You gotta have faith...

As many of you may be aware, the Ontario general election will be held on October 10, 2007, and the topic du jour is the question of public funding for faith-based schools.

Progressive Conservative leader, John Tory, announced that if elected, he would extend public funding for education to include religious schools; the expected price tag - $400 million.

The plan has polarized the province, to be sure. But, I, for one, support this move. As a practicing Pastafarian, I'm thrilled to know that my future children may be able to attend a provincially-recognized and taxpayer funded school that is guided under the principles of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Okay, seriously now. Most of the religious groups that are clamouring over these provisions are pointing to the public funding of Roman Catholic separate schools. I would have to refer, however, to Section 29 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the purpose of which guarantees special rights specifically for Catholic schools in Ontario and Alberta, and Protestant schools in Quebec. And no more.

Further to that, a constitutional challenge was issued to Sections 2 (freedom of religion) and 15 (equality) in the form of Adler v. Ontario, 1996, which was heard by Supreme Court of Canada. It's an interesting read, by the way... at least to a junkie like me, but I would encourage people to review the conclusions to understand the final decision. The findings justified the lack of taxpayer funding for faith-based schools due to fact that public schools are fundamentally neutral and therefore do not discrimate on the basis of faith, that no child was coerced to go, and that there are a number of alternatives available (including home-schooling) that would not create a financial burden for parents who wanted to give their child a religious education. The case was dismissed.

With a Charter section and a legal precedent against him, John Tory really doesn't have much justification left for pursuing this particular platform.

What confuses me a little is why I hadn't heard about all of this until I did the research on my own.