When's Wynne gonna fire Sandals over her scandals?

As Kelly Parland wrote in the Oct.26, 2015 National Post: "Corruption is a strong word, which we don’t often use in Canada when it comes to politics. It infers a blatant disregard for honesty, ethics or principle. But it’s the word that springs to mind when you contemplate the insidious relationship between Ontario’s Liberal government and the teachers unions they do so much to cultivate and please.
How else to describe it? The Liberals spend hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure the unions remain relatively quiescent and co-operative, offering rich contracts, special treatment, secret agreements and generous payoffs with public dollars. In return the unions spend millions undermining the government’s opponents and working to ensure the Liberals stay in power."
Why hasn't incompetent Liberal education minister Liz Sandals resigned - or been already removed by Kathleen Wynne? Secret taxpayer cheques being cut to unions, with no receipts? Wow.
Jim Bradley and his secretive, scumbag Ontario Liberals must be oh so proud of their dirty handiwork - scandal upon scandal, their destruction of Ontario continues.
Justin Trudeau must be very proud as well, of the kind of provincial Liberal scum which propelled him to power.

"Open and transparent" Liberal lies

So, while Jim Bradley's and Kathleen Wynne's 'Open and Transparent' Ontario Liberals were meeting secretly with Chinese Communists and shilling for 'Open and Transparent' Liberal Justin Turdeau, they were also secretly giving away millions of tax dollars to Ontario's teacher unions.
As Adrian Morrow reported in the Oct 21, 2015 Globe and Mail:
"The Ontario government secretly paid $1-million to the Catholic teachers’ union and $500,000 to the French teachers’ union to buy labour peace. This means three unions have now received payments totalling $2.5-million from the government in this year’s round of bargaining.

And Education Minister Liz Sandals has admitted that the government has repeatedly given such payouts to teachers’ unions over the past decade to compensate them for the cost of collective bargaining with the province.
The payments raise tough questions about the government’s claims it is not spending new money to reach labour settlements. They also call into question the province’s new negotiating system: The government said it compensated the unions because the process made contract talks longer and more complex than they were supposed to be.
The revelations about the money came on Wednesday, after The Globe and Mail uncovered a $1-million payment to the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, which represents public high school teachers. The Globe subsequently obtained a copy of the deal the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association and the province reached in August. The 54-page document, marked “highly confidential,” shows OECTA also received $1-million..."
So: this is the kind of secretive Ontario Liberal scum, that openly shilled for Justin Trudeau's Liberals.

This is the kind of cancerous Liberal carnage which we've suffered in Ontario, which is a harbinger of the same Liberal infection which will soon consume Canada.

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McGuinty's new Liberal Poor School

Further to an earlier post, When Jim Bradley met Jim Crow:

How is it that Kalvin Reid's St.Catharines Standard Feb.5, 2011 Editor's Notebook column, "It's time for a popular uprising", doesn't have any response from local Liberal Jim Bradley? Isn't education near and dear to Jimmy's heart? Doesn't cabinet-minister Bradley have anything to say about education anymore?!

We all remember how sanctimonious Ole Jimmy was about faith-based-schooling! It - like "global-warming"! - was, according to Bradley, going to lead to the end of the world!

We all remember how McGuinty touted himself as the 'education premier'!!

We all remember how Bradley and his smarmy Grits fear-mongered that faith-based education was divisive and regressive and segregationist and a threat to social cohesion in Ontario!!

But now that Jim Bradley's Liberals have no problem creating "black" schools and "poor" schools - suddenly, Jimmy's nowhere to be found, hidden in his trusty Cone-of-Silence cloaking device. As far as Liberals are concerned, poor schools are, apparently, good; so black poor schools would even be better...

It's astounding that McGuinty's education minister Leona Dombrowsky wasn't even tangentially mentioned in Reid's column! Doesn't the 'education premier's' education minister have anything to do with any of this?!

What is Dombrowky going to do about this Liberal Poor School - will she embrace the concept, or distance her Liberal government from it?

Compare Reid's column with the perspectives in Moira MacDonald's Feb.5, 2011 Toronto Sun column.
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Festive Greenshevism

Julie Greco wrote in "Lighting up a green Christmas" (St.Catharines Standard, Dec.2010):

"If the Griswolds of Vacation fame went green, their house might resemble the Bloms' during the holidays.

"Christmas is when we go crazy," says Andrew Blom, who has spent countless hours over the past month transforming his front lawn at 41 Senator Dr. into a dazzling holiday wonderland.

About 10,000 lights take the shape of Christmas trees, wrapped presents, reindeer and snowmen, all programmed to blink to the beats of seasonal songs.

The beacon of light generated from the Bloms' postage stamp-sized lawn at the corner of Macturnbull Dr., makes it one of the neighbourhood's main attractions during the holidays.

"Last night, we had people dancing on the sidewalk in front of our house," said Andrew's wife Jamie.

At first glance, it might appear the family's spectacular light show is a drain on energy resources -- not to mention their hydro bill. But that's not the case.

Energy efficiency has been their focus for the past five years, thanks to their son Zack, now 14.

When Zack was in Grade 5 at Power Glen School, he became interested in environmental issues. One day, he came home from school and told his parents how they had discussed energy and waste in class.

"My teacher said when my parents were born, people didn't really know what they were doing to the environment," he said.

His parents remember it a different way.

" 'Energy pigs' was the word he used," Andrew remembered with a chuckle.

"He told us we were personally responsible for the demise of the Earth and that we had to fix it."
That was a dramatic turning point for the Bloms.
As owners of an energy business, they had always researched new, cutting-edge products and alternative energy sources such as solar and geothermal, but until then they hadn't practised what they preached at home.

"I was the type of person who never wanted to recycle. But since Zack came home that day, we're huge into it now," Jamie said.

Now the family has solar panels on their roof and their water is heated through solar power.

The Bloms' shift to environmental awareness happened to coincide with their decision to get charged up about the holidays by going all-out with their light display.

"You wouldn't believe it but before, he was like the Grinch. He didn't want to do anything," said Jamie.

"I said, 'Is this what you want Zack to remember?' That's when he turned into this."

But Andrew didn't want to sacrifice his environmental consciousness for his newfound festive spirit. By opting for LED lights, his whole Christmas light display is powered by the same amount of energy it takes to run five 100-watt light bulbs.

"People always assume that our hydro bills must be out of control, but it's less than it was before," said Jamie.

"The only energy it really consumes is all the hours and hours he spends putting up the lights and programming the music -- human energy."

But the effort is worth seeing the faces of local children light up during the holidays, said Andrew.
Zack agreed.

"At first, I thought it was obnoxious. But after all the people who come to see it, I feel like we're helping them enjoy Christmas a little more."

