Toronto – Premier Dalton McGuinty is planning to end a longstanding tradition and it raises just a whiff of expectation he may he starting at last on a promise to bring change.
The Liberal premier has said he wants the legislature to stop reciting The Lord’s Prayer at the start of its daily proceedings, because it no longer reflects the province’s diverse population.
This may seem a minor issue, because few see the legislature and prayer even on TV, but the ritual is a symbol Christianity is Ontario’s dominant faith and has been a practice since the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada first met in 1792. For most of that time Ontario’s population has been overwhelmingly Christian, but it now has large immigrant groups including Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, plus a small but vocal population of Jews.
McGuinty has a valid argument when he says a prayer in the legislature should reflect the views of all the population and the current prayer should be replaced by one that does.
The Progressive Conservatives, when in government before the Liberals, rejected several attempts to stop the legislature reciting The Lord’s Prayer on the argument this discriminated against prayers of other faiths. A Conservative Speaker of the legislature also dismissed an argument reciting it violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which he claimed has no jurisdiction over the internal practices of the legislature.
The Conservatives will resume their fight to continue reciting the Lord’s Prayer, or at least have it included in a new prayer. Some evangelical Protestants also have said quickly the Lord’s Prayer should be retained because Christians created Canada, but by this measure aboriginals could be said to have an even prior claim, because their religions were here earlier.
McGuinty’s move inevitably will be seen as an attempt to please immigrants over longer established groups and win their votes, and the latter should not be ruled out.
But the public in the end is more likely to accept the view an institution such as the legislature should serve the needs of the population of today. McGuinty in any case has enough votes in the legislature to ensure it approves his plan.
Ontarians can be forgiven for feeling apprehensive of change, because it has not brought only benefits.
All political parties once viewed gambling as immoral because it takes money from some who need it for the necessities of life, but government now pushes lottery tickets on every street corner and helps organize cheap bus trips and top entertainment acts to lure people to its casinos. Successive governments have managed their affairs so they cannot pay their way without them.
The province used to sell alcohol in stores with windows painted over so passers-by could not see money being exchanged furtively for bottles, but now proudly displays them and showers residents with slick, glossy magazines to coax them to buy.
The province ended a ban on Sunday shopping, so mothers who work weekdays can buy groceries weekends, but now many drag their kids around stores as their Sunday outings and others have to work in them and have lost the day on which most families can be together – are these improvements?
McGuinty won the 2003 election with the slogan `choose change,’ but he has not provided much real change. He has initiated few radically different or novel programs. He won his second successive majority government in October, which should enable him to feel he has a mandate for change.
The Liberals in addition to changing the prayer, have announced they want the legislature to sit normal business hours and, if their past is a guide, will have O'Canada sung in the legislature once a week, which they supported in opposition, and the first is mere tinkering and the second could offend only music-lovers.
But the Liberals now have more power than they have had in more than half-a- century – if they are to make real changes, this is the time.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the press gallery at Queen's Park.
