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Funding overlapping school boards a waste of money - Leonard Baak

Re: Article “Time for province to pay back,” which appeared on NorthernLife.ca Jan. 28 .
Re: Article “Time for province to pay back,” which appeared on NorthernLife.ca Jan. 28.

As tough as the coming austerity is sure to be on Ontarians, it is comforting to hear that Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci appreciates the need for “tough decisions” to eliminate the threat Ontario’s massive debt poses to its future prosperity.

I’d like to point out to Mr. Bartolucci, in case it escaped his notice, that Ontario still funds four overlapping school systems where only two, one English and one French, would do the job. There is arguably no more obvious example of wasteful duplication in Ontario today.

Some programs are truly essential — alleviating pain and suffering, creating a well-educated workforce, or helping the genuinely disadvantaged among us.
Other programs, like Catholic school funding, are not essential at all.

Government need not be involved in the religious upbringing of children, particularly when it already expects the members of every non-Catholic faith to do it themselves.

The province’s Drummond Commission will soon release its recommendations for controlling government spending. Mr. Drummond has promised “pain in every chapter.” I hope Mr. Bartolucci and his colleagues in the legislature are able to distinguish essential programs from non-essential as they consider his recommendations.

Failing that, I hope their constituents, who will bear the pain of the coming austerity, help them in drawing those distinctions.

They’ll have to if they want to minimize their own pain — pain that will felt by Catholic and non-Catholic alike.

Leonard Baak
president, Education Equality in Ontario

Posted by Vivian Scinto