The clock is ticking for St. Catharines residents interested in participating in the city's sustainability study, to draft a sustainability strategy in 2011. The deadline for filling out the online survey is Tuesday. To take the survey or for more information about the study, visit www.stcatharines.ca"
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Why doesn't the Standard reporter identify the Power Glen "teacher" who was - and perhaps still is - propagandizing his/her own green bolshevism to impressionable fifth graders?
Is this kind of GreenFear now officially part of Ontario's Liberal-approved greenshevik curriculum? That and watching endless reruns of Al Gore's Inconvenient Climate Deceptions? Don't ask Liberal MPP Jim Bradley for an answer - this is exactly the kind of greenshit doomsday-fearmongering which Bradley and his Liberals encourage: see Bradley's "greener ways to live" propaganda. Were the kiddies also given recommendations by their ClimateFear teacher on who their parents should vote for, as well?
Yep - apparently Blom is personally held responsible for helping save the Planet, because his parents were "energy pigs". And Obama was personally going to halt the 'rise of the oceans'! Praise be upon them.
But isn't the use of thousands of lights - even if they are LED's - still offensive to some dour Suzukiite, somewhere? Degrees of perception, eh... or is it degrees of deception?
Aren't suicide and sterilization the best methods for achieving the greenshevik goal of population control in order to save the Earth from exploding/flooding/melting/burning?
Someone - just go and ask Jim Bradley to explain what the FLICK was being "taught" in his city's schools then, around 2005! Which approved curriculum was the PowerGlenGreenshevik using - the belief in Kyoto and the Mann-made hockey stick graph?!
Scaring the shit out of children in Liberal Ontario might be fine for McGuinty's Liberals, but they are probably itching to do even more, like showing the latest United Nations 'educational video' where teachers BLOW UP STUDENTS who don't obey the Greenshevik Commandments.
Yeah, that's right - maybe McGuinty isn't going far enough in scaring the kids to repent for their collective 'enviro-crimes' - maybe it's time McGuinty's Liberals now show the kids how it feels to die for their parent's carbon sins.
"Seriously??" you ask?
Well, read for yourself Peter Foster's column "U.K.'s Climate Killers" (National Post, Oct.7, 2010):

"The uproar over the “eco snuff” video put out by British climate alarmist organization 10:10 is more than a minor embarrassment for the warmist cause. Ten ten is not just any old bunch of hysterical radicals. It is virtually a propaganda arm of the U.K. government. Moreover, thousands of corporations, local councils and schools have signed on to the group’s Orwellian “pledge” to reduce carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010.

The “satirical” video — which 10:10 posted last week but had to withdraw in the face of an angry backlash — consists of four segments in which, respectively, school kids, corporate employees, former French soccer ace David Ginola, and X Files star Gillian Anderson are told that there is “no pressure” to get onside with the carbon reduction program. Then, those who refuse to sign up (including Messrs. Ginola and Anderson) are blown up, with a great deal of splattered blood. Side-splitting! Literally.

When I first saw it, I thought it had to be a spoof of the insanities of environmental extremism. Who would believe that any green organization would cast themselves as potentially murderous eco fascists? What message could one take from the movie but “Those who fail to agree with us will die,” even if we’ll just kill them tongue in exploding cheek. But the video, which was written by Richard Curtis, who penned Four Weddings and a Funeral, was comedically dead serious.

Ten ten was set up by Franny Armstrong, who found instant St. Joan of Noah’s Ark status last year after making an hysterical movie called The Age of Stupid. The film featured a lone archivist looking back from a dystopian future and wondering how humanity could have gone so terribly, terribly wrong.

Virtually the entire UN turned up for the film’s New York premiere. And since Ms. Armstrong’s message was not a million miles from the suicidal climate-change stance of the British Labour Party, the movie’s London debut was attended by a gaggle of politicians, including then environment minister and now opposition Labour party leader Ed Miliband. “Red Ed” was ambushed by the film’s star, Pete Postlethwaite, who threatened to march up to the gates of Buckingham Palace and give back his Order of the British Empire if new coal-fired plants weren’t stopped.

Abasing himself further in order (obviously successfully) to further his political career, Mr. Miliband then agreed to “debate” Ms. Armstrong. The only problem was that they were both on the same side. Not to worry. Ms. Armstrong used the occasion to launch the 10:10 campaign.

Since “10% by 2010” is the kind of target beloved of those who delight in moving in (and leading) intellectual flocks, the entire British Cabinet had soon signed on, along with a raft of corporations, soccer clubs (such as Tottheham Hotspur, whose players appear in the movie) and miscellaneous trendies and publicity hounds. Since coming to power, Tory leader David Cameron’s new coalition government has also signed on. Presumably now he wishes it hadn’t.

The 10:10 organization issued an apology for the video. Sort of. “With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh.”

Make ’em chuckle all the way to the child psychologist.

Ms. Armstrong was more combative. She told The Guardian (a powerful 10:10 supporter) “Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody’s existence on this planet? Clearly we don’t really think they should be blown up, that’s just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?”

A little amputating.

Ms. Armstrong went on to provide her idea of perspective. “We ‘killed’ five people to make No Pressure — a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change.”

Here was a wonderful example of Ms. Armstrong’s facility with numbers. I counted at least seven people who were offed in the movie. As for those 300,000, that’s a whopper manufactured by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan’s private NGO, the Global Humanitarian Forum. In fact, there is no way of linking a single death to the impact of humans on the global climate.

What seems to have been utterly exploded is 10:10’s credibility. The video was designed to coincide with a series of events at next Sunday’s (10/10/10) “Global Day of Doing.” These included “sumo wrestlers cycling to training in Tokyo.” But now major corporations such as Sony, and climate “prophets” such as Yale’s Bill McKibben, are leaving the sinking 10:10 ship, and climate skeptics are having a well-deserved field day.

According to Mr. McKibben, another mystic numerologist who claims the world is doomed at any level of atmospheric carbon dioxide beyond 350 parts per million, the video “represents the kind of stupidity that really hurts our side, reinforcing in people’s minds a series of preconceived notions, not the least of which is that we’re out-of-control elitists.”

Right on! But the problem is that free-floating moralistas such as Ms. Armstrong have been inflated by the alarmism peddled by the likes of Mr. McKibben. Still, Ms. Armstrong did have some support. The child actor who played one of those spectacularly eviscerated declared: “I was very happy to get blown up to save the world.” "
*
Unreal: figurative enviro-snuff films for the kiddies!
'Blowing up' children to teach them a climatalarmist lesson! It's all fun!!
This is the greenshevism of the kyodiots, writ large.
So, dear sheeple, contact Jim the Liberal Kyodiot Bradley, and McGuinty's education minister Leona Dombrowsky, with demands that this extreme enviro-fascism be brought to Ontario immediately!
The GreenFear warmists have no time for energy pigs anymore - killing off the non-green heathen is the new GreenFear tactic.
The Power Glen GreenFear Prophet of Doom would love this, eh, what with the picking of victims based on gaian greenshevist enviro-moralism, shaming and 'killing off' sinful students who don't worship at the Green Altar of Gore, Dion, Suzuki, Bradley, and Ban Ki-Moon.
It's only a movie, eh... for now...
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When Jim Bradley met Jim Crow

Michael Den Tandt wrote in "Afro-centric school founded on racist notion" (Nov.27, 2010, St.Catharines Standard):

"It was inevitable, once Ontario's first Afro-centric school became reality, that disputes about race would ensue. That's what segregation does: It creates divisions between people based on race.

At issue is the Toronto District School Board's controversial suspension of the school's popular principal, Thando Hyman-Aman.

Hyman-Aman went on leave in late October, following a complaint by a parent. The nature of the complaint is not public. The board has said only that it carried out an investigation, which is now over. Hyman-Aman is expected to return to work.

Parents, understandably, are upset. They want to know why the principal was removed, and the nature of the complaint, Many parents, according to reports, strongly support her. A minority are disaffected.

Will the people of Ontario, who are paying for this school, ever get a full accounting? Not likely. The TDSB has already been scolded by a local citizen's group, the Jane and Finch Concerned Citizens Organization, for daring to appoint a white man as Hyman-Aman's temporary stand-in.

Let's parse this. It's an Afro-centric school, teaching an Afro-centric curriculum. Students of all races are technically eligible to attend. What about teachers? "I'm sure he's a nice man but the optics are bad and it couldn't have happened at a worse time," an official from the Jane-Finch group was quoted as saying in the Globe and Mail.

The optics of having a white man replacing a black woman are undoubtedly lousy, if we're talking about running a school for black kids. But what if the replacement were of mixed race? What if he were South Asian, with a dark skin tone, but not of African origin?

These impossible questions emerge naturally from the school's founding premise, which is that black students will do better in a segregated environment. That is a racist notion, at odds with Canadian values. This country has a Charter of Rights that outlaws discrimination based on race.
Isn't segregation a form of discrimination?

