Apparently I need to move back to Ontario…

… just to slap argue some sense into some people.

Look at this:

Creationism raised as Ont. election issue

TORONTO — Publicly-funded religious schools would be allowed to teach creationism and other theories, says Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory.

Speaking to reporters at the a Jewish day school in Thornhill, Ont., on Wednesday, Mr. Tory defended his plan to bring Jewish, Islamic and other religious schools into the public education system.

“They teach evolution in the Ontario curriculum, but they also could teach the fact to the children that there are other theories that people have out there that are part of some Christian beliefs,” Mr. Tory said at the Kamin Education Centre.

(the article goes on)

Three paragraphs into the article and already there is so much, so wrong.

First of all, there is the underlying basic question of whether or not religiously-based schools should receive government funding at all. This is a sore point in Canada going back to the founding of the country, and in Ontario especially because Bill Davis tossed full public funding to the Catholic schools in the 80s. Since then Supreme Court of Canada and the United Nations Human Rights Committee have found this discriminatory, since it places one religion under the aegis of the government, apparently favouring it over all others. (You can read some of the history here.)

So, you can see where the Conservatives in Ontario are pandering to the other religious groups by promising to provide full public funding to other religious schools, apparently correcting this discrimination.

This is, of course, a ridiculous solution to a real problem. The proper solution to this is to separate religion from government and have NO PUBLIC funding for any religious schools. That’s right, I said it: the separate school system has to go. If religion is important to you, do it at home, don’t expect the government to do it for you.

Now, I’m obviously saying that primarily because I think organized religions are inherently harmful, but even if I weren’t a cocky atheist, there are both philosophical reasons (“separation of church and state” and all the philosophical underpinnings thereof) and pragmatic ones (how do you fairly decide which religions to fund, and where to place the schools? It’s a quagmire) to avoid getting into this business.

Then, there’s Tory’s statement that public funding of religious schools would mean it’s A-OK to put creationism on the curriculum. That’s actually borderline insane: even the Catholic board under the current system is required to teach actual science in science class, and only talk about the creation myths of nomadic desert tribes during “religion class”. If we have to have religious schools under the public aegis (and it should be clear I don’t think we do) there should still be a mandate that the religious aspects don’t get to damage the actual education.

And then, on top of all this, it’s just embarrassing that someone thinks getting the devout onboard with public money, while presumably losing the liberals and the fiscal conservatives, is a successful election strategy in Canada. I mean this isn’t Jesusland, right?