Mulroney Fiasco -- the bluff or the royal flush?

It has been a while since Mr Mulroney has been this much in the news, the liberals have tried hard to continue to paint him as the anti-christ over the years -- cost us a bit of money. Now we have Mr Schreiber on the eve of deportation for tax evasion and a host of other things sending letters to further inflame the situation. I guess if i was scheduled for deportation to a jail term in Germany -- i too would be doing everything in my power to stay in the country.

Now Mr Mulroney did an interesting thing -- he has call for a full public inquiry, something that has shocked parliament hill. He has said and probably rightly so that he will never get out from under the cloud of suspicion without a full airing of events. I can imagine not only are the conservatives a little concerned about this given they are on the eve of an election, but so too are the Liberals, as it has never been revealed how much of the previous investigation was driven by Chretien's hatred for Mulroney and his puppets in the RCMP acting a little KGB like. Also Mulroney is taking aim at the media -- I am assuming the likes of Stevie Cameron and the Toronto Star will also be a little apprehensive as their purported journalism has been little more then rewriting washroom innuendo.

All in all Mulroney may actually get what he is asking for, the public inquiry that is, but sometimes you have to be careful of what you ask for. But then maybe he is a better poker player then we give him credit for.

John Tory -- Redux

Well in the postmortem on the election Mr Tory has come to the realization that the religious schools proposal was not a smart idea -- well who knew. To compound this he now realises that he needed to listen to those amoung his team that were telling him to back off on this earlier in the campaign -- again who knew.

Had a chat with a Tory insider and they revealed that Tory has a hard time letting go of that back room role -- where you can push an issue, only to have it over ruled by a more street savvy politician. I guess he misses the advice, guidance, decision making for lack of a better description, of the Bill Davis's of the world. I think John has learned its a little tougher out there then he expected, and lets face it I don't think he expected the McGuinty liberals to play to the racist anti-muslim undercurrent in Ontario. But all is fair in love and war and the Liberals capitalised on the anti-Muslim vote -- and got themselves a majority with the support of 21% of the eligible voters. Ain't democracy grand.

"At Catholic schools we learn about God – but public schools worship a different God."

I don't think anything else needs to be said -- stop funding religious education -- stop funding catholic schools.

MMP -- referendum time for a choice

The whole referendum on the current First Past the Post or Mixed Member Proportional issue has been very poorly dealt with by Elections Ontario -- it has been too little too late with very little public education or debate about it. The whole strategy appears to be to be to not get this initiative approved. That being said the proposed modified system seems to be a political compromise -- and really quite confusing.

The vote needs 60% of Ontarion's to vote (of those who actually vote) in favour of the change for the MMP to be effective for the next election -- four years hence. Just want to make sure everyone understands it is not for this election.

There have been a fair amount of editorials (the Toronto Star in particular)who have railed against this new system -- they feel it is a step backward for democracy and raise the specter of a "Star Chamber" type of government where the will of the public is undercut by non elected party insiders. By the way the Tor Star editorial was factually wrong on a number of counts -- but they are the Star so that would be par for the course.

I really think they need to grow up. The current system of forced compliance to party vote is far more damaging to democracy then MMP would be. Right now a MPP cannot vote against party position in the house without the threat of discipline, the MPP cannot effectively represent their riding -- and from what I have seen the Caucus and decision making is ultimately controlled by a small number of individuals, most of whom are not elected. In addition parties with 5% to 10% of the popular vote and their constituencies are being shut out of the legislature.

I personally think the first past the post system is flawed -- too many seats awarded on a small number of votes. As it is currently designed one seat may be worth 10,000 votes while others are worth 300,000 -- not really fair. In addition being able to have a majority government without the requirement of a majority of the votes is kind of counter intuitive. The current system also marginalizes the smaller parties influence on the government of the day -- NDP, Greens, and the Family Coalition Party come to mind -- a party with 10% of the popular vote may have no seat in the legislature -- that is shutting out a fair amount of the population from the democratic process.

Will I vote for MMP yes -- do I think it will pass no, so why -- well hopefully a large percentage of Ontarion's will vote yes to the referendum -- so in the next election, four years hence, we may actually have another referendum with a properly designed and communicated proposal for electoral reform.

Creationism in the schools

Ok that does it, I really do think Ontario needs a wholly secular funded school system -- right now. Yes that does mean we stop funding the separate school board.

Why you ask?

Mr Tory was asked the question whether he thought this would be allowed to be taught in a publically funded school system he said yes, well maybe sort of kind of. The liberals were quick to pounce on this until it was pointed out it is taught in the Ontario Roman Catholic schools (publicly funded), not as part of the curriculum however -- but as part of "religious eduction". Somehow this makes it better -- guess under a religious school -- the religious part should be taken less seriously -- because it of course it is religion, who believes that stuff anyway?

New holiday -- February

A new stat holiday -- brilliant -- disagree with February -- too damn cold -- but from an election strategy who could disagree -- time off with the Family -- can I have some apple pie too?