Canada already has one segregationist, racist institution in the form of the Indian Act. Segregation and special status under the law haven't worked for aboriginal Canadians. Why not?

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character," said Martin Luther King, Jr.

Amen to that. We should have one public school system"
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What's this??
Jim Bradley and his Liberals founded a publicly-funded school in Ontario based on a regressive racist notion of colour segregation?!
Well, yes: segregation became the McGuinty Liberals' shameless new 'separate-but-equal' education frontier.
Remember how the smug Liberal education minister Kathleen Wynne, and Dalton McGuinty, and Good Ole Jimmy, smarmed on and on about how faith-based educational-funding was divisive and regressive and segregationist and a threat to social cohesion in Ontario!!?
And remember how - within months of their re-election - McGuinty's Liberal hypocrites deliberately went ahead and created a new brand of regressive racial educational apartheid in Ontario?!
So... how did all that work out, Jim?
Will any local St.Catharines Standard reporter bother examining Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's duplicitous educational fear-mongering?
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Shiny new hospital, same old monopolist problems

On May 1, 2009, the St.Catharines Standard reported in “School boards going green”:

“Niagara's school boards are getting some green to go green.
The province is giving more than $21 million to local boards to make schools more energy efficient.
The money represents the local share of $550 million announced by Premier Dalton McGuinty last week to help school boards trim millions from their utility bills.
The two-year investment is also expected to create and sustain more than 5,500 jobs.
Locally, the District School Board of Niagara will get $9.7 million to retrofit buildings with energy-efficient heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
The money can also be used to conduct energy audits to help manage and conserve energy.
St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley said the money will help teach important lessons to students.
"We are teaching our kids about conserving energy, minimizing waste and greener ways to live at school and at home," Bradley said in a news release.
The infusion of cash is timely for the board, which this month passed a new environmental policy, including implementing and promoting responsible environmental practices throughout the system.
The Niagara Catholic District School Board also received $5 million.
Requests for comment from both boards about how or what schools would be chosen for the green upgrades were not met Thursday.
The French public board also received $3 million and the French Catholic board got $3.9 million.”
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What does Liberal MPP Jim Bradley specifically mean when he bleats on of “important lessons”? What exactly does Bradley mean when he spouts vague concepts wrapped in “greener ways to live at school and at home” rhetoric?

What specific “responsible environmental practices” will Bradley’s Liberals be foisting onto "kids"? Trumpeting Smitherman’s green energy propaganda act? Buying more copies of Al Gore’s BS fear-mongering inconvenient bag of half-truth crockumentary, and peddling it as fact, not as fiction, to gullible minds? Will the Liberals inculcate students with the now-proven-to-be-false Mann-made hockey-graph, once so-trumpeted as fact by Kyodiot alarmists? Good Ole Jim has never revealed ...

(see: Liberal Jim Bradley and the "Mystery of the Secret Kyoto files";
see: Jim Bradley's sack of potatoes)

... upon what information he was basing his agitation for Kyoto! Good Ole Jim hasn't shown his sources which supposedly "prove" anthropogenic global warming, and which lead to Bradley's Liberal collectivist, statist policy predilections. The St. Catharines Standard even has a token pseudo "Green Team", of Tiffany Mayer and Matthew Van Dongen, who do their best to actually avoid asking local Liberal MPP Bradley any difficult questions regarding his green-hype rhetoric. C'mon guys - ask Jim Bradley some substantial questions, and work to get an answer from this Liberal government weasel, instead of kissing his ass. What a waste of tree pulp their column has been.

On May 2, 2009 (the very next day after the 'School boards going green story'), the St. Catharines Standard reported that Ontario’s Liberals were CUTTING (yes: Liberals - CUTTING!) $100 million in education grants for post secondary students!! (yep – but their greenshevik (green bolshevik) funding remains untouched!) Several months ago, when the federal Conservatives had announced a reallocation of some 30 million in arts funding across Canada, the screeching from the left was unbelievable. Now, stinking Liberal Dalton McGuintyites cut $50 million from nurse funding, and a $100 million from education, as well as multi-millions in other areas – this is just in Ontario – and yet NO ONE GIVES A FLYING F%$K !!

Also, its oh-so-nice to see that cancer chemotherapy wait times are getting LONGER under Liberal state-run, single-payer health-care-monopoly stewardship.

The St. Catharines Standard reported on Apr.30, 2009:

“A new report suggests wait times for chemotherapy in Ontario are growing longer as the aging population strains the cancer care system.
The wait time for 90 per cent of patients to start treatment averaged 73 days last year, according to the 2009 Cancer System Quality Index.
That's up almost 10 per cent from the 2007 average of 67 days, a difference the index attributes in part to a steady rise in cancer patients.
Cancer Care Ontario, which advises the provincial government on cancer services, recommends waiting no longer than 28 days.
The annual report, by the Cancer Quality Council of Ontario and Cancer Care Ontario, found wait times for 90 per cent of patients last year spanned from 55 days to 117 days.
The report found progress in many areas, including five-year survival rates for most cancers and screening programs. Wait times for other cancer treatments, such as surgery and radiation, fell or held steady.”
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Of course, no comment or response from the local Liberal health-care monopolist, MPP Jim Bradley, was provided in this St.Catharines Standard story, or, in other subsequent follow-up stories. But somehow, Jim Bradley CAN be found by the St. Catharines Standard when it comes to spout on about his green bolshevism!

Who knows if anyone is even asking Jim Bradley to explain the INCREASING wait times in his Liberal-run health monopoly system?

Why, Good Ole Jim Bradley’s busy posing for his future election-pamphlet photos at the ground breaking of the new 1.5 billion-dollar west St. Catharines hospital! Can't you just see the front page of the Apr.29, 2009 Standard being used in Bradley's campaign literature? Made for the occasion! Hurrah! And again... no difficult questions asked of Good Ole Jimmy!! We can't spoil Good Ole Jim's day, can we?

Somehow, amidst all the fanfare and self-congratulatory backslapping, we are supposed to believe that the construction of a new hospital - in an already-failing state-run health system - will magically solve and mitigate all the systemically-inherent problems now manifest in the existing system; problems which are a symptom of the McGuinty Liberal’s failing no-patient-choice, single-payer, authoritarian health-care monopoly.

It’s good that the plans for the new hospital include spacious hallways – this will allow for more patient-laden stretchers to be packed into the hallways, waiting for emergency room access and beds; beds that Dalton McGuinty has already precluded from being 'in the cards'!

This is nothing but the appearance of structural or systemic "change" - in other words, little substance: classic Liberal Healthcare Duplicity.

The local lumbering Liberal state-run health-monopoly is only now (see Nicholas Kohler's Maclean's article, written Jun.23,2008) updating its outdated hospital: why so late?

Why? Because...well, why should they have bothered to do so earlier?!? There's no competition in Bradley's monopoly for patients, no incentives to improve service or technologies, no accountability when patients die due to inadequate or out-dated services and practices. Just get in line, shaddup, and wait to be blessed by Liberal largesse. Oh, and you can thankfully kiss Jim Bradley's Liberal ass while you're waiting.

The same old problems of statist monopoly health care will simply transfer to the shinier, expensive hallways of the new location. This is an unqualified Liberal guarantee.
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Sid Ryan: socialist star of own kristallnacht pogrom

click on photo to enlarge

Above is from the National Post editorial page, Jan.7, 2009

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Dapper Sid Ryan, clad in leather (and jackboots as well, probably) wants to target Israeli professors and then ban them from teaching in Ontario's schools, but, really - trust him - he's not a bigot!!

Hey, where's Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty's strong rebuttal condemning Butthead Sid's asinine provocations?

Oh, yeah...McGuinty 's got nothing to say.

