Premier Dalton McGuinty and Wife Terri
Today's Issue: September 18, Tuesday Morning 9:00am Eastern Daylight...Today’s Issue: Should public funding extended to all faith- based schools?
The current Liberal Government is against the idea and would not even consider calling a referendum on the issue.
The opposition Conservative proposed the issue and will start the initiative of implementing public funding to the approximately 53,000 students of other faith- based schools (about 3% of the total) if it wins the government this coming election.
The other two parties, the New Democrat is against and the Green would like to revert back to Secularism.
At present the Catholic Schools get the same public funding as the Public Schools. Together both School Boards serve 95% of the students from Junior kin to Senior High (grade 12). While 2% are students of purely private or others, and 3 % of other religious based schools, e.g. Muslims, Hindus, Jewish, etc...
According to the Surveys done by two different pollsters, the results were entirely the opposite:
A CTV News-Strategic Counsel poll released last night found 71 per cent of 850 people surveyed oppose the funding of "private, faith-based schools," with just 26 per cent in favour. The poll, conducted last Thursday to Sunday, is accurate to within 3.4 percentage points.
An Environics poll last week showed dramatically different results, with 48 per cent supporting the extension of funding to schools of all religious denomination, 44 per cent opposed and 8 per cent undecided.
At the moment, I belong to the undecided..for now, I would continue the policy of giving tax credit (percentage) for the fees to the faith-based school to the amount not more than of that of public funding. Or go with Green Party Leader Frank de Jong pledged to eliminate all funding of faith-based schools and ensure world religion classes are taught in one secular public system.
September 16, 5:00am eastern daylight...
Election Update (provincial): Today, the New Democrats announced the Party Policy towards Intensive Behavioural Intervention (BPI)-a very expensive one-in-one treatment in a classroom for all autistic children, while the Governing Liberal insists that the issue go beyond funding, but the lack of trained support providers in the province which it said the govt. already started addressing by hiring more specialists and expand college training for more therapists. The Conservatives also pledge to address the issue, but no specific yet... It's about time the Autistic Children will get all the attention and intervention needed, spare no expense, we will foot the bill.
Promises
And from our 'USELESS BUT AMUSING SKILLS' file: when asked to recite a couple of lines from the poem they know by heart, the campaign front runners (party leaders) cheerfully obliged:
Read it Here
MORE ON ELECTION UPDATE Sept 17, 5am: this site will be updating and concentrate on Election Ontario issues for the next few weeks until election day of October 10. Election results will be available hours after official polls closing.
The first Party Leaders televised weekly debates will be on Thursday Evening. The issues and subjects of the debates are not published yet, but it will touch on the two main issues, medical care and education and also the crimes. Not sure if the Green Party leader, which do not represent any seat in the legislature will be represented in the debates, but the environment is also one of the forefront among the issues: Election Ontario
Is this a dirty campaign or not? Health Minister Smitherman said that candidate Klees of the opposition Tories, mused during one of the debates among local candidates that patients should be charged User Fees every time they visit Emergency rooms for non-emergency cases to avoid abuse of the privileges and clogging up emergency rooms, but not mentioning that the Party Leadership do not support such policy as it against the rule of the Federal Law to charge any patient for Medical care. This idea had been floated around just like calling for 911 and ambulance and fire for non emergency cases, but it is kind of hard to judge which are emergencies before the facts...and to punish people without malicious intents is against the spirit of the fair and honest democracy, which this country was founded upon... come on, let not indulge in dirty campaign without disclosing the party's stand.
Patient's user fee
