Education reform needed

Re: Not just a trim will do, Jan. 6. Ontario's indebtedness is of such immensity that health care is not the only area in which the government should take the opportunity to make some "long overdue changes."

Efficiencies can be realized and non-essentials eliminated in education as well. Ontario currently funds four 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 non-Catholic faiths to do it themselves.

I hope Ontario MPPs are able to distinguish essential programs from non-essentials as they wield their austerity knives. Failing that, I hope their constituents, who will bear the pain of the coming austerity, help them in drawing these 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, Ottawa President, Education Equality in Ontario



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