Aug 29, 2007 01:25
As many of you know, my political leanings are mostly Conservative (or, more accurately, Progressive Conservative). Now, here in Ontario we have an election coming up, and from what I've seen with the PC platform, I have no problem supporting it, except for one thing, and that's the issue of religious schools. John Tory wants to bring all religious schools under provincial funding, instead of doing what the rest of the country has done and scrap funding for the Catholics. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? I thought we were a secular society. Not to mention the increased tax burden this will cause (aren't the Conservatives all about easing/lessening the tax burden?). This also means less money for the public, secular schools since the money will be spread around more schools. Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the Catholic School Board, on top of government funding, get funding from the Catholic church? And aren't the province's Catholic boards generally better off than the public boards? So the religious schools will get funding from two places, while the public board gets funding from only one place. No matter which way I look at it, it's a bad idea. I'm still voting for them, but it's still a bad idea. I really hope that John Tory rethinks his position because if this is made a big enough of an issue, it could lose the PC's some votes.