{"id":15156,"date":"2016-08-31T11:49:55","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T15:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15156"},"modified":"2016-08-31T11:49:55","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T15:49:55","slug":"brocks-banter-back-to-back-and-back-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-back-to-back-and-back-again\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: Back to Back (and Back Again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

September is here and, as parents know, there are just a few more boxes to cross out on your calendar before your rug rats are out of your hair and cracking the books once again.
\nMany of you who have children probably subscribe to the feeling doled out in old Staples (and, earlier, Business Depot) commercials showing parents frolicking down the aisles of the store with more glee than Gene Kelly hanging off a lamppost in the rain while their downcast children trudge along a few steps behind. Others might be on a completely different track, luxuriating in the last few days you have with your kids before the school bell rings and the realities of work after a last minute vacation sets in.
\nWhichever side of the fence you\u2019re on, it\u2019s a familiar routine. We all know it is coming and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
\nSchool might be back but there are few of us who can escape the fact September means \u201cBack to Reality\u201d for those of us who aren\u2019t wrangling little ones.
\nIf one is in politics, it\u2019s time to catching up on the mental and oral gymnastics you\u2019ve been neglecting in time for the wheels of politics to fire up.
\nAs Stephen Somerville discusses in his Front Porch Perspective column this week, however, many of our friends in Toronto have had to gear up a little bit earlier than normal to account for the Toronto Bi-Election that will, of course, be a test on how Kathleen Wynne\u2019s Liberal Government might be faring in the eyes of the general electorate. It will also be a test on whether the electorate is subscribing to the more accessible brand of Progressive Conservativism their new leader, Patrick Brown, has been taking across the province.
\nBack in July, Mr. Brown brought his campaign-that-is-not-a-campaign to Aurora and I had a chance to sit down with him at Town Park to quiz him on issues near and dear to our readers.
\nAt the time, I thought \u2013 and wrote \u2013 that his candour was a refreshing change of pace compared to the current American election cycle.
\n\u201cI think we were too narrow-cast,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that\u2019s the reason we\u2019re in a better light today: we are building a more modern, inclusive PC party. I don\u2019t care who you love, where you\u2019re born, the colour of your skin, how much money you have, if you belong to a union or not, you have a home in our party. People want to be fiscally responsible. They want an honest, transparent government. They don\u2019t want something rabid and ideological.\u201d
\nIt sounded great at the time, but it seems somewhere between July and today, the plot has become lost along the way.
\nLast week, the Progressive Conservative leader offered his own back-to-school special for parents, vowing to scrap changes the Liberal government made last year to the Province\u2019s health curriculum.
\n\u201cI believe parents are the primary educators of their children,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWhen it comes to sexual health education, parents should have a say on how much their children are taught and at what age.\u201d
\nBranding the Government\u2019s changes as \u201ccontroversial\u201d, these changes, in my experience talking to local voters, are among the least \u201ccontroversial\u201d things that can be attributed to the Wynne government during its mandate.
\nLast year, the changes prompted about 20 residents from Newmarket and Aurora to briefly picket the offices of Newmarket-Aurora MPP Chris Ballard. They shared the sentiment that parents should be the primary educators of their children. In fact, it is a sentiment I think everyone can agree with. As a reporter, however, the detail I found hard to pin down among the group was precisely what they were objecting too.
\nSome argued the first primary grades are too young to learn the anatomically correct names for their genitals and other body parts, while others argued the upper primary grades were too young to be taught the concept of consent \u2013 an offering I found particularly alarming in this day and age.
\nWhile Mr. Brown says he\u2019s offering a party that doesn\u2019t care who you love, by backtracking on this for a brief window before he apologized for the latter issued under his name, he was pandering to a group in the base that very much cares and the PC wagon was careening down a hill back to the \u201crabid and ideological\u201d grounds so many find unpalatable.
\nNevertheless, the issue is now out in the open and the gate has yet to be closed.
\nParents should be the primary educators of their children, but when we\u2019re honest with ourselves, how many parents can honestly say they will be 100 per cent comfortable sitting their kids down and giving them all the information they know in their heart of hearts their kids need to be properly equipped to navigate this heady world? How many of you learned everything you needed to know from your parents? No matter how \u201cliberal\u201d and free your parents might have been, I don\u2019t anticipate seeing a sea of hands being raised.
\nHow many of you wish you knew a little bit more before being confronted with any variety of situation? I think that might garner a few more hands.
\nIf this becomes a PC policy plank in future bi-elections in the lead up to the Fall 2018 election, and they ultimately take all the marbles, it might be up to the kids entering Grade One next week and those getting off the bus for the first time a year from now to fill in the blanks for those coming up.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir September is here and, as parents know, there are just a few more boxes to cross out on your calendar before your rug rats are out of your hair and cracking the books once again. Many of you who have children probably subscribe to the feeling doled out in old Staples (and, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3Ws","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 06:02:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}