By Gudrun Schultz
NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario, February 20, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Parents with children in private religious schools will get help with tuition fees if the Progressive Conservatives are elected in next year’s election, PC leader John Tory said yesterday.
Speaking at a policy conference in Niagara Falls, Mr. Tory said the financial assistance would most likely take the form of tax credits for parents.
“I have now been to several [independent faith-based schools] to visit and I have learned a lot from listening to people of all kinds … and I have come to understand even better the fact that there is a fairness issue that needs to be addressed,” he said to delegates at the conference, reported by the Hamilton Spectator.
Mr. Tory said it wasn’t clear yet whether all private schools would qualify, or just those that are faith-based.
In November 2005 the UN Human Rights Committee called for an end to Canada’s system of government funding for Catholic schools, saying it amounted to discrimination against parents who send their children to non-Catholic private schools.
Mr. Tory said that while he agreed with the UN that the present system was unfair, he would not consider withdrawing funding from the Catholic schools as a way of equalizing the situation. Mr. Tory said public funding of Roman Catholic schools was part of “the bargain of Confederation.”
The PC party under Mike Harris introduced a tax credit for parents with children in private schools in 2001, but Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals threw out the program when they won the 2003 election. When fully implemented, that tax credit would have covered up to $3,500 per student annually for tuitions up to $7,000.
The original independent schools tax credit program was a pet project of now Conservative federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty when he was Finance Minister in the Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government. Harris’s successor, Ernie Eves, slammed the program and killed the next stages of increased deductions. Near the end of his term Eves reversed course but too late to save his government from defeat at the hands of the McGuinty Liberals.
It remains to be seen what conditions John Tory will attach to his proposal to restore a tax credit for private school tuitions given that, like Ernie Eves, he is a social liberal strongly supportive of abortion, same-sex marriage, the advancement of the gay agenda and more.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
UN Rules Government Funding of Catholic Education in Ontario “Discriminatory”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/nov/05111803.html
ONTARIO INDEPENDENT SCHOOL TAX CREDIT APPROVED WITH MINIMAL RESTRICTIONS
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2001/dec/01121701.html
EVES COMES OUT SWINGING AGAINST PARENTAL CHOICE IN EDUCATION TAX CREDIT
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2001/dec/01121801.html