Ontario: Schools: Funding for nongovt schools restored if Conservs under leader John Tory win in Ontario

Quite some time back now, I found an item on hogtown.com website, a commment by blogger J. Albert. I've carried my reply to him/her on my right-column Sidebar for many, many months now. But today I removed it from there. I had good reason; I have good news on the matter that irritated me so profoundly at the time. So, before the good news, I'm offring J's original post and then my mentioned reply one more play, then the good news:

Thursday, June 02, 2005
Education minister in need of education
Let me get this straight....

TheStar.com - Province suspends funding for 9 boards - From The Toronto Star

... Ontario Education Minister Gerald Kennedy has just pulled money off the table from a nine ongoing negotations with teachers' unions. We can only guess that these are cases where the unions thought they could get more by pressing on with the work to rule.

Says Kennedy however:

“We are definitely moving away from that era of conflict.”

I guess he's right - sure. One side cancels kid's sporting events and refuses to issue proper report cards - and the other side then pulls a pot of money off the table. That isn't conflict, and furthermore freedom is slavery and 2 + 2 =5!

Kennedy obviously believed that his unilateral capitulation and payoff to the teachers - offering a well in excess of recent inflation 10.6% over four years to elementary and secondary teachers - would have bought an "labour peace".

Well - Mr. Kennedy, the teachers' unions are not interested in labour peace. They are in the game to negotiate more money for less work for their members. Conflict and confrontation are the main tools in their arsenal.

- posted by J. Albert @ 11:10 AM 1 comments

And now my reply:

Remember that the Ontario Liberals campaigned in favour of denying the children of non-Catholic Christians in poverty the benefits of educational equality, going against a UN Human Rights decision that Ontario should grant support to all faith-based schools without discrimination. I single out the Christian poor denied their proper education in accord with their own worldview as an opener, because that would be the largest constituency still, in Metro, to benefit from the appropriate pluralization of the school-system/s. I think it's obvious why the Liberal Government, the two religious establishments of Secularist and Roman Catholic Boards of Education, and the teachers unions are all bankrupt in more ways than financial. Provincial Education Minister, Gerald Kennedy, knows damn well all the arguments and data for equity on this precise issue, but he has turned completely technocratic and unprincipled in dealing with it. After all, he serves a Premier who had all the benefits of a Catholic-system education, but who can not respond with honour to the UN Human Rights judgement against the Province of Ontario's educational iniquity/inequity. The teachers unions have their own version of lack of principle, as they are essentially bureaucrats without a unifying vision either for their profession or for the children in the classrooms. Money, more and more, is all they have as a measure of their "career success." I'm one of those who just can't feel at home when teachers are playing work-to-rule games, and skipping out on clubs and sports activity sponsorships.

I hope, [blogger] J. Albert, that you will keep monitoring the situation festering in the Ministiry of Education in Ontario, and in the schools and teaching professions of these privileged institutions which hog all the money in Hogtown, elbowing out of the spectrum of worldviews financially supported by government, all the others that would come to expression and cultural vitality were we to practice equality here in this city and this province. - Owlb

- comment June 03, 2005 3:58 AM

Okay, now the good news. The bigotted injustice of the present Libgovt of Ontario under Premier Dalton McGuinty, supported by the NDP, and more importantly by the vested-interest selfish teachers unions will be ameliorated, should the Ontario Conservatives come to power in the next provincial elections. Reporter Keith Leslie of Canadian Press via Ontario's London Free Press article, "Tory pledges fairness plan for faith schools" (Feb20,2k6). Subtitled "He says Ontario's Conservatives will address the concerns of non-Catholic parents," the Leslie report said:

NIAGARA FALLS -- Ontario's Conservatives will develop a policy before the next provincial election to address the basic issue of unfairness for non-Catholic parents who send their children to other religious schools, party leader John Tory said.

The issue was raised during a question-and-answer session Tory held with about 1,000 delegates as they wrapped up a Conservative policy conference in this border city, and he immediately said something must be done to help those families.

"Let me be very clear about that: I am still completely and totally committed to ensuring that part of our platform for the 2007 election is a policy that addresses the fairness issue for independent schools," he said.

I personally was particularly pleased by the Conserv leader's knowledgeability about the human-rights negative marker on the province for its injustice in schooling:

Tory said he agrees with the United Nations that it amounts to discrimination against other religions when Roman Catholics have a fully funded public education system but others do not.

Louise Arbour, presently UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, formerly Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and before that of the Ontario Supreme Court, has been irresponsibly silent, even while in Ontario and visiting the Roman Catholic school system here, silent regarding the blatant injustice of provincial govt educational-funding policy.

I must add, however, that the vital adjustment envisaged by the Tory and his Tories should he/they win, still doesn't satisfy me philosophically. While religious discrimination is blantantly unbearable, still there are many people who would join and run free associations to educate kids and young adults according to educational values and curricula not validated by govt educational overlords and unions, parents and other whose self-chosen schools would not necessarily carry any outright "religious" label, but would be devoted to their joint founding-choice of educational philosophpyy for that particular school, its curriculum, and it educational outcomes (subject to legislation and Ed Ministry regulations into which all schools, systems, and associations had input). Indeed, varieities of secularists have the same right to educational freedom that those belonging to worldviews decidedly of a recognized religious kind. Religion needs a broader definition than is presently held by the UN, the Canadian state, the Ontario government, or the too-often self-preoccupied Christian sects (not to mention Ontario's other lively religions, defined in the traditional sense). - Owlb

Ontario Alliance of Christian Schools
Ontario Christian School Teachers Association
Diversity of Schooling in Ontario (Ministry of Education)
Using the Ontario Ministry of Education's site, there was no way to get a complete list of what they call "private" schools in Ontario (that's another annoyance, since they arrogate to government schools the word "public;" not so, as a Christian school could be open to the public who meet certain requirements of respect for the public Christian school's distincitives and who commit to behave appropriately within the sphere of the institution). But here's the breakdown using my terms of the governement and government-supported school boards in Onatrio, by type:

English Govt school boards - 31
English Catholic Govt-supported school boards - 29
French Govt school boards - 4
French Catholic Govt-supported school boards - 8