Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory is expected to announce Monday that he would allow a free legislature vote by his caucus on his controversial faith-based schools program if he wins the Oct. 10 Ontario election.
Sources within the party say he will announce the move at a noon speech at the Economic Club of Toronto after a mid-morning conference call with Conservative candidates.
Mr. Tory has been under fire for a month over his proposal to spend $400-million to integrate private religious schools into the public system. The governing Liberals have said such a move would detract from the effort to improve the public system and are content to leave in place the constitutional provision that gives preferential treatment by providing public funds to Roman Catholic schools.
Mr. Tory has argued that bring other religious schools into the public system is a matter of ”fairness” and ”inclusion.”
But the proposal appears to have bogged down his campaign as Conservative support in the polls has not budged during the campaign despite polls that show Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty is unpopular with many voters for breaking his 2003 campaign pledge not to raise taxes.
This situation worsened on Friday with the release of a new poll that showed Conservative support dropping by two percentage points, an indication that Mr. Tory's core supporters may be abandoning him.
Some caucus members have been grumbling about the schools issue, saying that voters on the doorstep are resisting it. Veteran Conservative MPP Bill Murdoch said last week that he could not support the policy.
The promise of a free vote among Conservative MPPs is a recognition that the Liberals have succeeded in their attacks over the schools issue and that Mr. Tory is hopeful that he can defuse it as a campaign issue.
Mr. Tory has talked previously about reforming the rules of the Ontario legislature to allow for more votes by MPPs that are free from party discipline but he has not done so in the context of the schools issue.