Filed under: Politics | Tags: Catholic, Christian schools, dalton mcguinty, education, election, faith-based, fundamentalist, funding formula, Global, hindu, Howard Hampton, Human Rights, islam, Islamic, jewish, john tory, Liberal, liberals, NDP, Ontarians, Ontario, Ontario Liberals, PC, racism, schools, terrorist
The faith based funding issue should have been about simple human rights. The U.N has already indicated that the practice of funding only Catholic schools in Ontario is unjust. John Tory hoped to address this issue by fixing the problem and allowing fairness. Fund all or fund none, and he opted to fund all. Unfortunately, reality occurred and we found out that Ontarians are actually a lot more racist, ignorant and bigoted then they like to believe. Not all Ontarians are like this, but based on call-in shows and the general mood of people, many are. In reality the question should have been “would you like Islamic schools to get public funding”. Many Ontarians have extreme stereotypes about Islam, to some no fault of their own. The images they see, and are bombarded with, tend to be on the extreme. On the radio comments, in regards to faith-based education, revolved around fundamentalist Islam elements and “terrorists”. I have even heard a voter say that they do not what terrorist schools to get funding. Now a lot of this is based on fear, since 9/11, but in essence we still extremely fearful and ignorant in Ontario. Now the question is, does that fear show how successful the media has been in planting the wrong image about Islam in the minds of Canadians? Because it’s absolutely amazing how clueless people are about various religions in Ontario. Rather than be properly educated about any group of people, we like to remain in our sheltered domain; ignorant to the facts around us.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: 2007, Catholic, discrimination, education, election, Hampton, Howard, Liberal, McGuinty, NDP, October, Ontario, PC, schools
With the entire buzz about faith-based education, it seems that we have not dealt with the underlying problem facing education. The funding formula is truly something that must be looked at. Although I may agree that the status quo cannot continue, in reference to funding only Catholic schools, my worry is that the PC Party of Ontario has not taken time to look at the funding formula? What will happen, as parents take their children out of public schools and place them in faith-based schools? Will the funding formula continue to apply to ALL schools? I suspect that there would be a lot of Catholic High Schools closing also, since a lot of parents, who are not necessarily Catholic, send their children there. Now I wonder if a new school is available, will parents prefer it and cause a mass exodus of children to other faith-based schools. The NDP seems to be the only party with a platform devoted to public education, leaving the debate over faith-based schools alone. The PC’s and the Liberals have interesting ideas and plans. Albeit, I do not understand what Dalton McGuinty was thinking by attacking faith-based education, while doing a press release from a Catholic school.
It seemed kind of ironic and odd to me. How does that play to the viewer on TV? Now that the cookie is out of the jar this issue will not go away. Maybe this was their master plan all along? Maybe they are all working together on this? Get us talking about it and when we are angry enough we may just vote in an NDP government. I think we did that before? Maybe with a majority they will just remove funding from all Catholic schools or merge them into one public educational system. Hey, its not NDP policy, but who really knows anyway. All bets are off when you got a majority government and I don’t think anyone thought they would have won the election last time. Pipe dream or nightmare?
By: Torontomatic
