per-pupil funding next year to come in at nearly $1,000 less than the provincial average.
While it’s tricky to compare apples and oranges among the province’s widely varying school districts, that still astounds PDSB chair Stan Cameron, who points out that with rapid growth, “We need every penny we can get.”
After decades of seeing problems with the school funding formula go uncorrected, educators’ woes are only growing under the Doug Ford government’s cost-cutting and teacher-slashing budget.
City councillors heard a brief update this week on what’s happening with Brampton’s fledgling Action Committee on Innovation and Post-Secondary Education.
The direction the committee will take is still unclear, according to Paul Aldunate, of the city’s economic development office.
But for now the city is maintaining its focus on Algoma University's expansion and the “three pillars” of an ambitious plan with Ryerson after the province yanked $90 million in funding for a downtown university campus last fall.
A third-party legal opinion obtained by the City of Mississauga contends that Peel Region staff and Chair Nando Iannicca violated the region’s own bylaws by hiring two companies to review the financial implications of changes to regional government.
Splitting the work kept the cost of each bill to less than the $250,000 threshold over which any procurements need council approval.
But Peel’s chair and CFO say the scope of the work was different and insist that the controversial Deloitte report — which argues the region is better off financially staying as-is — was properly commissioned at the staff level.
Marisa Mascioli fears that the procedure that saved her vision decades ago won’t be available to a family friend with the same condition today — one reason she took part in Tuesday’s rally at Queen’s Park.
There were many more personal stories being told, including many from Brampton seniors and paramedics, as the lawn in front of the Legislature was filled for the second time this month with citizens protesting cost-cutting moves by the Ford government.
Major concerns include plans for consolidating public health units, local healthcare agencies and paramedic services — and fears that it’s all leading to privatization.
The Peel Police Services Board has approved $24,000 to hire five more youth as part of a summer program aimed at turning at-risk young people toward a more positive path in life.
The eight-week Youth in Policing Initiative will give 25 teens a chance to get mentoring and encouragement to think about policing as a career choice.
It’s the second year the board has topped up funding for the provincial program, following a rise in violent crime perpetrated by young offenders.
Mayors Patrick Brown and Bonnie Crombie have weighed in on a statement made by the chair of the Large Urban Mayors Caucus of Ontario, that argued looming provincial cuts are “downloading by stealth.”
The Peel mayors highlighted the burdens being placed on property taxpayers as a result of reduced provincial funding for local services such as public health, policing, libraries, childcare and more.
The provincial budget deepened the pain by reneging on the previous government’s promise to double the cities’ cut of the provincial gas tax.
It appears that the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board will be having its overall funding allocation reduced by the province for the coming school year.
The Peel District School Board, with its growing student population, will be seeing a slight increase in overall grants but is not immune from cuts, either.
Meanwhile, the first salvo in what might be the most contentious round of bargaining in decades, has been issued by the union that represents high school teachers.
Announced changes to healthcare and social services have cast a cloud of uncertainty over Peel Region’s public health and human services programs. At last Thursday’s regional council meeting, CFO Stephen VanOfwegan delivered his interpretation of the provincial budget and its local financial implications.
According to VanOfwegan, Peel could lose as much as $20 million for its social safety net, public health unit and affordable housing. One small gain might come through provincial funding for dental care for low-income seniors.
An unscientific poll conducted in conjunction with a recent tele–town hall that attracted almost 5,000 callers found two-thirds of respondents don’t want to see Peel broken up, or amalgamated into one mega-city.
But the debate over the regional government’s future is plagued by a lack of reliable information as to the true costs and benefits of either option. Residents will get their chance to give the Doug Ford government’s representatives an earful on May 8.
An extra $378,000 from Ottawa, on top of $1.4 million already committed for housing support in Peel, is sorely needed in a region with a serious shortage of shelter beds and an ambitious but underfunded plan to build more affordable, rental and higher-density housing.
Peel will receive $10.5 million in homelessness funding from the federal government’s Reaching Home plan over the next five years.
