Liberals: sharpen religious schools message

Further to my previous post, I just caught Dalton McGuinty on The Agenda. While generally quite good, he did evade answering directly why Catholics deserve publicly-funded separate schools while others do not. Steve Paikin pressed him on the issue, and not unfairly.

There's no reason to duck this question. If I were to direct the Premier's message, I would suggest that we be very plain. The McGuinty government wasn't the first to fund Catholic schools, and doesn't necessarily love it, but it is exceptionally difficult to take the well-established system apart without a major costs to current students and teachers. The question is what direction we ought to be moving, and the Liberal direction is towards an inclusive, pluralistic, wholly-public system.

Not a threat on the existing Catholic schools system, but a reasonable response.