When will McGuinty - the so-called "Education Premier" (!) - bother to speak up??

What's next on Sid's must-do list of priorities??

Here (from http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/knacht.html) is what worked for Goerring:

1 - Jews were required to turn over all precious metals to the government.
2 - Pensions for Jews dismissed from civil service jobs were arbitrarily reduced.
3 - Jewish-owned bonds, stocks, jewelry and art works can be alienated only to the German state.
4 - Jews were physically segregated within German towns.
5 - A ban on the Jewish ownership of carrier pigeons.
6 - The suspension of Jewish driver's licenses.
7 - The confiscation of Jewish-owned radios.
8 - A curfew to keep Jews of the streets between 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. in the summer and 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. in the winter.
9 - Laws protecting tenants were made non-applicable to Jewish tenants.

Come on, Dalton McGuinty, why are you hiding?

Wake up from your silence, Jim Bradley.

Nip this academic pogrom in the bud now. Why is Ontario's Liberal government not condemning Sid's crap?

Eden: the kind of faith-based school Liberals don't want for the rest of Ontario

Buddy Andres wrote in “The suggestion to close Eden should be dismissed”, (St. Catharines Standard, May 1, 2008):

“Re: Wynne is all bafflegab and hypocrisy, The Standard, April 19.

Despite my attempts to avoid the current educational storm that is raging here in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I have been helplessly drawn into the controversy.

Christina Blizzard's column was the straw that broke the camel's back, and simply cannot go unchallenged.

Her suggestion that Eden High School should be closed instead of Niagara District Secondary School truly baffles me.

Here we have a school that has been part of the Niagara-on-the-Lake fabric since the mid 1940s and was eventually absorbed by the District School Board of Niagara as an alternative school within the DSBN.

This unique union of a private school within the public school system was accomplished by school board administrators who understood the demographics of the Niagara area. I believe it was a first in the province.

Eden High School meets all provincial standards and promotes a curriculum that includes the Christian faith - not unlike the faith of the founding fathers of this country.
Eden has become wildly successful (200 students on the Grade 9 waiting list) and Christina Blizzard is advocating the closing of this institution in favour of a school experiencing a dramatic decrease in enrolment.

Eden must be doing something right - the school is bulging at the seams. However, let me add, that as a resident of Niagara-on-the-Lake, I would be very disappointed to see the demise of NDSS.

Is it any wonder that our society is dealing with so many problems when people like Blizzard advocate the closing of a school that promotes discipline, honesty, family values, respect for one another, and yes, even some religion.

Lord help us.”

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What is truly baffling is how anyone can write about how good Eden school is, yet not mention the political party whose mission it was in the 2007 election to destroy the idea of such schools by portraying them as divisive to society!

No mention in Andres letter of local Liberal MPP’s Kim Craitor, or Jim Bradley at all!

Jim and Kim denigrated the idea that Ontario should even have publicly-funded faith-based schools schools, such as Eden!

Jim and Kim retained power in Ontario by demonizing the educational model which has worked so well at Eden.

Jim and Kim’s Liberal Party did their best to downplay Eden as an anomaly, an oddity, an anachronism from bygone days.

Jim and Kim’s great secular Liberal Party made it clear that schools - such as Eden! - SHOULD NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY!!

During the election, Liberal campaign chair MPP Greg Sorbara claimed he wasn’t even familiar with Eden School!

Take a look at Blizzard’s column “Wynne is bafflegab and hypocrisy” (St. Catharines Standard, Apr.19, 2008) , which so irritated Andres:

“I can't decide. Does Eden High School prove the Liberals were right in their election campaign platform opposing public funding for faith-based schools?

Or does it show how absolutely correct the Tories were in asking that all faiths get school funding?

Located in St. Catharines, Eden is a Christian school, very successful and clearly popular with students and parents, since scores of kids are bused to it from neighbouring communities.
That supports the Tories' assertion - abandoned since their election rout - that religious schools are in great demand and provide an excellent education.

Supporting the Liberal platform is the fact the publicly-funded Christian school's success is eroding support for a truly public school. Niagara District Secondary School is Niagara-on-the-Lake's only public high school. Its enrolment is dwindling, since 168 students from Niagara-on-the-Lake now go to Eden - many of them bused there at taxpayer expense.
The school board insists this is just "courtesy" busing. The buses are going to St. Catharines for other programs anyway, so the Eden students can go along too. Still, it's hard to see how 168 bus spaces simply open up magically. That's about five buses of "courtesy" students.

Attendance at pre-school chapel is mandatory for Eden students and coincidentally the buses arrive in time for students to attend.

A number of Niagara-on-the-Lake parents are angry at the threatened closure of the public high school.

Taysha Palmer is looking down the road. When her 10-year-old daughter is ready for high school, she doesn't want her sitting on a bus two hours a day to go to the nearest schools in either Niagara Falls or St. Catharines.

Palmer points out there has been a lot of new development in Niagara-on-the-Lake recently, and the population is growing.

"A community of 25,000 people without a high school doesn't make sense," she said.
Eden High is especially popular with Mennonite parents, who like its uniforms, discipline and ethos.

On its website, the school describes itself as an "alternative" school within the District School Board of Niagara. As well as the pre-school chapel there's a Grade 9 Bible teaching program, described this way on its website: "Eden High School has a Bible teaching program for all Grade 9 students which runs from 8:25 to 8:50 a.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays before the official start of the school day. Grade 9 students will attend chapel on Mondays and Tuesdays. The Bible course is a survey of the main themes and content of the life of Christ, the book of Acts and an overview of the main themes of the Old Testament.

"Students must earn an overall mark of greater than 50 per cent to earn the privilege of attending chapel in Grade 10. Students who are not successful will be required to repeat either the entire course or part of the course the following year."

The board may claim the school is open to students of all faiths. Clearly, though, the reality is a Jewish, Muslim or atheist student is going to find the curriculum a tad unwelcoming.
This should be embarrassing for Education Minister Kathleen Wynne. After all, the Liberal government was returned to power proclaiming how private, faith-based schools would destroy the fabric of society.

"If you want the kind of Ontario where we invite children of different faiths to leave the publicly-funded system and become sequestered and segregated in their own private schools, then they should vote for Mr. Tory," Premier Dalton McGuinty said during the election.
I asked Wynne how the closure of NDSS sat with her, in light of how students are choosing faith-based schools in droves. And isn't this a model for a Jewish school in, say, Thornhill?
"The Education Act would not allow a public board to set up a faith-based school at this point," she said. So why does Eden get public funding, I asked?

"That school was established before those regulations were put in place and it's a grandfathered situation and the board has to make its decisions about its capital assets based on the best program delivery for kids."

Surely, though, on the heels of voters emphatically shutting out religious schools, if any school should close, it's the religious one.

You know what I think? I think Wynne is all bafflegab and hypocrisy. Either fund all faith-based schools or fund none."

*

Clearly the Liberals have created a two-tier system through their election hypocrisy.

Yet, the “the straw that broke the camel’s back” for Buddy Andres was NOT what his local Liberals were saying about faith-based funding, but somehow, Blizzard’s recent column ?!!

Clearly Eden represents everything Liberals such as Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor claim to vehemently abhor!

Clearly the choice still is: to fairly fund all faith-based schools - as John Tory set out - or now, to fairly NOT publicly fund any.

Clearly, Eden’s enemy isn’t Blizzard … it's the hypocritical McGuintyites!

Buddy Andres should be asking whether the Liberals were lying about faith-based funding then, or whether they're being honest now.

Andres writes about what “people like Blizzard advocate …”, but Andres simply ignores what politicians like McGuinty 'advocate' !!

Andres, actually, isn’t clear what he himself is advocating: is he advocating keeping Eden in this exclusive "grandfathered" grey-zone, which is denied to others in Ontario, while Liberals continue to pretend how fair and secular and enlightened their government is?!

