Study fears allure of English over Quebec postsecondary students

     A Quebec's teacher union consisting of 180,000 members have commissioned to a study as to why so many students are attracted to English post-secondary education, the union considers the statistics and trend provided by the study worrisome. Many francophone students in Quebec are increasingly attending English colleges, they feel that by being fluent in both French and English will help them land better jobs; however, this poses as a threat to the Quebec community. The authors of the recent study explains that many French-students believe that English is the key language to gaining an upward social mobility and an increased knowledge of this language is the key to landing prestigious jobs. In Quebec, all students, by law, must attend French-language elementary and post-secondary education schools. However, once they reach university, they are able to choose between English and French colleges. The study shows that many of these students are switching to a program called CEGEP in college, which is education in English. Since 1997, less half of the sstudents in the CEGEP are not English speaking individuals. Many students confirmed that their main reason of change to an English college was because it had a brighter future to be bilingual even if they were raised in a French speaking environment. Based on the 2006 consenus, it showed that people in Montreal who used English at their workplace received higher salaries than those who didn't.

     This poses as a threat to Quebec because English is attracting so many of their students that their traditions may be loss and be immersed with the "Canadian" culture. Furthermore, Quebec was never too fond of Canada and English to begin with, thus resulting in their many attempts to separate from Canada. The Government has revealed that a possible solution to this English-crisis may be to implement a law that implies mandatory French education even in College.

     In the current economy that we live in, English is the language of the world. With knowledge of this language, surviving just becomes much easier. It is only natural that Quebec students are drawn to the idea of attending English colleges. It is not just French speaking people that realize the importance of English, even those in the East such as Asia have implemented English programs in their elementary and post-secondary studies. The rivalry between the French and English have caused Quebec to feel very uneasy about the statistics of this study. In the post-Internet ages, they have done a good job of reducing the use of English in Quebec. However, in this technological era, information is distributed across the globe and available to anyone. In my opinion, I feel that Quebec should accept the fact rather than trying to reduce the level of English speaking in their community. In their current state of action, Quebec is putting their pride before their advancement in society, this can only result in them being left behind in this fast-changing world.

Hospital initiative aims to stamp out superbugs

     Superbugs are currently one big issue that hospitals everywhere have to try to resolve. Superbugs are drug-resistant bacteria that lives in the hallways of hospitals, they infect thousands annually and killing an estimated 12,000 Canadians. The deaths of lives suffered from these bugs in Canada take the combined stats of deaths to breast cancer and deaths to car accidents in Canada. There are now new initiatives to stop these bugs, two years ago, five hospitals took part in a pilot project regarding superbugs; on Monday January 10, this program expanded to 30 other hospitals. The approach of this new initiative is to put the duty on the front line staff to come up with strategies to prevent and reduce the spread of diseases to multiple floors. The leader of this new initiative, Michael Gardam reveals that they have been trying to fight these bugs for over 40 years now and the rates of their reproduction keep going up, which makes things worse. However, with this new program, they are finally starting to see some results. The 30 hospitals taking part in this initiative are going to, over the next year, will develope tactics for specific wards that take aim for methicillin -resistant Staphylococcus aureus and a host of other superbugs.

     What kills patients at hospitals is not the disease they are diagnosed with, but rather it is the disease which lowers their immune system levels leaving their body vulnerable to attacks. More than 200,000 patients suffer from hospital acquired diseases in a year. These diseases are results of three main factors; over prescribing of antibiotics that have helped create drug-resistant bugs; old and overcrowded hospitals; and health-care workers not following basic hand hygiene. In Toronto East General Hospital, they've come up with the idea of putting green tags on IV poles to indicate that they are disinfected, results of this idea have yet to be analyzed. While in Vancouver General Hospital, staff on particular floors walk around with hand sanitizer to clean patients' hands.

     I think that hospitals have put this problem aside for too long and giving too much time for the bugs to grow to the point where they are very hard to get rid of. As establishments of health care, hospitals should provide a safe environment for patients to recover, not one where they are at risk of developing other diseases. Despite this, it is still good that hospitals are raising awareness about this issue before it gets even more out of hand. In my opinion, this problem all started with the inconsistency of keeping the hospital clean. When hospitals decided that one or two janitors are able to monitor and clean a whole hospital, they were already contributing to the start of this problem. Why is it that there are so many people that work with paper works versus those that do cleaning and why do hospitals prioritize paper work over sanitation. The insufficient amount of janitors left hospitals filthy and an ideal environment for the growth of nasty bacteria and bugs. Hospitals are slowly realizing their mistakes and are putting more money and effort into the sanitary compartment than ever before.

    

Highly educated immigrants fare better in U.S. than Canada

     New research shows that university-educated immigrants in Canada earn significantly less than those in the States. The statistics from this research may prove to be a problem for Canada, a country built upon the attraction of bright individuals from around the world. Specifically, the research shows that highly educated recent immigrants find that their earnings are very low when compared to their Canadian-born counter-parts; those born in Canada of the same background earn about 50% more. In the States, this gap is lowered to a safe 30%.This, however, was not the case in 1980, when those of high education that immigrated to Canada received earnings on par with those born in Canada. The study's author, Aneta Bonikowska of Statistics Canada say that immigrant fortunes in the two countries started to divide in the 1990s; however the reason for this diversion is still elusive. Some suggested possibilities that caused this diversion may be that there are more immigrants going to Canada than the U.S, this causes limited supply.

     Mr.Bonikowska says that Canada has been accepting a much larger percentage of university-educated immigrants than in the past. In 1980, around 20 per cent of the immigrants were university- educated and in 2005, around 55 per cent of immigrants are university-educated. However, this climb is much slower in the U.S, only 35 per cent of their immigrants are university-educated in 2005. Canada's source countries for immigrants have also changed significantly, as Asian immigrants slowly replace those from Europe. In 2005, 80% of the immigrants that came to Canada neither spoke French nor English. The most troubling stat from this research is that this gap has been present ever since 1960. This new study suggest that becoming more Canadian held the key to finding work in Canada. Wei Chen is an example of an university-educated immigrant that came to Canada and was disappointed with the results he had with work. However, after enrolling in an one-year program in career counselling and landing a job as a career coach, he has had much success. As someone not native to Canada, we have our advantages, and that is we represent our own culture and help organizations reach a common goal, Wei Chen says.

     This article really illustrates the struggle that immigrants go through when they first arrive in Canada. Many of these immigrants, by immigrating to Canada, are throwing away everything they have in their homeland; they are sacrificing their jobs that they worked so hard for. Literally, Canada is just the opposite of what many think it is, when people plan to start over in Canada, they think that the living conditions will be so much better. However, life in Canada is especially hard for new immigrants because they have just arrived in an unfamiliar place with nothing to work it; it also doesn't help when Canada makes it so hard for immigrants to find jobs. What often starts out as excitement to start all over becomes a living hell for these immigrants, they are being treated unfairly. Canada is not paying them enough for what they are worth, why do two people of the same education-level but coming from different places have different amount of earnings? This is extremely unfair for those who have thrown away their lives back at home in order to come here. What's more is that Canada advertises themselves for these skilled workers to come, and once they arrive, Canada starts treating them badly. I think this is extremely unfair to the immigrants because of the ordeal that Canadian life is putting on them. I think that keeping to your words is very important and if you can't even commit to that, then there is no point in advertising in the first place.