Hypocrite Liberal McGuinty coyly avoids issue of bibles in public schools!

So McGuinty's Liberal hypocrites - the same ones who claimed faith-based schooling was divisive to society! - have suddenly become silent on the issue of bibles in public schools!!
This (not healthcare!) was the McGuinty Liberals' Number One issue in the 2007 Ontario election!!
But don't worry, though, folks  -  rest assured that the Bradley-Brown-Nosers at the St.Catharines Standard will not be asking Liberal hypocrite MPP Jim Bradley for a comment!
It might might make Ole Jimmy's Liberals  look bad!
HahahahahahahahahahahahaheeheehahahahahahahohohoHAHhahahahahahaheeheehahahahahaHAHhaha.........!!!!!!
*

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.
*

The "blood-libel" spin at the St.Catharines Standard

It was funny (no, sad... pathetic, really...) to read Grant Lafleche's St.Catharines Standard column Jan.15, 2011, and to see how this newpaper, the epitome of the "lamestream media" in Niagara, functions.
Here is a Standard reporter who for years, throughout numerous stories, has worked diligently to provide fawning support to the Liberal government; in many stories, if the subject of the story is a provincial issue, the Liberals are simply not even mentioned. The biased spin, the Liberal-friendly treacle from Lafleche and the St. Catharines Standard is palpable.
The Jan.15 column is indicative of how the Standard's cross-border liberal-friendly smarm works.
Lafleche's column exists solely to bash Sarah Palin, in the guise of saying she is not to blame for the Tuscon murders!
[This is obvious - we didn't need Lafleche to 'prove' Palin's innocence, since she was not connected to the murders, despite most of the lamestream leftist media's lookit-we-told-you-so allegations; no, Lafleche's column was a slick opportunity to simply attack Palin and conservatives.]
Lafleche chortles derisively over how dumb Palin is, and how she's too stupid to know - as Lafleche sagely does (because he's opining on the... ah... facts) - about the supposed anti-semitism in her use of the term blood-libel.

Gawrsh, Lafleche's is so smart, and Palin's so stupid, cuz she's a conservative, and stupid conservatives everywhere, even in Canada, believe in 'sky-gods' - right, Grant?!

Can't wait for Lafleche to spin and rationalize Democrat Steve Cohen's use of the same term - "blood libel" - in a nasty smear against all U.S. Republicans to score political points in a fear-mongering ploy to shove obamacare onto Americans.

It's ok for Cohen to babble about nazi Goebells, though - as long as conservatives are smeared, right?! You betcha it is! There's no 'emotional jingoism' there, right!! Grant Lafleche won't bother to write about that, as only a dumb conservative's use of the term is offensive; having an educated Democrat use the term simply shows that the particular Democrat - similar to Lafleche - is... um... "smart" and "well-meaning".

Many of us have no use for Lafleche's tainted-reports nor his religion-bashing opinions. The great wise Lafleche has no problems attacking priests. What about rabbis, Grant - are you going to put a bag over their heads and hit them with a club, as you say you'd like to do to priests?!
*
John Robbins (in a July 9, 2015 Bullet News story) also finally tagged onto Lafleche's years of intolerant smarmbaggery.
*

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"
*
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?
*

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.”

*

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

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?

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?