Goar: Ontario University students paying more but getting

less
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By Carol GoarEditorial Board

Ontario’s campuses are quiescent as the new school year begins.

Despite the highest tuition fees in the country, a debt load averaging $26,480 and clear signals from Queen’s Park
that no government relief is coming, students aren’t railing about the high cost of education. They aren’t even
visibly upset. They appear to have accepted the decision thrust on their generation by former Conservative premier
Mike Harris and echoed by Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty that it’s a “good deal” to go into debt to attend
university because they’ll reap lucrative benefits.

But look a little deeper. A survey conducted by Pollara for the Bank of Montreal this summer showed the biggest
source of student anxiety is paying for their education. It outranks getting good marks or finding a job.

Consider the muted reaction to Universities and Colleges Minister Glen Murray’s sweeping blueprint for change in
the post-secondary sector. It is forward-looking, innovative and smart, but its first sentence – “In light of the current
fiscal climate, as we continue to recover from the recession, it is necessary to lead the province’s publicly funded
higher education system towards lower rates of growth”— put students on edge.

Listen to undergraduates.

They know they’re paying more and getting less. They know society benefits as much they do from their education.
They just don’t see any realistic hope of bucking the political/public consensus. And unlike their Quebec
counterparts, they aren’t prepared to stage mass protests, cancel classes and clash with police.

When Harris was elected the average tuition fee in Ontario was $2,458. Today it is $6,640. Over the same 17-year
period, student debt grew by 80 per cent.

McGuinty points out that these numbers haven’t deterred young people from enrolling in university. Neither has the
prospect of digging their way out of debt while they try to find a job, build a career, save for a home and start a
family. But what choice do they have? Even entry level jobs require post-secondary training these days.

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada  chimed in as it does at the beginning of every school year,
reminding students that 75 per cent of the jobs in the coming decade will require a post-secondary education; that
university graduates will typically earn $1 million more in their lifetime than registered tradespeople or college
graduates; and that in a tough economy, university graduates get twice as many jobs as their college counterparts.

What nobody is talking about is the quiet death of society’s commitment to ensure that each generation does better
than the last. What is missing from all the data churned out by politicians and educators is that graduates pay for
their education many times over in taxes, economic productivity, improvements to the health and well-being to the
populace as a whole and support for the social services they seldom use.

To fill these gaps, Ontarians need to know:

•
   Why Ontario can no longer afford to offer affordable post-secondary education to its students as it did for five
decades? Could it have something to do with the hefty tax cuts of the late 1990s and early 21st century?

•
   Why McGuinty and his ministers focus exclusively the cost of post-secondary education when there is sizeable
payback.

•
    And why Ontario provides less support to its universities (54 per cent of budgets) than any other province
except Nova Scotia. It is far below provinces such as Newfoundland (69 per cent) and Saskatchewan (68 per
cent). And it falls short of the national average (61 per cent).

There was a time when students demanded answers and governments responded.

It’s convenient that today’s cohort is so passive. But it’s no cause for satisfaction.

Carol Goar’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Earthquakes kill dozens in China, damage 20,000 homes

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STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGESTwo buses make their way across a road full of fallen rocks after a series of earthquakes, one of them measuring
magnitude 5.7, hit the area near Zhaotong municipality at the border of southwest China's Yunnan and Guizhou province on Friday.
Christopher Bodeen 
The Associated Press 
BEIJING- A series of earthquakes collapsed houses and triggered landslides in a remote mountainous part of
southwestern China on Friday, killing at least 50 people with the toll expected to rise. Damage was preventing
rescuers from reaching some outlying areas, and communications were disrupted.

The quakes started with a 5.6-magnitude shock before 11:30 a.m. along the borders of Guizhou and Yunnan
provinces, and another equally big quake struck shortly after noon followed by more than 60 aftershocks, Chinese
and U.S. government seismologists said. Though of moderate strength, the quakes were shallow, which often
causes more damage.

Hardest hit was Yiliang County, where 49 of the 50 deaths occurred, said Yunnan province government agencies
and state media. Another 150 people in the county were injured, said Zhang Junwei, a spokesman for the
provincial seismology bureau.

China Central Television showed roads littered with rocks and boulders, and pillars of dust rising over hillcrests —
signs of landslides. Footage showed a couple hundred people crowding into what looked like a school athletic field
in Yiliang’s county seat, a sizeable city spread along a river in a valley bottom.

With some roads impassable, rescuers had yet to reach some outlying villages and towns, the official Xinhua News
Agency said.

