He was right about the unfairness of the Catholic only school funding, too bad he went about it the wrong way. He should have proposed the complete opposite of what he did: merge the public and Catholic systems into a single secular system and leave religious education to private schools. I honestly think that any party leader who proposes that would have the support of most of the population.
I hope/think so too - and yet the fact no one has even tried speaks volumes. I think there's a vocal minority and/or an "elite" group that is shielding what is an obviously unfair and obsolete system. Just look at how deep McGuinty drove the wedge in. To this day I see people going on Twitter, saying how Tory is pro-Creationism. Do they think the Catholic schools we publicly fund skip over the Book of Genesis? Sigh.
As with SmartTrack, one can certainly quibble with the details of Tory's chosen approach but one has to at least admire the broader attempt to change common thinking.
Apologies for sending things off onto the faith-based issue but it's true it does get held up as THE example of Tory's failure; it was an attempt to actually do something progressive within the Progressive Conservatives and for that he was handed his head. My two cents is I don't know why any non-Catholic would support it and the Constitutional issue is a red herring (there is something ironic about small-l liberals telling conservatives that we have to stick to the constitution, even though Quebec, Manitoba and others have found a way through that tunnel). It's a relic of old times, as surely as s.92/93 provide a very poor excuse for the federal government's refusal to engage in funding urban transit and housing....so that brings us almost back on topic, right? Olivia, after all, has tabled at least one private member's bill aimed at a national transit strategy which naturally went nowhere. Can Tory actually extract some sort of ongoing commitment from Ottawa? Doubt it, but he can certainly do better than the Fords, who probably can't even get Harper on the phone anymore.
(One of the many many sad elements of the Scarborough subway debate was that almost no one [including Rob Ford, I'm pretty sure] understood that the money Harper brought to the table was merely an advance on Toronto's portion of a new infrastructure fund. Instead of debating the best way to spend it, Rob spun it as money earmarked specifically for the subway and Harper, happy to stand by Rob and piss on Wynne, played along. Shameful.)
I imagine Harper's does the same walking on Parliament Hill in winter. Either that, or blows off entirely.
