How the SCC Handed the Ontario Election to Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals
October 15th, 2007
Wow, what a week! Al Gore gets the Nobel Peace Prize as the consolation prize for losing the presidency in 2000 and the Supreme Court hands the Ontario election to Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals. Okay, so we didn’t have our own Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), but Dalton McGuinty’s victory can be traced directly to the SCC’s 1996 decision in Adler v. Ontario, [1996] 3 S.C.R. 609.
In Adler, parents of children attending non-Catholic faith-based schools argued that the Province of Ontario’s refusal to fund their schools violated the Charter. Specifically, they argued that Ontario’s policy was discriminatory under section 15 of the Charter and also violated their freedom of religion under section 2 of the Charter. All nine justices heard two days of argument in January 1996 and ruled against the parents by a 7-2 margin later that year. The justices decisively punted the issue back to the political arena.
In the middle of the first mandate of the Common Sense Revolution, Mike Harris had other issues to deal with, but in his second mandate Harris introduced a private school tax credit for parents who sent their kids to any private schools, not just the faith-based ones. Killing the dreaded Private School Tax Credit and restoring the neglected public school system became a rallying cry for the McGuinty Liberals in 2003 and when they rode into office after their October 4, 2003 victory, McGuinty quickly called back the Legislature and one of his first orders of business was to rescind the tax credit.
A year later and John Tory had become leader of the Ontario PCs but he appeared oblivious to the decades of political strife in the province over the issue of funding for faith-based education, Catholic, non-Catholic or otherwise. With the issue of faith-based schooling, Tory handed the election to Dalton McGuinty on a silver platter. We can only wonder what the Election of 2007 would have been about if Justice L’Heureux-Dubé and Justice McLachlin had carried the day at the Court back in 1996. But that was not to be. And this is how the Court handed the 2007 election to Dalton McGuinty . . . with a little bit of help from John Tory.
[filed: Adler (1996) Charter of Rights and Freedoms Constitutional law Religion]
One thing not addressed in your comment–and rarely addressed in the pre-election press coverage–is the fact that public funding for Catholic schools is entrenched in the Constitution. Post-repatriation, would it not take an amendment (in short, an act of God) to remove the Ontario government’s obligation to fund Catholic schools?
The debate is so often characterized in terms of “favouring” Catholic schools–but there is nothing about acknowledging the unfortunate need to fund Catholic schools that leads to the conclusion that all faith-based schools should be funded. The SCC did not “hand” McGuinty the election, except insofar as they shared a straighforward reading of the Constitution.
October 15th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
In 1997 a referendum in Newfoundland to secularise the education system got 73 per cent of the vote. Judicial challenges to this change failed, and a constitutional amendment was executed in 1998.
It happened then and there, and it can happen here and now.
October 16th, 2007 at 2:25 am
I stand corrected. Insofar as it only effected Ontario, I suppose the provincial legislature could have such an amendment passed. How odd that such a referendum has never been held or proposed in Ontario! It would seem to be a issue on which any party could successfully campaign.
However, I stand by my disagreement with the conclusion that the court “handed” the election to anyone.
October 16th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Agreed. While it does scream for attention, the headline also runs contrary to the facts: a Supreme Court decision from more than a decade ago decided this election? Hardly.
If Tory had simply left that hot potato issue baking in the oven instead of grasping it with bare hands, who knows how things might have turned out… As the article itself states, contrary to the title, if anyone did so, “Tory handed the election to Dalton McGuinty on a silver platter.”
October 16th, 2007 at 10:53 am