Welcome on board

The York University Foundation welcomed in the Oct. 15 The Globe and Mail Tim Price as Chair of its board of directors, and Seymour Schulich and Alonna Goldfarb to its board. Price is Chair of Brascan Financial Corporation and active on many boards, Schulich is Chair of Newmont Capital Ltd. and a noted philanthropist, and Goldfarb is principal at Goldfarb Intelligence Marketing and general counsel, secretary and director of The Goldfarb Corporation. Price and Schulich are also members of York University’s board of governors.

Brain food for the bookish

A literacy conference, Living Literacies, the theme of which is What Does It Mean to Read and Write Now? Nov. 14-16 at York University got some quality publicity from Globe and Mail books editor Martin Levin in his Oct. 12 column. He called it an “ideal dinner party” for bookish types and highlighted the guest list: Camille Paglia, Susan Sontag, George Steiner, Jean Baudrillard, “These are the biggest names, but those attending the fLte at York Univerity’s Burton Auditorium (you can get tickets, a mere $25, online at http://www.livingliteracies.ca) will also hear from the likes of cultural-scientific historian William Irwin Thompson, literary scholar and cultural critic Barry Sanders, postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak and ex-boxer and falsely convicted murder suspect Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, among others.

Immigrant qualifications

Sociologist Jeffrey Reitz has shown that it is taking longer and longer for immigrants to establish themselves in their fields in Canada, reports the Welland Tribune Oct. 15 in a story on the difficulty immigrants have of proving the value of their qualifications.

Bloated Criminal Code

“It has been said that there are two things people do not want to see being made — sausages and legislation. So most people just go along for the ride when politicians tell them they are creating a new crime or a new rule of conduct,” writes Osgoode Hall Law School professor and criminal lawyer Alan Young in his The Toronto Star column Oct. 13. “In the process, the Criminal Code becomes a bloated, inaccessible maze of provisions which most ordinary people choose not to even look at.”

Removing rosy glasses

An independent panel chaired by Fred Gorbet of York University’s Schulich School of Business undermined the rosy scenario about electricity deregulation, that higher prices would attract new suppliers and resulting competition would reduce prices. Gorbet’s report noted that only 1,000 megawatts of new electricity generation are under construction, less than four per cent of the province’s capacity, and the return to service of broken nuclear reactors at Pickering and Bruce station has been delayed, reported The Toronto Star Oct. 12.

Tug over Kyoto

Patrick Monahan, associate dean of law at Osgoode Hall Law School, concedes it’s difficult to judge if Ottawa has the power to implement the Kyoto accord, reported Broadcast News Oct. 12. Monahan says subsidies or tax breaks are clearly an area of federal [not provincial] jurisdiction. The constitutional specialist was also quoted on CP Wire in a story about the economic costs of Kyoto. He said Ottawa’s power to implement Kyoto will depend on how it tries to enforce emission cuts.

BusinessWeek rates Schulich MBA 10th

Queen’s University has the second-best MBA program outside the United States, according to BusinessWeek‘s 2002 rankings of the top business faculties, reported The Globe and Mail Oct. 12. Queen’s, in Kingston, Ont., trailed only INSEAD of France among the top 10 non-U.S. schools. Three other Canadian schools were close behind — the Rotman School at University of Toronto (No. 5); the Ivey School at University of Western Ontario (No. 6); and the Schulich School at York University (No. 10). The Kellogg School at Northwestern University in Illinois led US schools.