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Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory has touched off a furor with his controversial proposal to give public funds to faith-based schools.
A Strategic Counsel poll for The Globe and Mail, published earlier this week, suggests more than 70 per cent of voters oppose the policy.
"The fact is, people are really objecting to it," said Tim Woolstencroft of Strategic Counsel.
"They just don't want religion to be mixed with school funding."
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The poll found that 71 per cent of those surveyed said they totally oppose having the province fund Jewish, Muslim and other religious schools.
Those opposed include voters of all political stripes as well as 69 per cent of those described as visible minorities. Only 26 per cent of those polled support the policy.
But Mr. Tory says he has no intention of backing down. He told reporters he believes that most Ontarians will eventually come to understand that funding for faith-based schools is a matter of fairness and of principle.
"Are we to the point now where nobody in public life any more can take a position of leadership on a matter or principle?" he asked on an Ottawa radio show.
"I wouldn't have come into public life if I thought it wasn't possible, indeed necessary, for people to take a position on something they thought was right."
Each of the three main Ontario party leaders have kept the issue in the limelight during the Oct. 10 election campaign.
But what has been somewhat lost in the sound and fury on the campaign trail is the issue of whether — or which — religions actually want public funding for faith-based schools.
So, to shed some light on that subject, globeandmail.com has invited a panel from the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Evangelical, Jewish and Muslim faiths to debate the issue and to take questions from our readers.
We have asked the panel to write short essays — most of which are now published — on the question of what their creeds say in general about the education of children, and what position their faith has taken on the question of public funding. Those short essays can be read at the bottom of this page and on subsequent pages.
In addition, the panel members have all agreed to answer questions from our readers. Those answers will be posted online no later than 2 p.m. EDT tomorrow (Friday).
Check back at that time to read their answers.
The members of our panel are:
Michael W. Higgins is President of St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B., and Past President of St. Jerome's University in the University of Waterloo.
Dr. Higgins is a broadcaster, author and co-author of numerous books and CBC Ideas series, including Heretic Blood, The Muted Voice, Power and Peril and Stalking the Holy.
Jennifer A. Harris is an Anglican Christian. She is assistant professor of Christianity and Culture at the University
of Toronto.
Her teaching interests include Christianity and contemporary popular culture, sacred space, and the Bible in medieval society.
Lorna Dueck, an Evangelical Christian journalist, writes a monthly column for The Globe and Mail.
She also hosts Listen Up TV, a weekly newsmagazine on spiritual perspectives in current events, seen Sundays on Global TV, and Thursdays on CTS, Salt and Light TV and Christian Channel.
Rabbi Ed Elkin has been the spiritual leader of the First Narayever Congregation in downtown Toronto since 2000.
Born in New York, he graduated from Princeton University and has worked or studied in Canada, the U.S. and Israel.
Sheema Khan also writes a monthly column for The Globe. She has a Masters degree in physics and a Ph.D. in chemical physics from Harvard. She has worked in R&D, is an inventor and has worked at law firms in intellectual property law.
Ms. Khan also served as chair of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) from 2000-2005.
Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Before we begin publishing the mini-essays and going into the question-and-answer mode, let me explain a bit more about the focus of this online debate and discussion. Several readers, including Sean W. from Toronto and Bill Wilson from Taiwan — I guess the issue has wide appeal outside Ontario — have asked the legitimate question of why there are no atheists or non-religious people on this panel.
