Canada: Politics: Prime Minister Harper guest of Ontario's PM Dalton McGuinty at private meeting, Harper endorses DMcG's rival
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A very important meeting took place a few days back in a private suite in a downtown Toronto hotel; it was a meeting of political import in the broadest sense. The host, Dalton McGuinty, premier of the province of Ontario, took the discussion of 'fiscal imbalance' forward from its hitherto limitation in Canadian Federal / Quebec relations to those of Federal / Ontario relations. A most important step for the political concept involved, but also for the situation of the Ontario economy which, tho Canada's largest provincial component, is seeing difficult times. A better balance is a reasonable and just here in Ontario as it is in Quebec, tho minus the special case of culture and language difference in the latter.
Ontario
Looking on from a francophone perspective, LeDevoir, the Montreal h+brow daily, carried a short item:
Toronto -- Tax imbalance between Ottawa and the provinces was the principal subject of yesterday's meeting between the Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Ontarian counterpart Dalton McGuinty.. The foregoing was a free translation of refWrite publisher, Albert Gedraitis, with the help of Apple's Sherlock 3 app, and Systran, the online translator feature.Mr. Harper refused to answer the questions of the journalists and he avoided the cameras of television before his 45 minutes meeting with Mr. McGuinty in a Toronto hotel. Mr. McGuinty indicated that the meeting was profitable and that it would be used to prepare the ground for the next talks on tax imbalance. "I invited Mr. Harper to a private meeting in order to speak to him about the Ontarian files and he was very receptive", said Mr. McGuinty to the journalists after the meeting. "I did not expect that he'd be able to discuss the position of the federal government at this stage of the discussions." Mr. McGuinty affirmed that Mr. Harper made a point of obtaining a national consensus in the file of tax imbalance. The two Prime Ministers await the report of a federal committee on the question of the equalization.
On TV later in the evening, the news carried word that Harper had left the get-together with McGuinty to attend a fundraising event for the Leader of the Ontario Conservative Party, John Tory. In which he did his bit of cheerleading, so to speak, to the dismay of the mainstream libleft press who has heaped disdain on Harper, and who don't want Tory to win in Canada's largest English-speaking province and former economic engine of the country.
refWrite has long opposed Dalton McGuinty for his violation of the UN Human Rights panel that brawt in a decision against Ontario's biggotted discrimination in educational support to only two religions - the secularist "public" school system, and the Roman Catholic school system (to which McGuinty and family are strongly attached, as is the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour - in violation of her juridical role). This combine is allied to the secularist teachers unnions in Ontario, and together they took away the new grants allocated by the previous Conservative govt to schools of other faith-communities. The legislation was not flawless, as it was allocated only to schools outside the secularists and Roman Catholics, only to schools with a narrowly defined "religious" basis. My analysis would have the state support schools of any system which has 1.) a full-dress educational philosophy that can be addressed and defended as such (Christian, Judaic, secularist Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, atheist, Montessori, Waldorf, etc); 2.) a curriculum that makes practical the philosophy and is discussable by all the other curriculum-generating educational-philosohical communities in the province; and 3.) adheres to the pluralism of Ontario society, teaches against violence and jihad, while teaching for the peaceful enhancement of the social order in all its diversity in Ontario. Something like that. The govt, not as educationists, but as doer of justice for all communities and between communities, while attending to the common good whereby certain basic standards must be agreed upon and enforced to bring every school, of every educational philosophy, and of every curriculum into line with meeting the needs of all Ontario's school-goers as they face life here in the 21st century. Something like that.
Because of the bigotry of McGuinty's position, and the Ontario Liberals with him, sacrificing educational equality for all to the special-interest pressure politics of the secualrist teacher unions, McGuinty is unsupportable by anyone with a decent sense of justice and educational freedom. But the statist mentality is extremely strong in Ontario; there's talk about freedom in general, but no freedom in the particulars of financial supppoort for diverse educational communities. John Tory of the Ontario Conservatives in contrast has supported the flawed but major step forward of the previous Conservative govt - the step forward that McGuinty quashed as soon as he took power, even tho he and his family have benefitted from govt-tax support for the Roman Catholic school system. Therefore, Harper's support for Joyn Tory strikes us as a very good thing. - Politicarp
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