With the clawback of the provincial gas tax increase, Brampton’s transit projects stand to lose out on as much as $30 million over three years in funding allocations from the Government of Ontario. In 2017, the Liberal government promised a doubling of the gas tax, but Doug Ford is planning on kiboshing it.
This year, Brampton has received about $13 million in gas tax transfers from the province, the fourth largest allocation out of 107 municipalities.
Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected is Jagmeet Singh’s new book. While it reveals some deeply personal and dark secrets, it leaves readers wondering why he wants to be our leader and how his life’s experience might make him the right person for the job.
Thursday’s Peel Region council meeting continued the debate over a controversial report commissioned by Peel chair Nando Iannicca that suggested keeping the region together would be much cheaper than splitting up.
Mississauga councillors questioned the credibility of the report after it became clear the auditors had not been given access to the cities’ own figures, suggesting that consultant Deloitte was working with incomplete numbers.
A $1.6-billion “attrition allocation” may temporarily ease the transition to much higher class sizes in high schools and the loss of thousands of teaching positions.
The extra money, announced by Education Minister Lisa Thompson on Friday, could save the Peel school boards from laying off some teachers this year if there aren’t enough retirements.
But it won’t ease the pain of losing electives for Peel students, some of whom have already been told some courses they picked for next year are no longer being offered.
Staff were meant to come back Wednesday with a report detailing how to proceed with the now halted Downtown Reimagined streetscaping project, which was cancelled in December to give staff time to consider the implications of the newly revived LRT Main Street route and other issues. The report is now expected to come forward on May 15.
Meanwhile, the projected cost of the revitalization is expected to climb because of the need to deal with underground diversion channels in the downtown.
21-year-old Navindra Sookramsingh’s heartbreaking plea to find the driver who struck him in the wee hours of St. Patrick’s Day marks an unusual outreach for Peel police for community help.
The Brampton man had been walking home and was in the southbound lane of West Drive when struck by a cream-colored Toyota Corolla.
Sookramsingh, who suffered numerous internal injuries and is unable to walk or move his hands, begged the driver to come forward to show “mercy” and accept responsibility for the accident.
The region’s only provincially designated Sexual Assault Centre is the second-lowest funded centre in the province, despite its success in helping more than 22,000 victims of sexual assault and related crimes, such as human trafficking, recover.
A 21 percent cut in provincial funding last July, only partially restored this month, has made Hope 24/7’s work all the more difficult in the #MeToo era, where more victims are feeling empowered to come forward. Mayors Patrick Brown and Bonnie Crombie are appealing to the province to restore full funding.
An internal email obtained by The Pointer shows that Peel Region staff are warning council members of funding cuts to Human Services, the department responsible for administering the provincial social safety net, which is overseen by Lisa MacLeod, Minister of Children, Community and Social Services.
This comes on the heels of an announcement by the Ford government that it will cut $1 billion in provincial funding over three years from social services and potentially download more of these costs to municipalities.
Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown is saying there’s no truth to allegations in recently unsealed court documents published in a story Tuesday by The Globe and Mail.
The documents allege Brown asked for a $5,000 donation for his then-girlfriend, Genevieve Gualtieri, and $2,000 for another individual.
It’s also suggested that Brown was being pressured by the Indian Consulate not to allow a candidate to run in the troubled nomination race because of family ties to alleged Sikh extremism, something Brown says “never happened.”
Brampton North MPP Kevin Yarde is part of the first organization of its kind at Queen’s Park.
The five-member group hopes to shed light on issues that particularly affect Black residents and other communities that have been negatively impacted by outdated, narrow-minded policies in Ontario, especially in areas such as policing and education.
The benefits of their perspectives, Yarde says, extend to all residents in the province.
Today is Earth Day, an odd concept to many. Is there any day or minute or second that isn’t entirely hinged on the existence of our planet? The clock is ticking on how we will respond to the ever-increasing challenges facing a 4.5-billion-year-old creation that has been ravaged by the excesses of man.
It’s been 49 years since the first Earth Day and 49 years since Joni Mitchell’s song was released.
