However, the Conservative government has declined to set up any meetings between cabinet ministers and De Schutter, something he described as highly unusual for UN special rapporteur missions. "Well, look, the tradition is that when I visit countries on official missions, I have meetings at cabinet level," De Schutter said. "The position of the Canadian government is that this mission is one that requires discussions to be had at the technical level with high-level public servant, with whom I did meet. And I'm of course grateful for their time and expertise, but frankly the question of hunger is not a technical question, it's a political question and without speaking to ministers, you cannot create the kind of understanding by the government that things are not going in the right direction, that there are very important blind spots in the current policies that the government cannot continue to ignore." De Schutter added: "To improve things in Canada, you need much more political will to be invested in this issue and that is a message I regrettably cannot make to public servants, convinced though of they are of this. I need to speak to the ministers, and I think this betrays, if you wish, a lack of understanding of what hunger is about."

NDP MP Peggy Nash said forcing well-trained workers into low-skilled jobs risks exacerbating Canada’s skills shortage. “It is a colossal waste of skills if we have people who are trained as computer engineers or teachers or nurses or electricians who are working in retail, Tim Hortons or picking fruit in the agricultural sector because it means they may not be available when a job in their field comes open,” she said.

I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent piece on the young guns of black studies. If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them. That’s what I would say about Ruth Hayes’ dissertation, “‘So I Could Be Easeful’: Black Women’s Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth.” It began because she “noticed that nonwhite women’s experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature, which led me to look into historical black midwifery.” How could we overlook the nonwhite experience in “natural birth literature,” whatever the heck that is? It’s scandalous and clearly a sign that racism is alive and well in America, not to mention academia.

But why take my word for it? Scholars more learned than I have been saying the same thing for decades. In 1974, Thomas Sowell wrote that from the beginnings of the discipline, "the demands for black studies differed from demands for other forms of new academic studies in that they . . . restricted the philosophical and political positions acceptable, even from black scholars in such programs." Thirty-five years later in a piece for the Minding the Campus website, former Berkeley Prof. John McWhorter noted that little had changed: "Too often the curriculum of African-American Studies departments gives the impression that racism and disadvantage are the most important things to note and study about being black." My critics have suggested that I do not believe the black experience in America is worthy of study. That is not true. It's just that the best of this work rarely comes out of black studies departments. Scholars like Roland Fryer in Harvard's economics department have done pathbreaking research on the causes of economic disparities between blacks and whites. And Eugene Genovese's work on slavery and the role of religion in black American history retains its seminal role in the field decades after its publication. But a substantive critique about the content of academic disciplines is simply impossible in the closed bubble of higher education. If you want to know why almost all of the responses to my original post consist of personal attacks on me, along with irrelevant mentions of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and George Zimmerman, it is because black studies is a cause, not a course of study. By doubting the academic worthiness of black studies, my critics conclude, I am opposed to racial justice—and therefore a racist.

Mulcair tops his recipe for economic mayhem by referring to the “Dutch disease,” whereby the manufacturing sector in the Netherlands was hurt in the early 1970s by currency inflation brought about by an over-reliance on natural gas revenues. However, this appeal to international validation ignores the fact that the Netherlands is doing just fine today, and additionally, is a country spared the regional divisions that shape the Canadian economy. The economic prescription advanced by Mulcair is both simple and potentially disastrous: curtail economic growth in the West, assume that a lower Canadian dollar will result and, in turn, will protect the manufacturing sector from global competition and soft American demand. It is impossible to imagine a more ill-advised policy prescription for the West, and for Canada.

The Gazette apologizes for inappropriate comments posted on Twitter Thursday night by one of its reporters. The Gazette’s social media policy clearly states that all journalists should conduct themselves in a manner that does not compromise themselves, their colleagues or the newspaper. The Gazette takes all breaches of ethics very seriously.

Cook said when she told Obama she loved him, he responded: “Thank you.”

Joey and Barry find themselves in the men’s room taking a leak at adjacent urinals. Joey looks down and says, “Wow, looks like what they say about black men is true. Do all you bros have such big ones?” Barry replies, “Yowza, but we’re not all born this way.” “What? Really? How do the, uh, disadvantaged ones get big?” “Well,” says Barry, “It’s a secret passed around only among my people.” “Tell me, tell me!” pleads Joey. “As you can see I need to know!” “OK. Seeing as how you’re my veep, I’ll tell you how. At night when you go to bed, tie a string around it, tie the other end to a brick, and let the brick hang down off the end of the bed. After a week or two, you’ll see a major improvement.” Some days later, Barry asks Joey how it was going. “Great!” enthuses Joey. “I’m doing what you said and I’m halfway there!” Barry thinks to himself, “If it were anyone other than Joey-the-dope I wouldn’t believe he’d actually try that trick. Anyone else would’ve known I was just funnin’ him.” “What do you mean ‘halfway,’ Joey?” he asks.

The Star and the Mayor have a long-running feud. And the Mayor has had security incidents at his home before, including one that led to an arrest. There have been assorted death threats. With all of that in mind, the Star probably should have reconsidered its plan to send a reporter, at night, to walk the fence of the Mayor’s private home. The telling point here isn’t that the Mayor blew a gasket — he does that sometimes — but that it was his neighbour who saw the reporter taking photos and raised the alarm. The Toronto Star might be able to convince people that the Mayor lost his cool and overreacted. But the fact that other people, who aren’t public figures and aren’t locked in a feud with their paper, also found the reporter’s presence disturbing is something that the Star should consider. It’s unlikely they’re the mood to now, having battened down all the hatches, but going forward, guys — if old men in their homes see your reporter and are alarmed by his presence, that might be a sign you’re being a tad aggressive.