Pollution: Ontario Pollution hypocrisy of Dalton McGuinty as bad as his furtherance of school inquality

Sorry, folks, but this time out my source of information and irritation is limited to an article in the French intellectual newspaper LeDevoir out of Montréal. I'll look for English-lang updates later.

My thorn for scorn is the report that Dalton McGuinty is supporting American states in suing the USA Federal government "in their judical combat against Washington and the main businesses that contribute to the smog shroud in the Northeast region" of the USA (which includes Ontario geographically). But as a PhD biologist reminds me, Toronto's smog, a daily assault on my lungs and his, is not due in the greatest part to climate change (science does not have evidence that humans are the main cause of climate change; look to the sun, O ideologue). Climate change and pollution are not identitical terms, by any means. I mean by pollution and by smog enshrouding Toronto the mainly auto, truck, bus, and plane exhaust that McGuinty simply will not address. He could cut Toronto's smog at least 70%, by outlawing obsolescently-fuelled vehicles in the metropolis. He could fire up the Ontario auto industry with multiplied thousands of new jobs were he to do the right thing and require systematic rapid change-over of vehichles otherwise fuelled, to non-pollutant motors, engines, and exhaust. This is his incredible hypocrisy - suing the US government over a small percentage of the pollutants that drift in from abroad, while at the same time having nothing programmatic to change over to life-saving alternatively-fuelled vehicles here in Ontario's great metropolis. Keep the polluting vehicles out of Metro! We have to live in auto/truck excrement, because he can't give leadership that is true to principle. We have to pay more and more for hospitalization of all whose lungs give out on them or freeze up, because he can't get his priorities strait.

This is a way of life with Dalton. He benefitted from a state-supported Catholic school-system education, one that since his day had been brawt to the level of equality, not by the Liberals who used to command "the Catholic vote," but by the daring changes of a previous non-Catholic non-Liberal Premier of the Province. McGuinty's kids and presumably those of his entire clan have benefitted from not just support but equalization of state-funding for the school system of their religious choice. But other people in the province get no such choice. Before the Guint came to power, the UN's Human Rights Commission sent a panel to the province upon the complaint of citizens belonging to other than the two established religions here - the secular Humanist school system, and the Roman Catholic school system. Other religions are discriminated against on a matter that becomes daily more urgent, and has been more urgent every day during the last three decades. I will only speak of Protestant Christians who feel their quality of life and spiritual existence is drastically diminished by not having recourse for their children to schools functioning according to a vision of life, values, and preparation for a vocation where those kids can grow up under a Protestant Christian educational option to serve God, nieghbours, and creation in a society where their kind of Christianity has free course in the public square just as much as the atheism that would sew their mouths shut unless they follow only secularist patterns of speech.

As said, a complaint was made to the UN Human Rights Commission, which has become in the meantime a sharp caricature of itself. Still, the ruling of some years back has not been rescinded, its arguments are solid, and religious discrimination is a structure of Ontario education as the UN panel decided and reported. Louise Arbour, a franco-Ontarienne borne in Montréal, once Justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario, once Chief Prosecutor for War Crimes in Rwanda, once Justice of Canada's Supreme Court, now UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, she knows all about this injustice to Protestant Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and many other communities who want, need, and are competent to operate schools of good will to all Canadian society, where their differing worldview (neither Catholic nor atheist Humanist), set the tone and guide the curriculum insofar as it varies from the provinicial. This Mdme. Arbour recently visited Catholic schools in Ontario, some of which are legally-provided as French-speaking. She had no difficulty in visiting these schools of religious discrimination without making public comment on their unfair privileged status, along with the atheist Humanist main system. I wonder if the Guint and Madame talked about the glaring injustice in Ontario education whereby the state here practices structural religious discrimination, as pinpointed sometime back, by the very UN Human Rights Commission she now heads? I'll bet not.

Where the Tories attempted to move in the direction of realizing educational equality for all qualified school systems of any religious commitment in harmony with peace and good order, McGuinty and the Liberal Party of Ontario to get elected, entered into an anti-democratic pact with the absolutist Teachers' Union to deny all sorts of other schools basic justice thru equal support. McGuintism led to the cancelling of the Tory law, which was about to come into effect at the time the McGuintLibs took over the province. The one good thing about the Provincial Tories of the time was squelched by the Libs hatred of other Christian schools and in order to buy votes, as the public is full of such unrestrained bigots. The new Tories under party leader John Tory display no interest whatsoever in restoring the justice his party offered at last, as they were being thrown out by Ontario's voters.

But, the tremulous Tories aside, take a look at both these double-standard pusillanimous moves by Dalton McWimpy. He won't talk plainly about the effect of badly-engined cars and trucks, on our lungs every day. and he is more agreeable to paying a huge but far lesser amount to hospitals to save those who can be saved from this second-hand smoke (he lives, works, and drives in air-conditioning, I'd bet). He's benefitted, his kids have benefitted, and his grandchildren will benefit (if his offspring continue as Catholics) from a Catholic education. Kids living in poverty who have Catholic parents can get a Catholic education from Grade 1 to Grade 12. I'm all for this. But some Protestant Christians must break their backs trying to pay for 12 years of a Christian education in accord with the formation of conscience, knowledge, and values of art, literature, science, and philosophy they choose in community with like-minded Christians. Our kids in poverty can't go to Christian schools because the means are not there. We have the professoinal teaching corps. We have a much more integrated curriculum than you can find in state atheist schools. But once again, McWimpy has insufficient backbone to do justice, to drop the double-standard from which he and his family and his religion benefit, along with the atheist Humanist schools.

Taken together, his policy on pollution and education are double-minded, double-standard unprincipled game-playing: all to the loss of my lungs, of my mobility about the unbearably polluted city, and to my religious community's ability to educate its children according to our values. - Owlb

UN High Commissioner, Human Rights