The Reality Of McGinty's Tenure

By God, the media has its issue By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN Now for an update on the Ontario election. The province's declining manufacturing sector is under siege and tens of thousands of workers have already lost their livelihoods. Ontario's auto industry is reeling. The province has already lost its place as Canada's economic powerhouse to booming Alberta. While the stats superficially suggest unemployment remains low, secure jobs with good benefits are being replaced by temporary, low-paying McJobs. Due to decades of government underfunding, thousands of seniors are on waiting lists for long-term care, stuck in inadequate private housing or occupying acute care beds in hospitals, because there aren't enough new facilities. If and when they do get in, a nightmare often awaits. Understaffed, underfunded and overwhelmed by Ontario's aging demographics, some homes have adopted a requirement diapers on incontinent seniors cannot be changed until they are 75% wet. As the Toronto Star recently reported, a strip that changes colour on the diaper determines when that happens, meaning incontinent seniors can lie for hours soaked in their own urine. Due to Ontario's energy shortage, Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty broke his 2003 election promise to close Ontario's coal-fired generating plants by this year, including one of Canada's largest contributors to air pollution and greenhouse gases. The latest "deadline" is 2014 -- maybe. In Toronto, the city's 57th murder occurred Tuesday (compared to 46 this time a year ago) when a 16-year-old student was stabbed at noon in a laneway behind his school in a possible ambush. In May, a 15-year-old was shot dead inside his high school. A task force struck in the wake of that murder reports violent students are being transferred between Toronto schools without receiving counselling, re-education programs and with nothing done to ensure the safety of other students. The school board pleads poverty. Ontarians pay up to $900 per year because of a new health care tax that rakes in $2.6 billion annually, the largest single tax grab in Ontario history. McGuinty imposed it after winning the 2003 election -- after promising not to raise taxes. Just before Christmas, Liberal and Conservative MPPs voted themselves a 25% pay raise. So, which of these issues has dominated the campaign? None. It's been McGuinty declaring a minor, albeit unpopular promise by Conservative Leader John Tory to publicly fund Jewish, Muslim and Christian schools in the same way Ontario already funds Roman Catholic schools, is threatening public education. McGuinty has dubbed it his "defining issue" and played the gullible, secular media to perfection. A media whose comprehension of religious issues typically ended around age 12 when their parents stopped forcing them to go to Sunday school. Rising to McGuinty's bait, the media have been portraying the politically moderate Tory ever since as a Bible-thumping creationist, after ignoring the policy for months when Tory announced it. No one has gone after McGuinty with equal vigour to explain (a) why, if Tory's proposal's is so destructive, did McGuinty support it until recently and (b) how does adding (and approving the curriculum for) 53,000 new students attending faith-based schools, to the 650,000 already attending publicly funded Catholic-based schools, part of a public system of 2.1 million students, threaten public education? Never mind. The media have found their "defining issue." They have a God to defeat.