Source: TheStar.com
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/225577
In 2003, in an attempt to break into the Liberal-dominated, vote-rich urban ridings, the government of Ernie Eves started funding private religious schools with public funds. It did not work and he was voted out of office.
Now, Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory has embarked on the same venture. In an apparent attempt to lure religious minority communities to vote for his party, he is dangling the carrot of funding their private, segregated religious schools.
Who can blame him? After all, we all live in an era when winning elections is not a means to an end; it has become an end in itself. Securing the votes of religious minorities through their clerics' backing, even if it reverses the progress we have made as a country through public education, seems worth the price.
If John Tory has his way, this is what a school system of the future will look like in the riding of Don Valley West, where he plans to unseat Education Minister Kathleen Wynne: Imagine an intersection, say Thorncliffe Park Dr. and Overlea Blvd., with a Hindu school on one corner, a Sikh school on another, a Greek Orthodox school on a third corner and, of course, a Shia or Saudi-funded Wahhabi school on the fourth.
The Muslim community in Don Valley West realizes it is being courted by all sides. However, as long as we are viewed as living in ethnic ghettos where supposedly the community cleric calls the political shots, integration is hampered, not facilitated. This may make it easy for politicians of all stripes to buy our votes through self-appointed community leaders who invariably work out of places of worship and operate private religious schools, but the reality is very different.