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ARCHIVES U-P.E. I.
Volume 7 Number 11
WINNIPEG (CUP) - Post- secondary students — who use the train three times more often than the rest of Canada — will be hit hard by Via Rail service cut- backs, the Canadian Federation of Students says. :
Federation chair Jane Arnold said the cuts will hurt students’ ability to move around cheaply and will serious affect students who depend on Via Rail to get home. ;
About 11 per cent of Cana- dian post-secondary students use the train, compared to about three per cent of all Canadians, according to a survey conducted by Campus Plus.
"It is important to factor in the cost students are faced with today as they attend post- secondary institutions,” Arnold said. ”In recognition that stu- dents use the train extensively, Via Rail has offered a student dis- count of a third in savings on a ticket.”
Deborah Boardman, a Via employee and coordinator of ‘Keep Via Moving,’ said more students will end up taking the bus.
"(The train) is good because we have the facilities. We get people who come on with canoes, snowshoes, backpacks. There’s no limit to want you can bring onto the baggage car.
” Most of what we get are stu- dents who take their bicycles and they take bicycling expenditions. Now if you have 100 students on a bus there’s no way you’re going to get bicyles on a bus.”
More people will likely travel by air, but Boardman said they shouldn’t expect cheaper rates. She said over the last few years Canadian airlines have been re- ducing their available capacity ~— the Via cutbacks will mean a higher demand for air travel which will push prices higher.
With the train effectively
try, Boardman said Canada will end up as a nation dependent on gasoline.
”What if there’s a bus strike, what if there’s airline strike. There are all things you have to
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The Student Voice of University of Prince Edward Island
Wie Cute 16 Hot Students
consider. There are no options.”
She said that people aren’t planning for the future.
She said the media is misin- forming the public by saying no one is taking the train.
”They’re.coming up with say- ing certain trains are absolutely empty, certain trains are only 30 per cent full and these are trains that are at 95 per cent capacity.”
The Via Rail cutbacks will cost over 2,700 Via employee (as well as an unspecified numbers of CNR employees) their jobs but Boardman said employees aren’t
the only ones which will be hurt. While only 3 per cent of Cana-
dians use the train; 5 per cent use
airplanes, Boardman said.
”The amount of Canadians using the train is really irreve- lant in that sense because the trains are always full. The rest of the people are tourists and that’s nothing to be scoffed at. That brings in millions of dollars to this country.”
She said tourism-based com- munities like Lake Louise and Banff, Alberta will be in deep trouble.
Thursday November 16,1989
”The highest ridership trains in these areas are being taken out,” she said. "If you’re not go- ing to take out all the trains why take the ones with the best rider-
Abortion Bill Unnecessary, Dangerous
OTTAWA (CUP) -— The pro- posed criminal law on abortion is a dangerous infringement on women’s rights pro-choice leaders say.
While the bill, which makes having an abortion without valid ™social, psychological or eco- nomic cause” punishable by two years in jail, isn’t as limiting as what many observers had ex- pected, Judith Ailen said it still ” stinks.”
The spokesperson for the Na- tional Association of Women and the Law said the bill, tabled last week by Justice Minister Doug Lewis, contains provisions similar to the old law struck down in 1988 by the Supreme Court.
The old abortion law (authored by then-Minister of Justice John Turner) required women seeking abortions to prove their need to a hospital commit- tee. But standards for what con- stituted a valid need for an abor- tion varied wildly from province to province.
Allen said the proposed law would have the same problem.
"If you’re in Ontario you could say you were stressed out and that might be enough teason to have an abortion,” she said. ” But if you go to Charlotietown, the doctor might say, ’well, you’re not suicidal, so you don’t qual- ify’.” :
” Women in rural areas, in the north, in Nova Scotia, in New- foundland will not have the same kind of access to abortions be-
cause the law will be applied dif- ferently,” she added.
This aspect of the old law was found to violate women’s right to security of person, Allen said.
The bill would also leave the door open for ”ex-boyfriends, family or neighbours” to bring a complaint against a woman they felt was getting an ’illegal’ abor- tion, Allen said.
Allen said the bill could force women who wanted abortions be- cause their birth control failed to have the child or face prosecution.
"In effect, it makes them criminally liable for the act of be- ing sexually active,” she said. "In this country, that’s not a crime now, but this bill would make it that way.”
Canadian Abortion Rights Action League official Nicole Jas- min said the bill was a move to pacify the anti-choice minority.
”It’s very difficult to justify this bill to the anti-choice mi- nority,” she said. ”It makes me wonder what are they promis- ing down the road. All they would have to do is take out the word ’psychological’ and abor- tions would be virtually impossi- ble to perform legally.”
*It’s very dangerous,” she added.
Under the proposed bill, it will be up to doctors to decided whether a woman has a valid need for an abortion.
”That’s a terrible imbalance of power,” Jasmin said, ”which
is demeaning and insulting to women.”
Allen was optimistic that the bill would be unpopular enough
ship?”
Boardman said West- ern Canada and Atlantic Canada will be the hardest hit by the cut- backs.
with both pro and anti-choice members: of parliament that it would have difficulty getting out of the house’s committees.
Prof Pisses Off Students,
Calls Them Dyslexic
TORONTO (CUP) — Univer- sity of Toronto biochemistry stu- dents are angered at a profes- sor’s theory that some of them are dyslexic.
Biochemistry professor David Tinker left a message on a pub- lic electronic mail system, open to his class, saying a large num- ber of university students suffer from the developmental disorder affecting comprehension.
”T postulate that an unexpect- edly large proportion of students
have become functionally (as op- posed to neurologically) dyslec- tic (sic),” he wrote in a note ad- dressed to his third year class, that is, unable to obtain knowl- edge from written material even though they can read it.”
A member of the class who complained to the U of T student paper, The Varsity, said he was insulted. He said other students had a similar reaction.
Tinker said the wasn’t meant to offend.
”This is a section for general intellectual discussion. There were no sweeping generalizations, there was no abusive language, there was no pejorative language used.”
message
In the note, Tinker theorized that dyslexia could be caused by neurological lesions.”
However, Dr. Jim Warner, an associate professor in Brock’s Faculty of Education who runs a reading research clinic, said the note contains generalizations and inaccuracies.
”'To talk about brain lesions from developmental dyslexia is inappropriate. There may be, we don’t know. We don’t know enough to make a difference help- ing.”
Warner also said it was un- likely a student would not be aware of the problem.
Dr. William Thompson, the acting chair of the Biochemistry department, said Tinker’s theory was new to him.
"He (Tinker) is not trained in psychology, psychiatry or medicine, so he is not an expert. He should not be going around la- belling people as dyslexic. That is very foolish.”