Random Access

Someone remarked after John Tory outlined his party’s platform on education this morning in Mississauga that Tory sounds and acts a lot like Bill Davis.
Not a bad role model or campaign strategy, of course, replicating Brampton Billy’s voice of stability and reason, a calm and collected persona that helped the Conservatives maintain an amazing 42 years in power.
After Tory spent 20 minutes sketching his party’s plans in education: matching the Liberals’ spending this year dollar for dollar, adding $2.44 billion over the next four years, fixing the funding formula that McGuinty keeps purporting to fix and setting up a school-building repair fund to reach $100 million at the end of the Tories’ first term, he was the guy who sounded like he wanted to be remembered as the “Education Premier.” That is, after all, how McGuinty keeps trying to bill himself.
The question is, which leader’s Bill Davis impression will the public prefer?
Davis, who couldn’t have had a better mentor in the art of grassroots politics than T.L. Kennedy, the long-time Minister of Agriculture and short-lived Premier of Ontario that he so greatly admired, acquired the amazing ability to be all things to all people by the end of his reign.
Davis was a small c-conservative who was able to project the unbeatable image of a rock-solid fiscal conservative who had a progressive social conscience. He is best-remembered for his politically bold decision to extend public funding for Catholic schools to the end of high school.
While that flew in the face of prevailing public opinion at the time, it was a response to both an incredibly well-organized campaign by the Catholic community (a key block of voters) and a logical step to deal with parallel school systems, one of which suddenly ended at Grade 10. That caused a disruptive march of thousands of students from the Catholic to the public system for their last two or three years of school.
It also had a constitutional basis dating from creation of separate schools at the time of Confederation.
John Tory’s misguided desire to extend public funding to all religious schools may be an attempt to make a similar Davis-style decisive blow for equity, but it does not enjoy the same broad political support. The timing — which is everything in politics — is all wrong as people increasingly worry about the political implications of providing a narrowly-focussed world view for children that can skew their moral axis.
Today, Tory was again asked if he intends to abandon that policy. He replied that it was part of his platform when he sought the leadership and it will remain part of his party’s platform. “When all is said and done, one day I believe people in all parties and, people who have no parties, will support this policy and say that every child will deserve and receive a public education in Ontario.”
The problem is that they can already have one by going to their friendly neighbourhood publicly-funded school and mixing with the rest of the world regardless of race, colour or religion.
Mr. Tory is a solid, decent man who would make a good Premier. His motivation in promising religious-school funding is honourable but it may be just as destructive in its own way as the slash and burn policies of the Mike Harris era that his party is still trying to live down.