Though quakes in the area occur frequently, buildings in rural areas and China’s fast-growing smaller cities and
towns are often constructed poorly. In 2008, a magnitude-7.9 quake that hit Sichuan province, just north of
Yunnan, killed nearly 90,000 people, with many of the deaths blamed on poorly built structures, including schools.

Friday’s quakes destroyed or damaged 20,000 homes, Xinhua said. The Yunnan seismology bureau said more
than 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes. All told, Xinhua said, 700,000 people had their lives
disrupted by the quake.

In Luozehe, a town in Yiliang near a zinc mine, residents and state media said boulders hurtled off hillsides and
houses collapsed.

“It is scary. My brother was killed by falling rocks. The aftershocks struck again and again. We are so afraid,”
Xinhua quoted miner Peng Zhuwen as saying.

A government official in Jiaokui town said a large number of houses had collapsed.

“The casualty number is still being compiled. I don’t know what it was like for the other towns, but my town got hit
badly,” he said. Like many Chinese officials, he refused to give his name.

Mobile phone services were down and regular phone lines disrupted. Phones were cut off to clinics in four villages
in Qiaoshan, another town in Yiliang, which has about half a million people.

Authorities sent thousands of tents, blankets and coats to the area, Xinhua said.

It said that so far no casualties had been reported in neighbouring Guizhou, but that homes had been damaged or
destroyed there.

Friday’s quakes were relatively shallow, about 10 kilometres deep, creating an intense shaking even at a lower
magnitude.

By comparison, the 7.6-magnitude quake that struck Costa Rica this week was 41 kilometres below the surface,
and combined with strict building codes, that kept damage and deaths to a minimum.
‘Zombies are coming!’ U.S. homeland security department
warns
Published on Friday September 07, 2012
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ROBERT BENSON/GETTY IMAGESAmong the government’s recommendations for the ‘zombie apocalypse’ were having an emergency evacuation
plan and a change of clothes.
Alicia A. Caldwell 
The Associated Press 
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WASHINGTON—“The zombies are coming!” the U.S. Homeland Security Department says.

Tongue firmly in cheek, the government urged citizens Thursday to prepare for a zombie apocalypse, part of a
public health campaign to encourage better preparation for genuine disasters and emergencies. The theory: If
you’re prepared for a zombie attack, the same preparations will help you during a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake
or terrorist attack.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year first launched a zombie apocalypse social media
campaign for the same purposes.

Among the government’s recommendations were having an emergency evacuation plan and a change of clothes,
plus keeping on hand fresh water, extra medications and emergency flashlights.

A few suggestions tracked closely with some of the 33 rules for dealing with zombies popularized in the 2009
movie Zombieland, which included “always carry a change of underwear” and “when in doubt, know your way out.”
Colombia rejects FARC proposal for truce
Published on Friday September 07, 2012
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CESAR GARCIA 
Associated Press 
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TOLEMAIDA, COLOMBIA—President Juan Manuel Santos on Thursday night rejected a proposal by Colombia’s
main leftist rebel movement to observe a ceasefire during peace talks that are to begin next month in Norway.

Leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said hours earlier during a news conference in
Cuba that their first item on the negotiations’ agenda would be to propose a truce in the half-century of fighting that
has killed tens of thousands.

Santos said that would not happen. He said the Colombian military and police had been instructed to intensify
offensive actions against the rebels.

“There’s not going to be any ceasefire. We will not give anything until we get the final agreement, and I want to
make that very clear,” the president told reporters at a military base in central Colombia.

Santos, who spoke after meeting with more than 100 generals and colonels, did not respond to questions.

There was no immediate comment from FARC officials.

Earlier in the day, rebel officials raised the idea of a ceasefire during a meeting with journalists in Havana to
discuss FARC’s plans for the peace talks.

“We will propose a ceasefire the moment we sit down at the table,” said Mauricio Jaramillo, a spokesman and top
FARC leader. “We are going to discuss it.”

Before Santos rejected that idea, he said during an interview with Colombia’s W Radio on Thursday that a lasting
peace could be achieved if both sides truly have the will.

“Making peace requires more sacrifice, more risk, but at the end the rewards are much higher,” Santos said.

FARC said the talks are scheduled to begin Oct. 8 in Oslo and it named three of its negotiators for the
negotiations, including a high-ranking guerrilla now imprisoned in the United States.

Jaramillo said two of the negotiators will be Ivan Marquez, a participant in past peace talks and a member of the
FARC’s six-person ruling secretariat, and Jose Santrich, a second-tier leader.

