The Pessimist

Tory would expand religious school funding Kerry Gillespie
Queen's Park Bureau
Faith-based schools should have access to taxpayer funding just like public and Roman Catholic schools do, opposition leader John Tory says.

The pandering to extremist religious minorities and immigrants has started. The Ontario election is nigh. John Tory wants to use public funds to support religious schools. Well, you might expect such an orthodox idea from a leader of the Tory party named John Tory.

But this must never be allowed to happen.

Dalton McGuinty took the brave opposite stance when he smacked down the idea of allowing religious arbitration. Muslims demanded to be allowed to use religious Imams acting under Sharia law to settle family law disputes (divorce, child custody, etc.), because Jews and Catholics had this right already. But instead of giving power to nonCanadian law, (law that says a woman's testimony is equal to one half of that of a man's), McGuinty took away the arbitration powers of Catholic and Jewish religious 'courts'.

If the Progressive Conservatives are elected in October, they will appoint former premier Bill Davis to lead a commission to figure out the best way to bring religious schools into the public system, Tory said today.

Davis — who grappled with the issue of fully funding Catholic schools before making it law in the 1980s — is the perfect person to figure out how to bring such students into the public fold, Tory said.

Tory claims that it is unfair that religious schools are not funded, when Catholic Schools are funded. Catholic schools are funded in Ontario under some sort of weird constitutional compromise (public schools in Quebec [Lower Canada] are Catholic, in Ontario [Upper Canada] they are not; funded private schools are the opposite [not Catholic in Quebec, Catholic in Ontario). The 1980 debate was not about funding Catholic private schools, but extending their funding beyond grade 10 to grade 13.

Full disclosure I went to Catholic school. I remember being in grade 10 in 1970 and going to a rally in Toronto to support the debate on the extension of funding. I came face to face with Bill Davis, and I cheered encouragingly. My memory is a bit fuzzy: I recalled the decision being made then, but apparently the decision didn't actually happen until 1984; I guess I must have paid for my grade 11-13 education, or, at least my dad did, so who cares. I guess what I'm remembering is helping to get Bill Davis elected. Religion can influence elections. But anyway, by the time I graduated from the Ontario Catholic high school system, I was a committed atheist.

The correct approach to the fairness of funding religious schools is not to extend funding to other religions, but to withdraw funding from the Catholic schools system. It is a waste of resources anyway to have 4 school boards (Catholic/Public French/English). Make them all one.

To be fair to the education I was provided by the Catholic system, though, I don't feel that I received any indoctrination. The curriculum was the same as the public school system, except for one hour of religious studies a week. [Which, as noted above had the opposite of the desired affect on me.] And the student body contained many nonCatholics. Probably 15% (including a large contingent from China) who thought the school was better value than the free public system. Most of the teachers were lay people [which didn't have the double entendre that it does today].

But what do the Muslims want? They want Imam's teaching rote learning of the Koran in Arabic. (The children don't need to speak Arabic, just phonetically parrot the words.) They want boys segregated from girls, with girls getting second rate educations, if any at all. They want total separation from the infidels, so they can be taught to hate them.

What do the Jews want? They want to teach their children how to drain the blood from babies and drink it. No, wait, that's what the Muslims and Catholics say the Jew do. Why do the Jews want to be separate, so that assinine things like that can be said about them?

Public school forges Canadians. Everybody is the same, and everybody is equal. Sure they may have to scrap a bit for respect, but if a muslim and a jew sit at adjacent desks and get a boring Canadian history lesson from a female teacher with a Jamaican accent, maybe they'll learn something about being Canadian.

Intemperant comment following; stop reading if easily offended
Multiculturalism means ethnic dancing and ethnic food. It means respect for the differences of others. It doesn't mean pogroms; it doesn't mean ancient ethnic hatreds. Send your kids to public school if you want them to become Canadians. They'll mix with all races, religions, genders. They'll learn English/French. They'll learn respect. If you want your kids to be just like you (little mini-me's with all your baggage, hatred and insularity), get the fuck out of Canada; go back to where you came from. There are plenty of backward educational opportunities awaiting them back in the old-country.