Working Families Coalition

The Tories have decided to challenge the legitimacy of the Working Families Coalition -- which they say is a front for the Ontario Liberal Party to get around the Elections act. (Globe and Mail story)

The coalition is fronted by a number of unions and liberal party staffers -- and amazingly he says tongue in cheek some of these very organizations got payouts in the latest round of Liberal pork barreling.

My take on this is if looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck -- it probably is a duck.

Guess the provincial Liberals learned a lot at the feet of their master Chretien.

This however will not be resolved during the course of this election -- the liberals are safe for now.

Funding for Religious Schools

I strongly believe in a secular school system, religion in my opinion has no place in publicly funded schools. That being said I am not a fool either, I recognize as we do fund the catholic schools, and that no party in their right mind is going to remove the funding for the catholic separate school boards that we in all eventuality will end up funding other religious schools.

Interestingly enough I saw a statistic a couple of days ago that 75% of Ontario residents believe in a secular education system. However we also know that 52% of Ontarians list their religion as Catholic -- from a political standpoint you can see why there is going to be no change.

The liberal governments stand on this issue is completely irrational -- and plays the majority against the minorities -- it is alright and non divisive for catholics to be educated in a separate system but not the Jews, Muslims, Hindi, etc would cause a general failure of society as a whole. Personally I think these are cheap political tactics aimed at an underlying mainstream of polite racism.

As i said if I ran the world, or Ontario at least, we would have a secular education system. However I don't and we will end up with a true Ontario compromise -- we will fund everyone -- to some extent at least. However this will not come as a result of this election.

As a friend of mine just reminded me -- when the Liberals came in they canceled the previous conservative governments tax credit for private schools and there was nary a whisper of dissent. The conservatives are very silly to make this a stump issue in this election -- lack of political acuity or just plain desperate.

Background:

Separate school

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A separate school is a publicly funded school which includes religious education in its curriculum, as opposed to a private school or public school.

In Canada these are usually Roman Catholic schools which are run parallel to the public school system which historically had been either Protestant or Roman Catholic, but which in recent years has become secular. The separate schools in Ontario, however, are fully denominational and not secular. In some communities, there is a Separate Protestant school district (board) alongside the public system (and possibly Separate Catholic), but this is generally the exception.

Protection of the Separate School system was a major issue of contention in the negotiations that led to Canadian confederation, due in large part to racial and religious tension between the (largely Francophone) Roman Catholic population in Canada and the Protestant majority. The issue was a subject of debate at the 1864 Quebec Conference and was finally resolved at the London Conference of 1866 with a guarantee to protect the separate school system in Quebec and Ontario.

In the Quebec education system there were separate Protestant and Catholic school systems until 1998 when the system was replaced with linguistically based secular school systems. Similarly, Newfoundland and Labrador had schools organised on a confessional basis with separate denominational schools for Catholics, Seventh-day Adventists, Salvationists, Pentecostals, and an integrated stream. This was abolished by referendum in 1997 and a single secular system was introduced to replace the previous streams.

The question of separate schools has been most controversial in Ontario and Manitoba. The ending of public support for separate schools in the latter province in the 1890s prompted a national crisis known as the Manitoba Schools Question, and led to Pope Leo XIII's papal encyclical Affari Vos.

In Ontario, funding for the Catholic separate school system was initially only guaranteed until grade nine under the British North America (BNA) Act. This funding was gradually extended until 1984 when the government of William Davis extended funding to include the last three (Grades 11-OAC) years of secondary school after having rejected that proposal fifteen years earlier. The historically Protestant system was eventually transformed into the present day public board, and school prayer was banned in the early 1980s.

A province-wide newspaper survey conducted between 1997 and 1999 in 45 dailies indicated that 79% of 7551 respondents in Ontario favoured a single public school system. But rumours that the Catholic Church had instructed its parishioners not to respond to the survey suggest that it may have produced inaccurate results. Regardless of whether the results were accurate or not, no widely supported movement to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 has developed.

In Ontario the only separate schools are Catholic (except for one elementary school in Penetanguishene, Ontario, the Burkevale Protestant Separate School, under the Penetanguishene Protestant Separate School Board, which has no other schools); other faith groups do not receive similar funding. This restriction has often been criticized as contrary to the spirit of official multiculturalism. The provincial policy has been ruled as discriminatory by the Supreme Court of Canada, and on November 5, 1999 the United Nations Human Rights Committee condemned Canada and Ontario for having violating the equality provisions (Article 26) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee restated its concerns on November 2, 2005, when it published its Concluding Observations regarding Canada's fifth periodic report under the Covenant. The Committee observed that Canada had failed to "adopt steps in order to eliminate discrimination on the basis of religion in the funding of schools in Ontario."

In Alberta in some areas that were originally populated by Franco-Albertan French Catholics before the province came into existence, the Catholic church controls the public schools and the separate schools are protestant. This applies to St. Albert and St. Paul.