Andres doesn’t provide an answer to the proposition Blizzard placed before the forked-tongue Liberals: “Either fund all faith-based schools or fund none”

Yet, funding some, not all, is simply discriminatory. Eden may well have to suffer the burden for the sins of the McGuintyites.

Jim Bradley's faith-based two-face

Does Jim Bradley have any public comments regarding Christina Blizzard’s column “Grit’s faith-based hypocrisy” (Toronto Sun, Mar.9, 2008)?

During one of the all-candidates' debates held in St. Catharines prior to the last election, incumbent MPP Bradley insinuated that faith-based funding would “fragment” public education. He also stated that his Liberal government “would not extend funding to faith-based schools in the province of Ontario”. Wasn’t Bradley in David Peterson’s cabinet when the Eden school funding originated back in the 1980’s??

Blizzard wrote: “Minister of Transportation Jim Bradley, a Liberal who represents St. Catharines, says the reason Eden is allowed to operate as a public school is because it offers the provincial curriculum and teachers belong to the OSSTF teacher union.” This is now Bradley’s criterion? He never once mentioned this standard for faith-based schooling during the election! It was, though, the PC position all along to bring faith-based schools into the provincial curriculum with certified teachers! (By the way, Bradley - now Mr. Transit - also said: "And we will see GO Transit coming to Niagara". When will that be, Sir?)

Will Bradley now stand up in the legislature and denounce Eden school for the divisive and segregationist institution it must be (if his Liberal election rhetoric was to be believed)?

I wonder if Bradley would comment on these previous essays regarding faith-based funding and his Liberal party's two-faced posturing:

* Liberal Greg Sorbara has amnesia about Eden High School

* Mennonite school in St.Catharines dismissed as "an anomaly" by Liberal education minister Wynne

* Segregation: The new Liberal education solution

Segregation: The new Liberal education solution

Here’s a comment on the so-called Afro-centric [Afri-centric?] schools which are being seriously proposed to be set up in Toronto, Ontario, posted by Anonymous on Halls of Macadamia website, Jan.28, 2008:

“If segregation in Toronto is such a great idea perhaps it should be more inclusive of the principle - blacks could have separate buses, drinking fountains, washrooms and restaurants. The Toronto District School Board should study the pre-civil rights era southern US, or for a more recent example they could copy Apartheid era South Africa, there's no need for them to re-invent the wheel. South Africa probably has leftover skin colour charts so our government school board will know who can and cannot be admitted, they could probably get a deal on those.”

Is this the Neanderthal regressive throwback to the past that is now going to occur in Liberal Ontario? Premier Dalton McGuinty says he’s “uncomfortable” with this idea – yet, what are his Liberals doing to stop it?

If racially-profiled education isn't “DIVISIVE” enough for McGuinty to act on, then what is?!

Christina Blizzard wrote in "The hypoGrits are back" (Toronto Sun, Feb.1, 2008) that McGuinty "shut down debate on faith-based school funding. Now [he] has the power to shut down this race-based school." McGuinty has "a moral obligation" to do so, because "segregation in schools was not just an issue but the defining issue" of the last election.

McGuinty recently said he won’t provide funding for the initiative; that the school board will have to carve it out of their own funds. Yet, their funds are nevertheless our PUBLIC funds –and the school board always gets bailed out by the province with subsidies at year’s end.

So when the school board comes-a-callin' at the end of this or next year with a deficit, how will McGuinty refuse them? On what basis will he say ‘oh, this much of your ongoing deficit was for your segregationist, race-based schools, so we’re not paying that part?'

It’s astounding that in the last Ontario election – just over three months ago! - the McGuinty Liberals made such a righteous (yet hypocritical) issue of faith-based educational funding (which would have brought various faith groups into an Ontario-approved curriculum). The Liberals made all kinds of nasty insinuations that the policy would be divisive, regressive, segregationist.
McGuinty waxed poetic with kumbaya-homilies about how all the children should sing and laugh and learn together in public schools.

Lorrie Goldstein (Toronto Sun, Sept. 19, 2007) asked: “So why is McGuinty, educated at a publicly funded, faith-based school, smearing Tory as a segregationist and fear-mongering by implying that whatever's going on in those privately-funded Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu and other faith-based schools, it's probably not anything good? Why is this self-described champion of diversity, stooping to this?”

The Branford Expositor (Sept.11, 2007) wrote: “"It's a bad idea," McGuinty said. "We want our kids coming together in the same classroom sitting side-by-side from various faiths."”

What... except for black kids??! Isn't that also "a bad idea"?? And then what about having an Asian-based, or a Latino-centric, or a "white"-centric education system, as well. That's got to be the next step...that is , unless you want to discrimate against them! What an example of politically-correct government egalitarianism gone out of control! Mouthing platitudes of faux-equality, while pracising the exact opposite!

During an election campaign all-candidates meeting in St. Catharines (Sept.27, 2007), a member of the audience remarked to Liberal MPP incumbent Jim Bradley: “Over the years I have appreciated the fact that at the faith-based school that my children attend, you have made many laudatory comments about contributions such schools make. Now your leader says that people like us are a threat to social cohesion in Ontario, and segregationist. And I presume that would include other non-public schools like Ridley, for instance. So I would appreciate knowing whether you agree with your leader on that.”

Bradley agreed with his Liberal leader, all the while trying to appear that he didn’t agree. Who would have dreamed that three months after their faith-based hypocrisy that Bradley's Liberals would turn the other cheek when race was used to segregate Ontario’s education system - under the Liberal's watch. Does Jim Bradley agree with race-based education occurring during his Liberal government's tenure?

And let’s not forget that during the last election, just like with health care, Liberals strived to pretend there was nothing wrong within their educational system, either - a system they ran for four years. The Falconer Report’s findings didn’t magically appear in the last several weeks – all that was percolating in the educational system for years. The Liberals IGNORED it! The kids were failing in the Liberal Utopian school system, because the Liberal school system failed them. So the "new" answer; the "new" policy of "inclusiveness", under the Liberals, is educational apartheid!

And the Liberals have done nothing to stop this odious ‘progress to the past’.

So now, the Liberals acquiesce to a new divisive and regressive “solution’: plain ol’ re-packaged segregation.

As with the Liberal’s duplicity on healthcare, that this 'development’ is actually being implemented in McGuinty’s Ontario is FLICKING unbelieveable.

But hey: this must be the good kind of racial segregation: it’s Liberal!

Canadian health-care: vouchers, rhetoric, and revolution

Peter Shawn Taylor wrote in “Vouchers look pretty in pink”, (National Post, Dec.10, 2007):

“You may have missed the release of the federal Liberal's Pink Book II last week. Certainly the Liberal Women's Caucus new women's platform was overshadowed by other female issues, such as the bizarre allegation that Tory MP James Moore was ogling lingerie models in the House of Commons or, more seriously, Liberal MP Belinda Stronach's recent mastectomy.

But if you did miss it, you probably don't realize that the Liberals have suddenly decided to endorse vouchers in lieu of direct government involvement in social programs. The reason? The Liberals claim government delivery of social services can be inefficient, poorly targeted, supply-constrained and limiting of choices for recipients. Better to leave it to the private sector.
This surprising new position represents a massive change in perspective for a party that has traditionally supported heavy centralization and government control over social programs at the expense of personal choice and the market. Medicare is a perfect case in point. So the voucher issue clearly deserves greater daylight. Unfortunately, further investigation suggests it is just a brief break in the clouds for the Liberals, and not a sign of any broader dawning of enlightenment or economic practicality. But at least it's a start.

Pink Book II's chapter on poverty notes that the traditional approach towards affordable housing has been direct government investment in subsidized apartments. It hasn't worked. "Not only is the creation of new subsidized housing costly, but subsidized housing benefits only a small number of households who are in need," the report states. The report notes that reliance on government-supplied housing creates supply constraints which in turn cause "lengthy wait lists and other restrictions."