Unless we make clear choices and insist on leaders who face up to the challenges now at our doorstep, our legacy will be mud with future generations. It’s past time we re-created a “clean and green” model – for government, business and day-to-day life – moving forward.
The forces behind a new clean and green economic model for living are all around us. This movement may be unstoppable, as reminders of climate change – devastating storms, rising temperatures and sea levels, the extinction of species – grip our consciousness. We are now at a planetary crossroad. For those concerned about the earth’s future, there is hope. The movement is gaining momentum. And the profit motive for a green economy is quickly gaining traction around the world.
A report by Grosso McCarthy Inc. and Bob DeShane & Associates for the province appears to be providing a blueprint for how the governing PCs will transition to a privatized, for-profit model of delivering ambulance services.
Ontario’s 53 ambulance service centres will be consolidated to 10, a move that aligns with the report’s recommendations. The paramedics union is warning of dire consequences of a “Wild West” American-style paramedic service. Premier Doug Ford has stated EMS service will not be impacted and no paramedics will lose their jobs.
Months after a heated exchange between Peel Region councillors and staff over the slow pace of developing more affordable housing, as prices lock a growing number of families and young couples out of the market, committee members are pleased to see things moving in the right direction.
The region’s director of housing services, presented a needs assessment Thursday that will inform Peel’s Housing Master Plan, which shows that an increasing number of residents are living in precarious housing, while Peel has one of the longest affordable housing wait times in Ontario.
With sweeping and controversial reforms to Ontario healthcare hovering over the horizon, Bramptonians are growing nervous about what those changes will mean for a city that is already short on healthcare infrastructure.
At a town hall in Brampton Friday, the Ontario Health Coalition and Peel Poverty Action Group rallied support for an April 30 protest at Queen’s Park against changes widely viewed as a move towards privatizing healthcare.
It seems warnings of teacher cuts have come to pass. The Peel District School Board and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, Peel District, say hundreds of teaching jobs will be eliminated by the fall due to the Ford government's funding cuts to the public education system.
The 330 “surplus to board” notices sent to teachers in Peel aren’t part of an annual routine, as the Ford government has suggested, as there have been no layoffs in the PDSB for the past five years.
The loss of teachers, the OSSTF says, could lead to 1,200 fewer classes being offered in Peel high schools, reducing elective options for students.
Bramptonians who had placed hope in a full-fledged university campus coming to downtown saw that hope dashed in October when the province yanked funding for a Ryerson University project.
In the face of that disappointment, Algoma University has been a beacon of reassurance, and now wants to expand its own small business-school campus downtown to bring its student enrolment up to 500, with the help of $575,000 from the city.
The main renovation will occur along the Garden Square-facing facade, in the corridor between the Rose Theatre and the school’s current building at 24 Queen St. E.
The provincial budget is leaving a choppy wake, with far reaching ripples across Ontario. Brampton Centre MPP Sara Singh raised the alarm Monday about cuts in the provincial budget that would gut public health units across the province. The number of units would be reduced from 35 to 10, leaving Peel Public Health vulnerable.
In the era of vaccine skepticism and a raging opioid crisis, the units have a vital role to play, and cuts have the potential to exacerbate major public health issues.
The arrest of one suspected serial offender alleged to have committed 45 property crimes that targeted Muslims helped reduce reported hate crimes in the region last year, according to a report presented to Friday’s Peel Police Services Board meeting.
But the annual tally is still nearly double what it was prior to the 2016 U.S. election of Donald Trump and the subsequent emboldening of hate groups across North America.
Peel police detective Feras Ismail said race is the primary motivation for hate crimes and hate-related incidents in the region, followed by religion and sexual identity.
The controversial addition of “Sikh (Khalistani) Extremism” in an annual report on terrorism threats had riled Sikhs across Canada, who said they were unfairly tarred by the assessment.
The threat remains in the list under the title of “Extremists who Support Violent Means to Establish an Independent State Within India.” But just ahead of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's attendance at Sikh celebrations in Vancouver this past weekend, marking a significant historical religious event, his government removed language in the report deemed by many Sikhs as too vague and over-reaching.
