Wanted: brave political party that will do the right thing

The problem currently facing Ontario is that we are funding religious schools. In fact, Ontario's funding of a separate school system is the most comprehensive in Canada. The United Nations, our Charter of Rights and our Human Rights Code all suggest that this is discriminatory against those religions that do not get comparable funding.

There are three solutions to this, apart from McGuinty's position of ignoring it and hoping it will go away. One is to follow the Green Party's secularist stand and remove religious education from our schools. This will save money and reduce the distance students have to travel to get to school.

Another is to follow Tory's idea and segregate our schools into religious silos. This is a costly option that will likely increase the isolation between cultures.

The third solution is to merge the public system into the separate school system. Allow for a certain amount of optional, parent funded and non-credit religious education in the parent's choice of religions. This should be acceptable to the majority of people who currently send their children to faith-based or separate schools while achieving the secularist goal of having a single school system.

People are already voting with their dollars against the Green Party's position when they pay to send their children to faith based schools. And people have seen the problems of segregated schools in apartheid-era South Africa and the U.S. South. We don't want to follow that path in Ontario.

The question is, will any political party step up to the plate and do what must be done to resolve this issue?

Gary Dale