Instead of this top-down approach, Pink Book II argues in favour of a "portable shelter subsidy." A simpler name would be a housing voucher. This could be a monthly cash benefit or a tax credit delivered to low income Canadians deemed in need of housing support. While housing is largely a provincial matter, and affordable housing itself can be a rather vague concept, vouchers are worth exploring in their own right.

With vouchers, recipients are freed to make their own choices. With respect to housing, they can choose where and how to live instead of being constrained by government building decisions. Such a system is more convenient and discreet for recipients, better targeted to those truly in need and far less expensive to run from a taxpayer's point of view. Quebec, B.C. and Manitoba already have similar programs, as does New Zealand and Germany. The Federation of Rental-Housing Providers of Ontario has long advocated vouchers for that province. (Although the report's claim that former Liberal housing minister Joe Fontana was an early advocate of vouchers is blatant revisionist history.)

To summarize, a new federal Liberal report eschews rent controls, publicly funded construction and all the other failed but doctrinaire government approaches to housing for the poor in favour of vouchers, choice and the free market. It is an acceptance of the practical over the ideological.”

*

I wonder if our local provincial Liberal, MPP Jim Bradley, will heed the Grit feds call for the end of rent controls in Ontario?! After all, rent control is a provincial law here. And we all should remember the subsidized housing fiasco which David Peterson's Liberals, including Jim Bradley, were embroiled in in the 80s. But now, the Liberal family is decrying rent controls!? And now recognizing that creating and perpetuating government housing kingdoms is inefficient?! Oh, my! So, why should healthcare still be a monopoly?

Speaking of health care, will Jim Bradley stand up in the House and call for the Liberal Commitment to the Future of Medicare act's abolishment, as well as call for health vouchers to be established in Ontario? This would bring more market, rather than government, control into the health system.

Michael Coren wrote in "Two-tier trauma", (Toronto Sun, Dec.8, 2007):

"Canada's locked-in thinking on medical care needs hospitalization

Last week it was revealed that the president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Brian Day, jumped the queue to obtain speedy treatment for his five-year-old daughter who had a tumour in her leg. There was a chance that the little girl might have had cancer and the public system required her to wait six days for a verdict. Dr. Day used connections to have the results back within a day.

Thus the debate begins. Is the man a hypocrite, should he be punished? Of course not. He did what any parent would do in a similar situation. To have done otherwise would have made the man a monster. But in discussing Dr. Day's personal actions we have missed the point entirely. The good doctor would not have been forced into such a position if we had a less authoritarian medical system.

Along with Cuba and North Korea, we make criminals of doctors who dare to set up clinics where people can spend their own money on the health care of their own choice. It's hardly an extreme proposition. Just as we are able to buy the cars, food and clothes we want, we should be able to buy the health care we want.

We have, for example, a public education system but only a lunatic would argue that Canadians should not be allowed to buy private education for their children. The public system still works. And as some of the leading leftists in the country have sent their children to private schools, we can only conclude that this system must work too.

Those who resist two-tier medicine argue that public medicine would suffer because the best doctors and nurses would leave for the private system, where there would be better money. This assumes that the private system would pay more than the public system (in fact the public system currently pays doctors extremely generous salaries). It also assumes that medical professionals are only interested in profit, which is damning of doctors and largely untrue.
The argument continues that the poor would receive no treatment or shoddy treatment. But this is not the case in Europe, where most countries have some form of two-tier medicine and where everybody is covered. In countries such as France and Germany the least able to pay invariably receive swifter treatment than most Canadians.

Then there is the point that Canadian-trained doctors should have to pay back some of the cost of their subsidized education if they work in private medicine. It's strange that we don't apply this standard to other graduates who work in the private sector or even leave the country. The problem, however, is easily remedied. All doctors should be obliged to devote a portion of their time and a proportion of their career to the public system.

FILMMAKER FANTASY

Nobody wants the American medical regime -- not even the Americans. Not that it is the fantasy given us by trendy filmmakers who, ironically, usually enjoy the best medical care money can buy. There are numerous other models throughout the world that could be adapted to Canada, from countries that have far more in common with us than does the United States.

Yet when we even discuss this issue we are marginalized as sinister, un-Canadian and elitist. Not so. We're just brave enough to admit that a failing system has to be repaired by revolution rather than rhetoric."

*

Coren nails all his points well. There's another counter to the leftist argument that medical workers would leave the public system for the private system. (By the way, the same argument was tried and dismissed by the Quebec court in Chaoulli, so why would the same argument somehow be more valid in Ontario?)

Firstly, this transition to a market health-economy, were it to occur, should be phased in, not just 'happen'. We are so embedded in our current medicare myth, that we need to be weaned off our dependence on it. However, a charter challenge, like Ontario's McCreith/Holmes case, might quickly alter the landscape (which is what the government just might be hoping for, so they won't actually have to make the decision themselves: 'the courts made us do it'! It is best to end the rhetoric and prepare and implement market-reforms now, regardless of the challenge's outcome.

Secondly, the same unions that fear-monger about all the defections that would supposedly occur, should have no problem with this: during the phase-in period (say, five years), simply ban any present public-system union health care worker from leaving to a parallel system. Easy.

Unions are all about banning, preventing, barring, limiting, exempting. They use these tactics to their own advantage. So, they can inform their membership that they will forced to remain employed in the public-system, which for so many years we have been forced into, and which for so many years has had the privilege to force competition away from its cozy monopoly.

Let their membership stew about that. Let the union bosses see what their membership says about that. Meanwhile, during the transition, the private parallel system(s) would be free to take the entreprenuerial risk to source, train, administer, finance, and employ another cadre of med staff, and facilities, at what ever cost and timeline that may take. And this would have nothing whatsoever to do with those strident lefties who for years opposed even small health care reforms, to the current system's eventual detriment; they would remain to carry on in their own (publicly-paid) feifdom.

Why, it's only fair. Let the patient decide.

Liberal Greg Sorbara has amnesia about Eden High School

James Cowan wrote an article in The National Post (Sat. Sept.29, 2007) titled “Mennonite school used against Liberals”, focusing on Eden High School in St. Catharines, Ont., which joined the Ontario public system in 1988.

Cowan quoted Conservative spokesman Mike Van Soelen noting that: “five current Cabinet ministers - including Greg Sorbara, the Finance Minister and Liberal campaign chairman - were members of Mr. Peterson's caucus. They would have been at the Cabinet table. They must have believed in it at the time."

On Oct.1, 2007, I was listening to Greg Sorbara on a radio interview (CFRB 1010, The Motts show, approx. 2pm) where Sorbara claimed he was unaware of Eden High School, and would have to find out more about it! Has anyone heard that interview?

Sorbara, the campaign chair of the Liberal party which is trying to discredit faith-based funding, now says he doesn’t know of the successful example that his own Liberals funded? Why doesn’t Sorbara ask his current Liberal cabinet colleague Jim Bradley, who has represented St. Catharines for 30 years, about Eden? Bradley too was a Peterson cabinet minister, and Eden School is in Bradley’s riding!

You’d think Bradley sees the obvious contradiction; the discriminatory double-standard of his party's position, but, as he admitted in the Ridley debate on Sept.26, he’s simply toeing the party line.

Maybe Bradley should consider the example of another veteran Liberal, Monte Kwinter, who announced he will not be a hypocrite and will not support McGuinty’s flip-flop on the funding-fairness issue. McGuinty, who in the past said he was not opposed to faith-based funding, now claims it’s regressive and leads to sequestering and segregation. Is that what occurred when McGuinty and his family went to Catholic school? Is that what Bradley also thinks of Eden High?

