Catholic school funding issue resurfaces in first Ontario NDP leaders’ debate

(from left) Peter Tabuns, Michael Prue, Andrea Horwath and Gilles Bisson kicked off the Ontario NDP leadership debate series in Toronto.

By Andrew Serba

Most of the candidates for the leadership of the Ontario NDP learned a lesson from Progressive Conservative leader John Tory’s last campaign: Catholic-school funding is a losing issue.

But one candidate thinks that may not be the case.
Michael Prue, the New Democrat representing Beaches-East York at Queen’s Park, says that he’s open to debate the Catholic-funding issue if the party’s membership puts it on the agenda.

“We have to determine if the current system (of school funding) is against the United Nations charter, of which we are a signatory nation,” he said, “and that’s why I’m looking forward to the public debate, and that’s why I encourage our members to put down anything they want. Because, if you can’t debate this issue, what else can’t you debate?”

On Nov. 8, hundreds of NDP supporters filled a hotel boardroom beyond capacity. They spilled out into the halls of Toronto’s Ramada Plaza Hotel to hear four of their MPPs state their cases for the party leadership. The debate was the first of nine scheduled to be held throughout the province.

The need for the Ontario NDP to rebuild membership and deal with a slumping economy were at the top of the agenda during the debate, while funding of Catholic schools emerged as a controversial point that only one of the candidates was willing to broach.

Peter Tabuns, Toronto-Danforth’s MPP, said early in the debate that raising the issue would only derail the party from its main objective: to form the next Ontario government.
“We should move on to those other issues that in the end are going to decide whether we’re government or not government,” he said.

MPPs Andrea Horwath from Hamilton and Gilles Bisson from Timmins, who are also running for party leader, agreed with Tabuns that reopening the Catholic-school issue can only serve to divide voters and the party. Bisson stressed throughout the debate that the party needs to get a hold of its finances and begin to rebuild from the riding associations up.

“There is nothing more that the Liberals would love than for us to get into the (Catholic-school funding) debate so that they could divide the voters of this province against us,” he said.
While all candidates cited the economy as the issue of greatest importance, Tabuns — a former Greenpeace executive director — focused on the need to build a “green” economy while bolstering the manufacturing sector.

“My vision of Ontario is centered around building a new-energy economy,” he said. “We have to go out to Ontarians and say that we can move away from job-killing, climate-killing and air-pollution creating fossil fuels. Not just in the electricity system, but right across the scope of energy.”
Prue cited his municipal experience — including the East York mayoralty — and advocated a more traditional NDP fiscal policy as medicine for Ontario’s economic woes.

“I think that only the New Democrats can offer the help that this economy needs, because we are willing to step into a failing capitalist system and to help to regulate it in a way that will make it work better.”
The candidates also debated First Nations’ issues, issues for people with disabilities, and post-secondary education costs.

The leadership debates will continue through February. The Ontario NDP will select Howard Hampton’s successor at its convention in early March.

** Originally published in the East Toronto Observer **