WhatFinger


Peanuts, eggs, allergies

The Lunch-bag police – coming to a school near you



Six children who attend St. Stephen’s Catholic Elementary School in Woodbridge Ontario, just northwest of Toronto, are taking their school to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. For six years the school had a voluntary program that monitored all kids’ lunches. Teachers would check the students’ lunches to make sure that they didn’t contain such things as peanuts or egg products; ingredients that can pose a danger to children with allergies.          

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The York Catholic District School Board ended the program last year. Maurice Brenner, who is assisting the little litigants, claims that these children suffer disabilities and therefore are entitled to protection from the human rights body. It is amazing how human rights tribunals that were created to ensure that everyone in society had the same rights regardless of race, religion, creed, etc. are now instrumental in depriving people of what few rights are left in a society run by ever intrusive governments. If this application is successful, students entering the school will be once again subject to their lunches (which presumably will be eaten) searched by teachers acting as the lunch police.           In recent years teachers have become notorious for whining and complaining at contract negotiation time about how overworked they are despite of the fact that they get two months off in the summer and other holiday breaks that others can only dream about. If it ends up that they will be required to sift through lunches and take on the role of the peanut police, perhaps they will have a point about being overworked and underpaid.           Brenner claims that he just wants the school to reinstate the program and claims that he’s not looking for a province wide law. But if the Ontario Human Rights’ Commission upholds the complaint, it is difficult to see how the procedures will not have to be implemented on a province-wide basis. There is nothing different about these particular students at this particular school. Surely these students will not be granted “rights” that other kids do not have. And Dalton McGuinty and his government will be only too happy to have everyone’s lunches inspected; no right is too important to not be taken away; for the good of the children of course.           It’s true that exposure to certain foods can cause serious illness and even death. But as the family and friends of the late Jordan Manners discovered, bullet wounds can be fatal and being within the walls of a school offers no protection from the gun violence that has become rampant in recent years. So let’s not just protect these children; let’s protect all of them.           If it is permissible to comb through a student’s lunch on the grounds that it might contain harmful substances, then students, teachers and everyone else who enters a school building should be searched for guns and anything else that can be used as a weapon. It is hard to believe that 15-year-old Jordan Manners will be the last student to be shot or attacked with a weapon within our school system. All children deserve to be protected; not just those who suffer from serious allergies.           This will never happen of course. It simply isn’t politically correct to deprive students of their privacy rights by searching them for weapons rather than peanut butter. While there will be a lot of support for lunch police in certain circles, the thought of conducting weapons searches will be met with cries of fascism, Nazism, Mike Harrisism and a whole slew of “isms”. In this politically correct world, the rights of certain members of society always trump the rights of others.           If there is any certainty, it will be that those who proclaim about rights the loudest will have no objection to students’ lunches being frisked on a daily basis. And it will only be a matter of time before these searches become province-wide.


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Arthur Weinreb -- Bio and Archives

Arthur Weinreb is an author, columnist and Associate Editor of Canada Free Press. Arthur’s latest book, Ford Nation: Why hundreds of thousands of Torontonians supported their conservative crack-smoking mayor is available at Amazon. Racism and the Death of Trayvon Martin is also available at Smashwords. His work has appeared on Newsmax.com,  Drudge Report, Foxnews.com.

Older articles (2007) by Arthur Weinreb


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