Questions remain about whether Ottawa has credible evidence to support the idea that a separatist movement whose heyday ended in the early 1990s, after the 1985 Air India bombing, continues to pose a threat.
Thursday’s raucous Peel Region council meeting was proof positive that this is a house divided. Mississauga is eager for independence, and said it has the numbers to prove it’s being ripped off by its partnership with Brampton and Caledon. They counter that the status quo is just fine – and they, too, have the numbers on their side. But all the positioning is really just posturing, as the decision on the future of Peel Region will be made by one man, while the political winds blow around him.
A furor in Peel Region council chambers on Thursday pitted pro-secession Mississauga councillors against a former colleague turned chair and defender of regional government.
Nando Iannicca argued, correctly, that he had a right under municipal bylaws to quietly authorize a consultant’s study that ultimately suggested Peel would be better off sticking with the status quo than breaking up.
But Iannicca admits the rollout of the Deloitte report, commissioned ahead of a provincial review of regional government, wasn’t handled well — particularly when it was handed to Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown (on Brown’s request) ahead of the Mississauga delegation.
The search for the next Peel Regional Police chief has entered a new phase with the hiring of an executive search firm.
That announcement came at Friday’s Police Services Board meeting, where members also said they are seeking public feedback.
This was welcome news to the students of Sheridan College’s Community Worker program, who spoke to the board – with its powerful members, including Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, looking on – about themes they’d discussed together, including intercultural competency, inherent biases and the possibly negative effects of School Resource Officers.
Despite having two MPPs in the governing PC caucus, the province’s fourth-largest city was completely ignored in the budget delivered by the Doug Ford government on Thursday.
Nothing for Brampton hospital expansion, nothing for transit expansion, no university campus money, scant insurance relief for drivers, and the prospect of fewer teachers and bigger classes in a city where schools are already bulging at the seams.
Voters here might well ask: What are Brampton’s representatives, Prabmeet Sarkaria and Amarjot Sandhu, doing to live up to the PCs’ mantra of “putting people first”?
A terrorism threat report released in Ottawa in December unfairly paints all Sikhs with the brush of “Khalistani extremism,” say offended members of Brampton’s large Sikh community who showed up at a town hall meeting on Sunday to express their concerns about lasting repercussions, while many question why an issue involving the declining Sikh independence movement in India is being conflated with extremism in the first place.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale has admitted the language needs to be fixed to avoid libelling Canada’s half-million Sikhs.
But the federal government has yet to explain why a movement whose heyday was in the 1980s is suddenly showing up in Ottawa’s annual security assessment.
The repeatedly jilted residents of Brampton will be watching Thursday’s release of the new Ontario budget with anxious anticipation. Finance Minister Vic Fedeli, who is locked in a legal battle with Mayor Patrick Brown over the publication of his memoir last year, will present the PC government's 2019 budget.
In the recent past, the city has lost funding for a university and LRT and been passed over for healthcare infrastructure expansion. It’s not clear it will do any better this year.
A high-growth community, Brampton is playing catch-up with basic services, and there are fears the Doug Ford government will leave the city in the lurch again.
Thursday’s Peel Region council meeting was a session lit with cannon fire. Mayors and regional councillors were at each other’s throats over the question of Mississauga’s proposed exit from the region.
The main sore point was the contradictory findings of two reports: One by City of Mississauga staff asserts the city would save $85 million a year by no longer being obligated to subsidize the other two municipalities. The second, a consultant’s report for the region, calls Mississauga’s methodology flawed.
This is a Tale of Two Cities: Mississauga and Brampton, linked by history and politics. Our neighbour to the south is eager to score its freedom from its two northern partners because it wants out of the Region of Peel. Monday night inside Mississauga City Council chambers, a special town hall meeting was held so residents could express their feelings on the future of their city. While Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and a special report commissioned by the region urge caution, the forces of change are active, and two of the biggest and fasting growing cities in Canada might be moving towards separate lives, or a joint future.
