Mike Schreiner the leader of the Ontario Green Party, has a very bold idea. His idea is to merge the Catholic and Public School boards into one Public School board.
The savings to the Province of Ontario could exceed 1.2 billion a year, which is the cost of a couple of gas plants. All joking aside, I've always asked that question, why do we have and need 2 publicly funded school systems in Ontario. Other Provinces have merged their school systems to great success, and it's about time Ontario does the same thing.
Schreiner says Ontario's having two publicly funded school systems --- one for Catholics and one for everyone else --- is intellectually unsustainable in the year 2014. He’d move to end an education model that has existed in Ontario for a century and a half, by creating a unified school system.
You know the long history on this issue. Back in 1867, Protestants in Quebec and Catholics in Ontario agreed to the Confederation deal on the condition that their minority rights be protected with publicly funded schools. Initially, governments in Ontario funded the separate school system up to grade 8. Then the John Robarts government extended it to grade 10 in the mid-1960s. Then in 1984, William Davis announced he’d fully fund the Catholic school system right through to the end of high school. Davis retired before actually doing it, and it was left to David Peterson’s Liberal government, with an assist from Bob Rae’s NDP, to complete the task as part of their “Accord.”
Most politicians who have weighed into the toxic mix of politics, religion, and education have been punished for it. Davis’ successor, Frank Miller, saw the PC seat and vote totals drop precipitously in the 1985 election because the Tory base never accepted the policy of fully funding Catholic schools. Six weeks after that 1985 election, the 42-year-long PC dynasty came to an end.
John Tory lost the 2007 election in large part because of the issue. Tory, to his credit, felt the unfairness of only one religion’s schools receiving public funding was unsustainable. Regrettably for him, he chose to offer some public funding to all religions --- a solution the public overwhelmingly rejected.
It's a shame that this bold idea will never take off in a divided Ontario. Hopefully the people of Guelph will vote to elect Mike, and send the first Green MPP to Queens Park.