The rebels said they want the third to be Ricardo Palmera, alias “Simon Trinidad,” a high-ranking FARC member
and former peace negotiator who was extradited to the U.S. in 2005 and is serving a 60-year prison term on
hostage-taking conspiracy charges.

Asked whether the FARC is seeking Palmera’s release or the rebels envision him participating by video
conference, Andres Paris, another spokesman, responded that Colombia’s president would be learning of their
request from Thursday’s announcement and they would await a response from his government.

“You (the media) will be the bearers of this news, that the FARC has decided as a symbol of the nation and of
dignity to have Simon at the negotiating table,” Paris said.

More negotiators will be announced later, Jaramillo said, speaking a day after the Colombian government named
its five delegates to the talks.
In Washington, State Department spokesman William Ostick did not respond specifically to the request for
Trinidad’s participation, saying that the U.S. supports Santos’ efforts.

“We hope the FARC will take this opportunity to end its decades of terrorism and narcotics trafficking. The United
States is not a party to these negotiations. We will not comment on the negotiating positions of the parties,” Ostick
said.

A decade ago, talks fell through after Colombia had ceded a Switzerland-size swath of terrain as a safe haven for
the FARC, which used it as a base to continue waging war elsewhere, extorting, kidnapping and expanding its
cocaine trafficking activities.

In Havana, the FARC representatives played a roughly edited video in which rebel chief Timoleon Jimenez, known
by the nom de guerre “Timochenko,” denied that the group had been weakened by defections and the deaths of
several top leaders in recent years.

“We have never been stronger or more united,” Jimenez said. “They are completely mistaken, those who try to see
weakness in our tireless efforts for peace.”

The Norwegian, Venezuelan and Chilean ambassadors to Cuba were at the convention hall representing their
countries, which along with Cuba are facilitating the peace talks.

Associated Press writers Vivian Sequera in Bogota, Andrea Rodriguez in Havana and Bradley Klapper in
Washington contributed to this report.
Yosemite doubles hantavirus warning to 22,000 visitors; death
toll rises
Published 1 hours, 28 minutes ago
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MICHAEL THURSTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGESA third victim has died from a rare rodent-borne virus contracted in Yosemite National Park, out of eight
cases now confirmed with the disease, authorities said on Thursday.
Ronnie Cohen 
Reuters 
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SAN FRANCISCO- Yosemite National Park doubled the scope of its hantavirus warning on Thursday to some
22,000 visitors who may have been exposed to the deadly mouse-borne disease as the number of confirmed
cases grew to eight and a third death was reported.

U.S. officials recently sounded a worldwide alert, saying that up to 10,000 people were thought to be at risk of
contracting hantavirus pulmonary syndrome after staying at the popular Curry Village lodging area between June
and August.

As many as 2,500 of those individuals live outside the United States, U.S. health officials said.

Officials are concerned that more Yosemite visitors could develop the lung disease in the next month or so
because the virus may incubate for up to six weeks after exposure.

The warning was expanded to roughly 12,000 additional visitors to the park’s more remote High Sierra Camps,
after an eighth case of the illness was confirmed in a man who had stayed in tent cabins at three of those camps.
He also had stayed in a tent cabin at the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge and had camped in the wilderness—all
locations in the park’s high country, Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said.

His symptoms were so mild that he never went to a hospital, but after hearing about the outbreak he was tested,
and laboratory results confirmed on Thursday that he had been ill with the disease, Gediman said.

The seven other confirmed victims are all believed to have contracted the virus while staying in one or more of the
91 insulated “Signature” tent cabins in Curry Village, located at a lower-elevation area of the park.

The 91 Curry Village tent cabins were shut down after deer mice were found infesting the double walls of the
structures.

Officials in Yosemite, a fabled national park destination in California whose scenic vistas, hiking trails and wildlife
draw some 4 million visitors a year, did not previously consider the High Sierra Camps to be at risk for hantavirus.

Those camps will remain open, based on recommendations from public health officials, Gediman said, adding,
“We do inspections, and we try to keep the rodents out. It’s impossible to say every tent cabin is rodent-proof.
That’s impossible.”

He estimated that a few hundred notices also were being sent to individuals who still had reservations to stay at
the High Sierra Camps before they close for the season on Sept. 17.

The expanded warning came as Yosemite announced that a third person had died of the disease and the number
of confirmed cases rose to eight, all of them among U.S. visitors to the park.

Health officials in France were also investigating two suspected hantavirus cases there of people who may have
been exposed while at Yosemite, according to an assessment by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and
Control.

