At Home: Licence battle continues for Hutterites
The battle over drivers? licence photos looks set to continue for a southern Alberta Hutterite community. As the CBC reports, the group has asked the Supreme Court of Canada for a rehearing on the issue.
The issue began when a member of the Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony was ?pulled over and fined for not having a valid licence because it didn’t have a picture.? The group argued that the photo requirement (introduced in 2003) was a breach of their right to freedom of religion.
In the original suit, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench sided with the Hutterites, ruling that the photo regulation was in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The case then went to the Alberta Court of Appeal, which upheld the ruling in a 2-1 decision. However, when the case reached the Supreme Court of Canada the ruling went in favour of the Alberta government, with the Supreme Court arguing that ?licences without photos could lead to identity theft.?
Because the Supreme Court represents the highest judicial level in Canada, the only legal avenue for the Hutterites to pursue is to ask the Court for a rehearing. The Court has noted that such requests are hardly ever approved.
In Foreign News: Denmark’s grads facing jobs deadline
A new law in Denmark may get graduates into the workforce quickly, but the cost may be too high for the workers themselves. Effective August 1, the government has set a 13-week deadline for university grads to find employment.
But as The Copenhagen Post reports, grads in highly skilled areas ?such as biotech and engineering? are being forced into low-paying manual labour jobs in order to comply with the law. The new rule applies to unemployed persons under the age of 30. If they don’t want to lose the right to unemployment benefits after the 13-week deadline, they have three options: return to school, begin an apprenticeship, or take ?a job at reduced wages.?
Jørn Guldberg, president of the engineers? unemployment fund, explained the downside to reporters. With an average of two to three months for engineering grads to land a job, young workers are ending up in positions that don’t allow them to use their hard-earned skills. And the longer their skills remain untested, the harder it becomes for them to break into their field.
?What we’ll end up seeing is newly educated engineers taking unskilled labour because That’s the easiest way to get them into the workforce,? Guldberg told reporters. Denmark’s engineering field has a current unemployment rate of 23.4 per cent.
