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Tory's free vote leaves Catholic educators puzzling potential impact |
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Written by Catholic Register Staff
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Wednesday, 03 October 2007 |
 TORONTO - John Tory's proposal to hold a free vote on minority education rights is at best neutral and more likely bad for Catholic education, according to leaders in the Catholic education community.
“I was half expecting him to talk about a referendum, so I see a free vote as the lesser of two evils,” said Toronto Catholic District School Board chair Oliver Carroll.
“I don't think any kind of a vote is going to be helpful to us,” said Catholic Principals' Council of Ontario executive director Lou Rocha. “One would anticipate that a free vote is going to turn down Mr. Tory's proposed bill. So then, what would happen next? We would have a whole lot more spin around, and let's keep on going, and let's get rid of the Catholic system.”
“It depends what the question is, how it's laid out, and what implications it has or doesn't have. Is it all faith-based?” said Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board chair Bruno Iannicca.
Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association president Elaine MacNeil also thought the implications of an even more protracted debate about faith-based school funding would be negative for the Catholic system, its 650,000 students, 36,000 teachers and more than one million parents.
“I don't believe the vote will have any impact on the Catholic system at all,” said Ontario Catholic School Trustees' Association president Bernard Murray. “This whole thing is not about the Catholic school system.”
However, Murray does believe the Catholic education community has work to do shoring up support for the system following a bruising election campaign debate about faith and education. The debate has included calls to dismantle or defund the Catholic system. On Sept. 30 Ontario's largest newspaper, The Toronto Star, declared in it's editorial, “This province needs to start a process that will eventually eliminate funding for all faith-based schools, including Catholic schools, in favour of investing its limited resources in a single secular school system.”
Murray places the public debate and poll results aside and puts his faith in the official positions of all three major parties in favour of continued funding for Catholic schools.
“Everybody has their opportunity to have their ideas about it, but I think we have to pay attention to what the parties are saying and the indication of support we have from them,” said Murray.
Iannicca said the tone of the debate spawned by the Conservative faith-based funding proposal is something to worry about.
“Over the course of time people have to some degree accepted that Catholic education is viable and a good thing. I think all that Mr. Tory has done is stir that pot again,” Iannicca said. “The way people talk about it, that's the part I don't like.”
Whoever wins the election Catholics are going to have to defend their historic gains in education over the coming years, said MacNeil.
“We're going to have a lot of questions to look at after the election,” she said.
Carroll makes the case that Catholics are faced with a communications crisis.
“We haven't done a good job of explaining what it (Catholic education) is and why we're an integral part of the community,” he said. “If people had comfort with what's going on we wouldn't be having this type of debate. In my mind, the issue has become a discussion about Catholic education. Probably more so in many people's minds than just the extension (of funding to other faiths).”
“I don't think there's anything that's going to happen in this election that is going to challenge our existence,” said Rocha. “I think what's going to happen is following the election. I think we have some work to do with our Catholic rate payers at the very least.”
For now, Iannicca is playing it cool.
“Everybody needs to remember that in order for Mr. Tory to have his free vote he has to be elected,” Iannicca said. “I don't worry about Mr. Tory and what he wants to do.”
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