Gediman identified the third fatality as a West Virginia resident who contracted hantavirus while staying in Curry
Village tent cabins in June. That person died at the end of July, and laboratory tests confirmed on Thursday that
the death was due to hantavirus, he said.

The two others who died were a man from northern California and a man from Pennsylvania.

The World Health Organization also issued a global alert this week over the cases of hantavirus linked to
Yosemite, and advised travelers to avoid exposure to rodents.

The virus can lead to severe breathing difficulties and death. Early flu-like symptoms include headache, fever,
muscle aches, shortness of breath and coughing.

There is no cure for the lung disease, which kills over a third of those infected, but early detection through blood
tests greatly increases survival rates.

Hantavirus is carried in rodent feces, urine and saliva that can mix with dust and be inhaled by humans, especially
in small, confined spaces with poor ventilation. People also can become infected by eating contaminated food,
touching tainted surfaces or being bitten by infected rodents.

The disease has never been known to be transmitted between humans.

Hantavirus previously was known to have infected just two Yosemite visitors, one in 2000 and another in 2010,
both at higher elevations in the park.
 High consumer debt raises recession risk

About half of Canadians live paycheque to paycheque and use credit to make ends meet.

Kevork Djansezian/GETTY IMAGES

By Vanessa Lu | Thu Sep 06 2012
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With nearly half of Canadians living paycheque to paycheque, economists worry that a second recession could ensue if
overstretched consumers can’t help boost spending.

A new report from Moody’s Analytics warns that Canada could fall into a second recession, due to external economic pressures,
hastened by consumers carrying too much debt.

Debt-to-income ratios are at an all-time high of 150 per cent, thanks to low interest rates and a strong housing market. They are
now higher in Canada than they were in the U.S. prior to the subprime mortgage crisis.

Canada managed to outperform other G7 countries since the recession because it has been propped up by consumer spending,
even though exports continue to lag.

The report, called Storm Clouds Gather Around Canadian Consumer Credit, noted that the federal government has tightened
lending rules, as well as an ingrained culture of conservative lending standards, positions Canada to better withstand a downturn
than consumers in the U.S. prior to 2008.
It comes as a new survey suggested fewer Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque, but nearly half are still at risk of falling
into hard financial times.

A survey of 3,500 employees across Canada, commissioned by the Canadian Payroll Association, found that 47 per cent would
be in financial difficulty if their pay was delayed by even just a week, down from 57 per cent a year earlier.

“It’s better news, but it’s still not great news,” said Caroline Bernard, chair of the Canadian Payroll Association, which conducts the
annual survey.

“People need to save more. They need to start earlier, and they need to do it every pay,” she added.

That’s part of a continuing message that Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney has been hammering home as well as politicians
like Finance Minister Jim Flaherty about not taking on too much debt.

According to the survey, 73 per cent say they have saved less than a quarter of what they want to accumulate for retirement, and
among those 50 and older, 45 per cent say they are only a quarter of the way to their savings goal.
More than four in 10 said they would need to work longer, five more years on average than planned in 2007.

Fewer believe a nest egg of $500,000 to $1 million would be enough, only 34 per cent this year, compared to 42 per cent last
year, while more think that they will need $1 million to $3 million for retirement, at 38 per cent this year, compared with 27 per
cent.

The main problem is people are living beyond their means with two out of five surveyed spending more than they take in, Bernard
said.

“You can’t save what you don’t have. People need to be spending less and prioritizing savings,” she said.

That’s what credit counsellors have been telling consumers for years because too many Canadians are servicing huge debts and
Canadians are still living beyond their incomes.

“I would suggest you’re digging a bigger hole for yourself. In doing so, you’re going to perpetuate this problem into the future until
you change your spending habits,” said Jeffrey Schwartz, executive director of the Consolidated Credit Counseling Services of
Canada.

He pointed to student debts, large mortgages, credit card debt as well as using lines of credit for everyday expenses. People need
to have enough savings to live for at least three to six months, he added.

Schwartz acknowledged that low interest rates have made lines of credit enticing.

“If interest rates increase a little bit, people aren’t going to be too fazed by that. But I think the bigger shock is illustrated in this
survey is that people aren’t saving.

“And half of Canadians are going to be in trouble if they lose one paycheque,” Schwartz said, noting the global economy can have
an impact on Canadian jobs. “If you don’t have income, you can’t service your debts.”

Conducted by Framework Partners market research firm between mid-June and mid-August, the survey is considered accurate
plus or minus 1.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.