Globe wants to end Catholic schools.

Toronto -- The Charest government's flip-flop on fully funding Jewish schools, provided an opportunity for Toronto's Globe and Mail to suggest ending the funding of Catholic schools in Ontario.

In early January, Quebec Premier Jean Charest decided to enhance the 60 percent funding of Montreal's Jewish schools to 100 percent. However, the plan ran aground against massive opposition from public school parents who are struggling with a shortage of funding for facilities, textbooks, and bursaries. The public protest forced Premier Charest--who had not consulted his cabinet--to reverse his ruling on January 19, 2005.

Toronto's Globe and Mail has strenuously objected to Catholic schools and the parental rights of Catholics to choose schools for their own children since its founding in the 1860s. In an editorial of January 21, 2005, it gave renewed expression to its traditional intolerance towards Catholics by suggesting the BNA Act of 1867, which granted Catholic school funding, be amended to remove that provision (G&M "Quebec's school ties").

As for private schools which, in Ontario, unlike in any other province, receive no funding at all, the Globe wants to keep it that way. The present McGuinty government, in power in Ontario since September 2003, abolished the $3500 a year subsidy projected by the Conservatives as one of its first legislative acts. Other religious groups--Jewish and Protestant--do not want the funding to Catholic schools cut but, instead, want it extended to all religious schools. Presently, the Ontario Catholic school system teaches 600,000 students.