Susan Yellin

Commuting, public transit, traffic and voting

sgupta — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 15:37:02 +0000

Commuting, public transit, traffic and voting sgupta Fri, 04/04/2014 - 11:37

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CivicAction student panelists with moderator Mary Wiens of CBC Radio (all photos by John Guatto)

Susan Yellin

Author legacy

Susan Yellin

Topic

City & Culture

Top Stories

Transportation

Students

Student Life

Politics

Cities

Subheadline

"Appalling commute times make it much harder for students"

Young adults in Ontario, often chided for their lack of participation in politics, need to ensure that their voices are heard on issues such as transportation gridlock and long commute times in and around Toronto, members of the youth wings of four political parties said Wednesday.

“Young people think that politicians are just in the background and aren’t going to listen to us anyway so it doesn’t matter if I vote or I don’t vote,” said Michelle Johnston, president of the Ontario Young Liberals and a recent graduate of the University of Toronto. “But I don’t think people realize how much politicians do listen to the youth wings.”

Johnston gave the recent example of fellow alumna and Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne who asked for the policy papers of the Young Liberals group before speaking at one of their conferences so the premier could see what was most on the minds of young people today.

Transportation is one issue close to the hearts of students, many of whom don’t have their drivers’ licences and rely on family or public transit to get around, said Alanna Newman, president of the Ontario PC Youth Association. A third-year student studying political science at U of T, she was part of the panel organized by the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance, a non-partisan group that brings together senior executives to tackle social, economic and environmental challenges.

"Young people do have a role to play in this discussion of transit. Students need to get involved in a political party or an issues-based group like CivicAction and ensure their voices are heard,” Newman said.

(Attending the transit discussion were mayoralty candidates Sarah Thomson and alumnus John Tory, former chair of CivicAction, both of whom have discussed transit issues in the past. (See a photo gallery of the event.)

The university itself has a social obligation to collaborate with partners to address the most compelling issues of the day – including transportation, said Meric Gertler, president of ��οand renowned professor of geography and planning.

“Transportation infrastructure is a factor in the continued success of institutions like the University of Toronto, not least as it affects the quality of student experience on our three campuses,” said Gertler (pictured at right with CivicAction chief executive officer Sevaun Palvetzian).

Gertler noted that 68% of first-year students live off campus and rely on transit to commute from the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas.

“The region’s appalling commute times make it much harder for students to engage in university life both inside the classroom and outside the classroom in the co-curricular and extra-curricular activities that are a key part of post-secondary education.”

Alumna Laura Anonen, Central West representative on the Ontario New Democratic Youth Executive, commuted for years from her home in Brampton to Toronto for both university and work, a ride that could knock off hours of her day when the traffic was poor.

Anonen said young people constantly talk about transit problems and need to use their strengths in social media to ensure politicians know how they feel.

“Tweet your MP, tweet your city councillor. You can directly send a message to a politician at any level. If we’re all talking about it, they can’t ignore it.”

The cost of transit is also an important issue for graduates, many of whom work in unpaid internships, said Jesseca Dundun, the anglophone communications director for the Young Greens Council.

Dundun’s commute from her home north of Highway 9 includes taking the GO Train ($7 each way) and then a subway ($3 each way) – about the same cost as when she drives and parks at her job.

Matti Siemiatycki, an associate professor of geography and planning at U of T, said the Toronto region has a history of “misaction and missed opportunities” when it comes to transit.

Siemiatycki said it all boils down to two questions: how people prioritize mega-projects like transit and how and who pays for it.

Young people have an important role in this conversation, he said. “For youth especially, voting is key. You need to make your voice heard. If you don’t vote …it will just be the same old constituencies who have their voice heard.”

(Read more information about CivicAction.)

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Madeleine Albright, Lloyd Axworthy on R2P: Responsibility to Protect

sgupta — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 09:37:16 +0000

Madeleine Albright, Lloyd Axworthy on R2P: Responsibility to Protect sgupta Wed, 04/02/2014 - 05:37

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Madeleine Albright with Tina Jiwon Park, PhD student, co-founder and executive director of the Canadian Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (all photos by Nicolett Jakab Photography)

Susan Yellin

Author legacy

Susan Yellin

Topic

Global Lens

Top Stories

Trinity College

Politics

Munk School

International Relations

Global

Subheadline

Former diplomats discuss sovereignty with international relations students

Sovereignty implies the inalienable right of a country to protect itself, former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former Canadian foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy told University of Toronto students and staff at an international relations panel April 1.

But this concept becomes challenging when sovereignty protects the perpetrators in the demise of its own people, such as during the Rwandan genocide 20 years ago and ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian war in the late 1990s.

When sovereign states are unable or are unwilling to protect their own citizens, Responsibility to Protect, or R2P, states that the international community has the responsibility to step in. However, R2P, a moral principle dealing with the sovereignty of individual countries and their duty to protect the lives of their residents, is a complex, multi-layered policy that might well be up to today’s graduates to resolve, speakers said.

“I think that’s the trick pony in R2P – a challenge to sovereignty per se,” said Axworthy, who is credited with helping to develop the R2P concept. “Sovereignty is earned by protecting its citizens. And if it doesn’t protect its citizens -- or itself becomes the predator -- then its right to sovereign protection is problematic.

“These are the kinds of issues that you [students] … are going to have to put to bed in the next 10 to 15 years as academics, international relations specialists and foreign-service personnel.”

Albright, who often met and talked with Axworthy on cross-border issues when both were cabinet ministers and later sat on an R2P task force, classified R2P as a “moving target,” noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to justify its recent invasion of Ukraine by saying Russia needed to protect civilians at risk from political violence and human rights abuses.

“I think you will find that this is going to be your issue and the fact that you are studying it is essential because it is a very complicated concept,” said Albright. “We have argued that when you see people dying and you have the capability of doing something about it then you should do it. But, when is it an invasion? When is it actually protecting somebody? I don’t think we’ve sorted anything out yet.”

The panel was hosted by the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History – a collaborative program of U of T's Trinity College and Munk School of Global Affairs – and the Canadian Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (CCR2P) at the Munk School of Global Affairs. Student participants included Hope Caldi, Misha Boutilier, Rachel Gunn and Patrick Quinton-Brown (pictured left).

Angelo Mateo, a third-year International Relations (IR) student at the University of Toronto, said the discussion shed some light on the American perspective of R2P and the need for students to better develop the concept in the future.

“The fact that more needs to be done with R2P is frustrating but … patience is a virtue in these sorts of issues,” said Mateo. “While we may be frustrated at the lack of progress, it is our duty as students to solve this issue in the future.”

Patrick Quinton-Brown, a fourth-year IR student and one of the student questioners, said it’s difficult to maintain optimism in light of what has been going on in the world, but he acknowledged that the reins of responsibility have now been passed on to his generation.

“We have a responsibility as the next generation of scholars and activists and commentators and writers. A lot of us want to become foreign-service officers and I suppose R2P is going to be one of our tasks in the future.”

Albright also said the so-called “CNN effect” of televising horrendous acts of violence inside a country means people can no longer use the excuse that they don’t know what’s going on, as people did during the Second World War in Germany.

"And now that we have information about everything, that’s where the concept of human security and responsibility comes into play. But now, once you have the images and the facts, then what do you do?”

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