Today Bradley sits mute, while his leader Dalton McGuinty attacks faith-based school funding as divisive and backwards, while Liberal Education Minister Kathleen Wynne (who, apparently, has heard of Eden School) nevertheless callously dismisses this school, along with its 780 students, as "an anomaly". You’d think if Eden was so divisive, Sorbara would’ve known about it!

Now Sorbara has amnesia, and Bradley, sadly, is just a lapdog to McGuinty’s hypocritical party line.
*

Mennonite school in St.Catharines dismissed as "an anomaly" by Liberal Kathleen Wynne

James Cowan’s column in the National Post, "Mennonite school used against Liberals" (Sept.29, 2007) had a St.Catharines focus:

“A public school in St. Catharines that for two decades has offered chapel services and Bible classes for its Mennonite students proves Dalton McGuinty's arguments against funding religious schools are "nonsense," according to the Progressive Conservatives.
John Tory, the Conservative leader, has promised to spend $400-million to fund Jewish, Muslim and other religious schools if elected on Oct. 10.
Mr. McGuinty, the Premier, opposes the plan, saying it would be divisive and deprive the public system of money. However, Mr. McGuinty also defends continued public funding of Catholic schools because it is legally required under the 1867 British North America Act.
But Mike Van Soelen, a Conservative spokesman, said the Liberal leader's constitutional argument fails to explain why his government provides full funding for Eden High School, which bills itself as "an alternative Christian high school."
"Clearly this proves we've already gone beyond funding Catholic schools," Mr. Van Soelen said.
"This undermines the constitutional argument that is used by the Liberals and shows that argument is just nonsense."
Eden High joined the public system in 1988 during the Liberal government of premier David Peterson.
Mr. Van Soelen noted five current Cabinet ministers -- including Greg Sorbara, the Finance Minister and Liberal campaign chairman -- were members of Mr. Peterson's caucus
"They would have been at the Cabinet table. They must have believed in it at the time," Mr. Van Soelen said.
Kathleen Wynne, the Liberal Education Minister, yesterday described Eden High as "an anomaly" and said its existence does not justify the fundamental changes that Mr. Tory is proposing.
"There is a difference between a single school that is in the system and making a systemic change across the province that would introduce a very different way of educating kids," she said, adding, "I don't see it as a contradiction." ”
*
St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley was in Peterson’s cabinet as well. Why is he marching lockstep with his Liberal reactionaries today? Why Is Bradley denying the same right to other faith-based Ontario schools that his own government granted to Eden (the so-called “anomaly”) which exists in his own riding, right in Niagara? You’d think he sees the obvious contradiction, the discriminatory double-standard, but, as he admitted in the Ridley debate on Sept.26, he’s simply toeing the party line. (and giving the boot to funding fairness, too)
At least one long time Liberal, Monte Kwinter, has now stood up to say he will not be a hypocrite and will not support McGuinty’s flip-flop on this issue. McGuinty, calling it unfair, once said he was not opposed to faith-based funding; now he claims it’s regressive and leads to sequestering and segregation. Is that what occurred when McGuinty and his family went to Catholic school? Is that what Bradley thinks of Eden High?

Liberal Jim Bradley: tired and uninspired during debate

Further to the St. Catharines Standard's (Sept.27, 2007) story, “Go Transit a go with all candidates”, (regarding the all-candidates debate held at Ridley College in St. Catharines on Sept.26, 2007), here’s what some audience members asked during the question session which didn't make it into the paper:

-a man to Jim Bradley: “Political integrity has become a key issue for me. You need to convince me that I should vote for you, knowing that that vote would re-elect the party leader who has devastated the meaning of integrity. Just to clarify, I think he should have resigned after he broke his promise – and that wasn’t even on your party’s mind.” [Bradley blamed his party’s broken promises on the deficit].

-a man to Bradley: “Over the years I have appreciated the fact that at the faith-based school that my children attend, you have made many laudatory comments about contributions such schools make. Now your leader says that people like us are a threat to social cohesion in Ontario, and segregationist. And I presume that would include other non-public schools like Ridley, for instance. So I would appreciate knowing whether you agree with your leader on that.” [Bradley agreed while trying to appear that he didn’t agree.]

-a boy to Bradley: “In my school there are split classes in every single grade, and over thirty kids in each class. Do you believe this is an improvement in the past four years?” This young student’s question actually elicited outright laughs from the audience. [A chagrined Bradley bafflegabbed his way through that little inconsistency from his Liberal’s last election promise to cap class sizes, by using rural schools as his excuse. (How many rural schools does St. Catharines have, anyway?) I’m sure the boy, and most everyone else, was probably more confused after Bradley’s answer.]

Bradley said about healthcare: “First of all the Liberal Party in Ontario and Canada believes in public healthcare, and the delivery of public healthcare. We had instances where we saw for instance, radiation treatment going to the private sector that could have been delivered at Sunnybrook hospital by the public sector. That was reversed because what happens when you allow it to go private is that it takes resources and personnel from the public sector and goes to the private sector, so while it may be an illusion that you are reducing the wait list, what in fact you are doing is simply moving to private health care.”

What Bradley fails to see is that, for suffering patients, wait-lists are not “an illusion”; and, that wait-lists are not a result of any alleged failure by the private sector - they are a predictable consequence of the ideological health-care monopoly which Bradley and his rigid Liberals unreasonably cling to. Also, Bradley simply ignores that the same tired allegations he still propagates today in Ontario were put forward by Ted Marmor (witness for the defence) during Quebec’s 2005 Chaoulli Supreme court trial – and were dismissed.

All in all, Liberal incumbent Jim Bradley’s performance was tired, uninspired, and wholly unsatisfying.

Liberals: from hypocrites to bigots

On Michael Coren’s show (CTS, Sept.25, 2007) his guests included Bernie Farber, Kathleen Wynne and John Vanasselt. They talked about faith based school funding. Wynne claimed first, that "infrastructure" would cost too much for discrimination to end in Ontario (what a proud Liberal!); then, she blamed the constitution; then, as expected, she played the old Harris card to sum up her sorry defense of Ontario’s educational double standard. Of course, no real answer was given by Wynne, the current Minister of Education, to Farber’s question. Some comments by the panellists were:

Farber: “What is the problem of eliminating religious discrimination finally in this province? How can it be, in the year 2007, that we have the only jurisdiction in the world that permits one faith based group to have special rights others don’t? How is that possible?”
Wynne: “The argument I’m making is that we’re not talking about 400 or 500 million dollars, we’re talking about into the billions of dollars once you start to house and put infrastructure in place and we cannot afford to go there.”
*
Vanasselt: “The issue of infrastructure has been handled in the other provinces where they fund faith based schools. They’re not issues. [gives examples: Edmonton, Manitoba, British Columbia] The educational infrastructure is not an issue. It’s not an issue anywhere in the Western world. Why would it be that way in Ontario?”
*
Farber: “Kathleen, you didn’t answer the question. I just want you to answer the question about discrimination. For a whole hour I’ve been asking you to answer that question. Is it discriminatory or is it not? Yes or no? No politician from your party has answered that…Is it discriminatory in your opinion? Don’t give me a political answer.”
Wynne: “It’s a historic tension. And we have historic tensions across the country."
Farber: “And so we continue with discrimination because of “historical tension”; is that what your telling me?”
Wynne: “The worst discrimination is against the mass of children in this province who are in our publicly funded system who need resources that were taken away by Mike Harris and now, John Tory…”
*
Vanasselt: “The suggestion that in this largely multicultural province that the only place to propagate democracy is in public schools and the language that’s being used by the party in power is just absurd. The notion that these other schools and these other communities do not contribute to democracy, to the growth and the advancement and the development of this province it remains offensive…you can’t answer Bernie’s question about discrimination - this is not going to get better, is it?”
*
Coren (to Wynne): “I don’t think you actually believe this at all. I think John Tory brought this forward and you thought at Liberal headquarters ‘we can get him on this’. And in fact it’s entirely Liberal to say that you can have funding for faith schools. I’ve heard New Democrats and Liberals say to me ‘yeah, it’s not against our ideology. But you knew this would be real loser for the Tories, and you bashed away and you know what? You’re doing well at it, you’re doing very well at it indeed."
Wynne: “That’s not true.”
*
More and more, these Ontario Liberal hypocrites are just looking like bigots.

