iaink

Why not, the Christians who insist on a faith based education have theirs paid for after all. Its not just Catholics in the catholic board schools.

Too many people choose to send there kids to the catholic schools for it to be a political winner to decide to do away with them, and there is a large minority of non christians that would be open to voting Tory for once to get the education they want for there kids. Its actually a smart way to broaden the ethnic appeal of the conservatives

Just because you think educaton is secular does not mean that everyone would agree with you.... if everyone thought that way the catholic schools enrolment would be dismal.

Oakvillian

But Tory has realised it's a debate he's losing, if not already lost - hence his decision "in the interests of democracy" to allow his party's MPPs a free vote on the issue if it every comes before Queen's Park. That's tantamount to admitting it's not a vote-winner.

McGuinty seems to have been trying to steer away from the separate schools debate. From what I can work out, his position is that he's rather softly against separate funding for anybody, but it's too emotive an issue to campaign on, would alienate the Catholic vote, and since it's the status quo he may as well take advantage of it for his own children. Strangely, although it's a pretty untenable position logically, he's struck something of a vein of public approval - along the lines of "it's the least worst option - let's not rock the boat."

By the way, around our neck of the woods the Liberal and NDP campaign posters have the party's name in big letters, whereas the PC ones have "your John Tory candidate," the candidate's name, the leadershipmatters.ca URL and in tiny letters at the bottom (I only know because there's one by my bus-stop) it has "ontario PC." I guess they're trying to distance themselves from past misdemeanours....

iaink

They might have their work cut out there...maybe thats why they were targetting the non christian immigrant vote...newcomers have no memory of the previous Tory government so might be stupid enough to vote for them

I agree about pointy head, hes not comfortable with segregated funding, but it is what it is. McGuinty might not have done a lot (anything?), but hes done better than Harris/Eaves in my opinion.

Novocastrian

Which, of course, is exactly what John Tory thought a few weeks ago.

It turns out that he was wrong (as I suggested at the time).

JAJ

It is disheartening to see how political expediency can prevail over a sense of what is fundamentally right and wrong.

There are so many reasons why segregated schooling is fundamentally wrong, but here's a few to start with:

- denial of employment opportunities to non-Roman Catholic teachers;
- increased scope for sectarianism as children are given a message at an early age that they are "different" from other children
- discrimination at school against children from Roman Catholic backgrounds who decide that they don't want to be Roman Catholics themselves.

Novocastrian

Quite. That's the whole point isn't it? To make it as difficult as possible for kids to decide for themselves.

"Give me the child before he's six and I'll have him for life."

iaink

Given the number of lapsed catholics I know, I dont think its a major problem. Or the number of non catholics who survive the catholic education experience come to think of it.

For the record I'm not catholic (or religous at all realy) , but my wife is. People here talk like being a person of (any) faith is some sort of major failing in life...I dont understand why. A lot of people get great strength and comfort from their faith, and a lot of good comes of that.

Kids will make there own mind up anyway. The best way to turn a teen of the idea of doing something is for an authority figure to tell them to do it. Most people of my generation had some sort of prayer and hymns at school, and it not like english churches are bursting at the seams with gen Xers, so it cant have been all that influencial can it?

With a large number of catholic teachers working in the catholic board schools, there are more openings for non catholics in the public schools. More funded schools means more teaching jobs. period.

Novocastrian

Bull. No-one has suggested closing the catholic schools, or banishing them to the private sector. Simply incorporate them into the normal governance structure in the public school boards, lay off the duplicate bureaucracy and hire more teachers with the $$ saved.

iaink

All Im saying is that the overall number of teachers and teaching jobs is dictated by the number of kids available to teach, and that wont change at all, so if the catholic board is hiring catholic teachers, (and not all the teachers in our school are catholic by a long way), then those teachers are not taking jobs in the public schools.

I wonder though how much of the ~$4M in "other" funding that my local board reports is actually coming from church funds and investments set up for the purpose of susidising the schools. If you incorporated the catholic schools into the public boards there is real danger that per pupil funding might actually drop as that would be withdrawn?

Besides, its not going to ever happen as too many parents are happy with the system as it is now. Me being one of them.

Novocastrian

No idea about the $4M, but in an average size school board budget, $4m is a tiny drop in the ocean. Absolutely trivial compared to the extra costs of having parallel school boards/ bureaucracies. So, no, all other things being equal it would be a money saver.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if now that Tory has opened the can of wriggly things, the polling results on this issue (which show substantial majorities for my viewpoint) don't result in grassroots pressure to rationalize the public system.

You do know that the UN has condemned the Ontario status quo?

iaink

Didnt know, dont care.

$4M is about 4% to my board The provincial portion is about $90M.

More schools in the public system would require more local board beurocracy to deal with them, so you lose one board, and expand the other...the savings would not be as significant as all that I suspect..it would only be the top one or two levels of bureaucracy that was lost, and the transition would probably cost a fortune anyway in reorganisation costs, studies, redundancy payouts etc etc etc.

Novocastrian

That's not like you mate.

It's nothing to do with the funding issue, but I recommend reading "Galileo - Antichrist" by Michael White. And I especially recommend noting the recent quotation from one Cardinal Ratzinger that Galileo's treatment by Urban VII was "fair and just".

An engineer like yourself would likely disagree.

iaink

You seem to be mistaking me for my wife Im an agnostic mate, I really dont care.

Just cos hes Pope does not mean that a billion catholics all agree with him by the way. They dont all abstain from birth control either would you believe.

Novocastrian

Just to show that you don't have to be religious to be gracious, I'll let you have the last word.

Steve_P

It would appear the Conservatives have well and truly shot themselves in the foot over the school issue.

McGuinty headed to a majority: poll