This is a lively article. It gives a little history of the Conservative party in Ontario as well but Mike Harris is left out! There is no mention of the NDP or Greens in the article either. I guess they don't count as part of the campaign.
Monday » September 17 » 2007
Ontario election campaign is anything but dull
The Tory proposal to extend funding to religious schools has captured spotlight
NORMAN WEBSTER
The Gazette
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Quebecers like to think Ontario is Dullsville, and that goes double for its politics. We should take another look. The provincial campaign in our neighbour to the west has turned into a real slugfest.
Politicians warn of creationism being taught in public schools. The ugly word "segregation" has passed the lips of a campaigning premier. You'd think this was the U.S. deep south in the '50s - or perhaps the '20s, featuring the Scopes monkey trial.
It's a long way from the days those of us who lived through them remember as Tory Government Forever, with the motto enunciated so memorably by its leader, William Davis. Accused one day of blandness, the old Silver Fox smiled contentedly and replied: "Bland works." Which it did for an astonishing 42 consecutive years of Conservative government, one third of them (1971 -1985) under the premiership of Bill Davis.
And he's still on the scene -- in fact, a central presence in the current campaign. For it was Davis whom the current Conservative leader, John Tory, was emulating when he decided to make his dramatic promise of public funding for faith-based schools in Ontario. In 1984, you see, Davis extended public support for Roman Catholic education to the end of high school, solidifying the Catholic system in the province and encouraging the Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, fundamentalist Christian and all the other financially-racked private schools to redouble their demands for assistance.
So the Tories' Tory has pledged, should he win on Oct. 10, to appoint Davis to help implement his controversial pledge. The idea would be to bring some old-time blandification to the promise - which, incidentally, would cost more than $400 million a year to implement.
There is no getting around it: Financially, philosophically, politically, this is a biggie, the main issue of the election - and it is not going well for John Tory. The early polls show massive suspicion by the voters.
There's reason for that suspicion. Ontario - especially Toronto - might be the most multicultural society in the world. But cracks are appearing in the racial facade - minority group gangs and gunplay, immigrants not integrating the way previous generations did, demands for sharia law and the like that make Quebec's "reasonable accommodation" a small and passing issue.
There are sincere, non-racist worries about children attending schools with others just like themselves, instead of integrating into the larger community. Not surprisingly, the sitting premier, the Liberals' Dalton McGuinty, has seized the issue and is running with it.
"I'm hoping to grab Ontarians by the earlobes," he said last month, in a twist on the usual fixation on voters' anatomy. "If you want the kind of Ontario where we invite children of different faiths to leave their publicly-funded system and become sequestered and segregated in their own private schools, then they should vote for Mr. Tory.
"If they think it's important that we continue to bring our kids together so that they grow together and learn from one another, then you should vote for me." You could hear the violins playing as the boot went in.
Critics note a slight touch of hypocrisy in McGuinty's affection for the public system, given that he and his wife and their four children all attended separate, Catholic schools; his wife still teaches part-time in the Catholic system. But the reality is that support for Catholic schools, part of the bargain of Confederation, is here to stay. There is little point calling for total logic on the issue.
Tory says extending funding to other religious schools is a matter of simple fairness. So far it isn't washing. The opposition leader did not help things with a confused answer that left open the possibility that faith-based schools, using their public funding, could teach creationism on an equal footing with evolution.
Uproar. Shades of the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee in 1925. Bring on Charles Darwin. Bring on Spencer Tracy. Cue Stockwell Day. Cue derisive laughter.
Tory issued a correction saying he meant creationism could be taught as part of religious studies, not in science class, but the damage had been done.
Note in passing: John Tory is one of the more admirable political leaders in the country. He has integrity, personality and experience. We need a lot more like him. But clips from the campaign trail this past week showed, ominously, a politician on the defensive, with deep bags under his eyes and miles to go before he slept.
As my favourite English-language columnist, Margaret Wente, noted this week in the Globe and Mail: "Mr. Tory has found himself a pile of dry brush and lit it." It could be a scorcher.
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007
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