Is Liberal McGuinty 'a liar in everything but name', or is he lying?

Ontarians saw the televised leader's debate on Sept. 20, 2007. The Conservative leader, John Tory, was clearly the overall winner - sincere and to-the-point on all the issues throughout the debate, projecting his message clearly, and showing himself as a capable and trustworthy leader. We saw the current Liberal premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty - a proud product of our Catholic 'separate school' system - proudly try to justify his hypocritical stand to deny education funding to a minority of other faith groups in Ontario. Saying one thing in opposition, then doing something else in power, has become pretty much a hallmark standard operating procedure for the Liberals, whether on healthcare, education, the environment...the list goes on. (Remember 'flip-flop McGuinty'?)
Seeing McGuinty's debate performance, reminded me of two articles, both of which deal with the Liberal's hypocritical stand on the faith-funding issue:
The first article, by the Toronto Sun's Lorrie Goldstein, was published yesterday, Sept. 19, 2007. The second article, by Enzo Di Matteo of Now Magazine, was published SIX YEARS AGO, in 2001!
Bizarrely McGuinty's Liberals, in opposition, were in favour then of what they claim to vehemently oppose today! Does anyone really have to point out the Liberal propensity for lying, or are they spinning that yarn all by themselves? You have to really wonder what the Liberals who were mentioned in Now Magazine's piece then - and who are still around - must be thinking today. If instituting faith based funding was a matter of Liberal fairness before, why is it not a matter of fairness still today? Why the new-found prejudice?

***

"McGuinty has done this before"
By Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun, Sept. 19, 2007:

"Question: Why did the McGuinty go to a publicly funded, faith-based school to tell us Conservative Leader John Tory's plan to publicly fund-faith based schools endangers public education?
Answer: Because it's all he's got, turkeys.
So far, despite media hysteria, the polls haven't really changed. Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberals are stuck at 40% support -- with the Conservatives stalled five or six points back.
While those numbers give McGuinty enough to win, they won't give him a majority government. If that holds, McGuinty won't be celebrating Oct. 10. That's why McGuinty keeps doing his Chicken Little routine that on Monday, saw him descend on a poor, unsuspecting publicly-funded faith-based school (Catholic) to denounce public funding for faith-based schools (non-Catholic).
A few years ago, McGuinty, his past and present education ministers (Gerard Kennedy and Kathleen Wynne), and other Liberals said the policy he's now denouncing was the fair thing to do.
So why is McGuinty, educated at a publicly funded, faith-based school, smearing Tory as a segregationist and fear-mongering by implying that whatever's going on in those privately-funded Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu and other faith-based schools, it's probably not anything good?
Why is this self-described champion of diversity, stooping to this?
Because what else is he going to do, silly, to get his support up to the 43% level he needs for a majority government?
Run on his record of keeping his election promises? Ha, ha ha!
Argue that John Tory isn't up to the job? Actually, when asked, more voters prefer Tory as premier than McGuinty.
Finally, if McGuinty is so proud of his record, why isn't he running on it?
Why does he run back to denouncing funding faith-based schools every time anyone mentions the crisis in long-term health care, job losses in the manufacturing sector or that Ontario's coal-fired generating plants, which he promised to close this year, will be polluting our air until at least 2014?
It's because he wants to win, silly, and he'll say anything to do it. Which, of course, is exactly what he did in 2003."

***

"Two-faced grits, They can't make up their minds on private school funding"
By Enzo Di Matteo, NOW Magazine, May 24-30, 2001, issue Vol.20, No.38:

"We thought Dalton Mcguinty, aka premier-in-waiting, was ready for prime time. But last week's fiasco over Tory plans to extend tax credits to private and religious schools shows that it doesn't take much to knock the Liberal leader off the rails.
The Grits should have been making political hay by pointing out how the Tory proposal is nothing but a break for the Richie Riches who send their kids to Upper Canada College, Havergal and other private institutions of finer learning.
Instead, McGuinty's Grits are in damage-control mode. And the leader himself is facing a caucus mini-revolt. How did it come to this?
Shoot-from-the-lip McGuinty, it turns out, was a little too quick to condemn the Tory proposal. Several members of his caucus -- at least half a dozen, one MPP says -- are not averse to extending tax credits to religious schools, which is also part of the Tory plan.
It turns out McGuinty isn't opposed to the idea either, if we're to believe the tune he's singing now, but that's not the impression he gave when he wrote former Foreign Affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy on the subject last year. That was shortly after the United Nations criticized Ontario for funding Catholic schools but not those of other faiths.
The Liberal leader now says money for religion-based educational institutions should be made available, just not right away. First, he says, we need to fix a public school system that's in total disarray.
As usual, the Liberals want to have it both ways.
What a mess. Still, Gerard Kennedy, the Grits' education critic, doesn't see a contradiction in the Liberal position.
He contends that funding for religious schools doesn't necessarily mean less money for the public system. Both can be accommodated, he says. How?
"We don't have the answer to that at this time," says Kennedy.
If he will admit to any failing, it's that the Liberals haven't been able to articulate their position clearly enough. Go figure.
"People are talking about religious schools, which is exactly what the government wants," he says. "But the real beneficiaries are the private-sector schools. We're paying the price, in terms of communication."
On CBC Radio Tuesday morning (May 22), McGuinty said, just in case there's any confusion, that a Liberal government would repeal the Tory measure.
But there's still the small matter of that caucus revolt. MPP Monte Kwinter is a long-time proponent of funding for religious schools, notwithstanding the fact that the feds already offer a tax credit to parents who send their kids to parochial schools.
"I've always supported full funding for faith-based schools," Kwinter tells NOW. "There should be some recognition in the (provincial) tax regime. I'm personally delighted that that's happened. I don't think anyone accepts the argument that Catholic schools should be funded and the others not."
Grit MPP Michael Bryant is another who has publicly expressed support for funding for religious schools.
Bryant, whose own St. Paul's riding, like Kwinter's, includes a substantial Orthodox Jewish constituency, won many a vote campaigning on this very issue in the last election.
But this week the MPP seems less anxious to fan the flames of division within the Grit caucus. He declined to respond to several requests from NOW for comment.
Kathleen Wynne, who unsuccessfully sought the Liberal nomination in St. Paul's before the last election, says the party could have avoided this mess if it had taken what she calls a "principled stand" in favour of funding for religious schools during the election.
She says she personally urged McGuinty's advisers to do just that, apparently to no avail.
"I'm disappointed we didn't come out earlier on this," Wynne says. "I think we could have claimed some ground."
Wynne is talking now about moving toward a confederated school board system. The horror. McGuinty also has to worry about the teachers unions he's been stroking.
Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation president Earl Manners says it's premature to say whether Grit support for faith-based schools will mean no OSSTF support for the Libs come the next election.
But there is a subtle warning. Manners says the Grits "need to oppose this legislation without equivocation."
The Liberals will be out in full force this week flailing away at the Tory plan. Election-style factsheets and pamphlets have been prepared. MPPs will be working the phones. But the damage may already have been done. "

***

The Liberals are attempting, in this 2007 election, to make their opposition to faith-based funding as their defining issue, for they have no credibility left on essentially anything else of consequence, having broken practically all their promises over the last four years. And when you look at it, do they sincerely even have faith in their own defining issue?