From today's Star:

Tory vow of tax dollars for faith-based schools will 'define' election

and from Dalton himself:

"I don't think that Ontarians believe that improvement or progress is defined as inviting children of different faiths to leave the publicly funded system as we know it and go to their own schools," he added.

This debate has been going on for some 25 odd years or more, and apparently consensus is hard to reach. The UN says we need equality in funding, which means either the Catholic system and all others are treated equally, or we discontinue funding for that religious group too and fund only the public education system.

Among scholars there is also an apparent lack of agreement as to the benefits and pitfalls of segregating students from others. I found an article from the University of Western Ontario, titled Keeping Faith? the tagline reads:

In a society which strives to absorb diverse communities, religion-based educational segregation is a paradox. Or is there another side to the story?

And out in the land of blog, Matt, of Queer-Liberal succinctly frames this issue this way (emphasis is mine):

As a homosexual, I don't want my public tax dollars going to schools that openly teach that I am a sinner. When you teach someone is a sinner, you tacitly give your students the right to take action against those sinners. When you fund that education through public dollars, the state is giving approval to this terrible message against some of its equal citizens.

If there's one thing our political leaders are good at, it's rushing ahead with badly thought out policies. Where there isn't enough evidence indicating a tangible benefit to everyone's well being to warrant a change in policy, create an issue and buy some votes, in this case with what would end up costing Ontario taxpayers $400 million of our dollars.

It's easy to spend someone else's money speculatively isn't it Mr. Tory?