Thursday, January 12, 2006

Ottawa is in Ontario, right?

Sticks took pains to correct himself in comments to Beautiful Dreamer, and apparently on his blog, concerning the Canadian scheme of direct funding of Catholic schools. He originally said it was in Ontario, but later said it was Ottawa.

That doesn't seem exactly right to Spot. As Spot recalls, Provincial Premiere Mike Harris' Tory government adopted a province-wide direct funding scheme for Catholic schools; Spot is not sure how widely it was implemented. One of the stated reasons for doing it was because of the existence of a state-sponsored religion in Canada, the Church of England.

Parents of Jewish, Muslim and other unChristian children protested, and they were able to get a United Nations humans rights panel to condemn the scheme. The panel stated that Ontario should fund everybody, or nobody. Ontario officials told the UN to go fish. Of developments since then, Spot is unaware.

So, the uncorrected Sticks was correct.

This initiative was nothing more than a Christian interest group lining up to suckle at the public teat. And in spite of Sticks' unctuous twaddle about educational diversity and "seeming chaos coalescing" into educational excellence, that's all the discussion of vouchers is really about.

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