Raise the Hammer

Ryan, Last time I checked we had more than one party in Ontario which is why if one party has 45% or 46% of the popular vote it can still win the popular vote. I'm not saying that the Eves gov't didn't cause problems what I'm saying is that when McGuinty ran for the election he had every opportunity to look into the deficit and didn't despite predictions from his own advisors that it would be bigger than he was anticipating. Also, it's interesting to note that John Tory took over the Conservative pary leadership with his own party being in debt and has since then balanced the budget... Not to mention that party policies are different now as well as there being a different leader. Holding previous "sins" of leadership against a party or the following leaders is very childish and closeminded.

Regardless, the reason Tory was suggesting equality by funding all religious schools is because of the Liberal's refusal to "defund" Catholic schools citing historical reasons. (DM actually attended a Catholic school...surprise!!!) One cannot say that we should have a secular society where religion and politics are separate and continue to fund ANY religious school including Catholic schools. By refusing to remove funding for Catholic schools, the only alternative is to fund them all. This format, by the way, is in effect in, I believe, nine of the other 13 provinces and territories and has not had the negative affect on society that Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals are suggesting.

All that aside, why are we focussing on the issue that will consume all of 400M of an increased education budget. (Contrary to DM's accusation that it will remove the money from the publicly funded system, the education budget would be increased) This is all of what 2% of the total budget. Why not focus on what should be real election issues such as doctor shortage, the repairing of the education funding formula (also promised by DM...but when?), poverty issues, crime rates, the traffic of guns and so forth. Why does it take the NDP leader coming to Hamilton to speak out on poverty issues in an area that has been shown to have one of the highest concentrations of poor people in the province?

You may call Tory's decision a flip-flop, I call it the only way to remove the issue from the Liberal microscope and allow Tory to focus on his other election promises rather than answering rapid-fire questions about religious school funding at every stop on the campaign trail. How can the public find out the rest of a parties platform short of reading the platform online (I've read both the Liberal and Conservative platforms...the NDP site was down at the time) when there's no way for the party leader to talk about them???