The Ontario leaders' debate on queer issues has been cancelled, but Xtra spoke to the province's political party leaders to see where they stand. Their responses (and non-responses) are below:

Extra: How would your government address homophobia in schools and make queer children safe in all Ontario schools, public, private and separate?

Frank de Jong, Green: Not only is homophobia on the decline but homosexuality is also on the upswing. It's cool. I think teachers in the school board and the curriculum should do everything they can to demystify homosexuality and school boards should be proactive in making sure that gay, lesbian, bisexual lifestyles are included and treated as normal.

Dalton McGuinty would not speak with Xtra before press time. A spokesperson at the premier's office said McGuinty's duties as premier and his need to take vacation time with his family before the launch of the official election campaign made it impossible for him to spend 10 minutes speaking to the 100,000-plus queer readers of Xtra, Capital Xtra and Xtra.ca.

There's no question that Tory's proposal to publicly fund religious schools is a cynical vote grab. The fact that he has absolutely no specifics on the plan is a sure sign of that. But the result for Ontario gays and lesbians could still be a resurgence of hate-filled religious propaganda — which queers would be forced to fund themselves.

Tory proposes to "associate" these religious schools with public school boards in some completely undefined fashion. The result, he says, will be to create peace and harmony across the province.

"This inclusive approach has proven to be successful in managing and respecting religious diversity within public education," says a Tory press release. "It has taught children of different ethnicities and faiths to value our respective religious and cultural heritages, while also being unified by common standards and equivalent experiences."

Well, when it comes to queer students, that's bullshit. Gay students in public schools face harassment, homophobia, ignorance and violence on a daily basis from fellow students and sometimes teachers.

If there's one thing — and it may be the only thing — that fundamentalists of all religions agree on, it's that they hate queers. And yet the public — including queers — will be asked to pay for schools that are directly charged with teaching those beliefs.

"This inclusive approach has proven to be successful in managing and respecting religious diversity within public education,"

With the Wed, Oct 10 provincial election looming ever closer, advocacy groups are working to ensure queer education issues are on the minds of voters as they head to the polls.

Queer groups are bitterly opposed to the Progressive Conservative plan to fund faith-based schools, fearing that public money will be used to preach homophobia. But even if Conservative leader John Tory never gets the chance to realize his plan, queer students continue to face safety and education issues in the classroom and in the schoolyard.

Helen Kennedy, the executive director of national queer lobby group Egale Canada, says her organization has conducted a survey of every publicly funded school board in the country — including Ontario's Catholic school boards — that she hopes to bring into the election campaign.

"We're looking at everything from antibullying policies to whether they have just cut and pasted from the human rights code," she says. "In Peel for example they have clear language around gaybashing and the Toronto District School Board is the province-wide leader."

Kennedy says that regardless of how good written policies may be implementation is a whole different issue.

"Are there incident reports? Are incidents being tracked? How do we monitor that? We haven't been able to find anything about implementation," she says. "Are there higher incidents of bullying in schools that don't have good policies?"

To remedy that lack of information Kennedy says she is also planning what she calls a Safe Schools Survey, which will "go into the schools and ask the youth."

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A spokeswoman for Liberal education minister Kathleen Wynne says her party doesn't yet have an election platform on education, but in an interview with Xtra in September 2006, just after she was appointed minister, Wynne said homophobia is a major concern.

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Wynne announced on Aug 22 that the Liberal government would spend $10.5 million to hire 170 experts — including psychologists, social workers, attendance counsellors and child and youth workers — to help students at risk in Ontario schools.

That's expected to translate into about $1.7 million for Toronto, which could mean about 30 experts for the Toronto public and Catholic schools.

However, since becoming minister, Wynne has not announced any policies to address equity or safety for queer students in schools.

Also on Aug 22 Correctional Services Minister Monte Kwinter announced a $1.7-million pilot project to hire 18 local police officers in Toronto, Hamilton and London to tackle bullying — including over the internet — among students in Grades 6, 7 and 8.

Tory says the Conservatives have no plans to put more resources into enforcing school boards' equity policies or the province's code of conduct.

"This issue of money for enforcement of equity policies has never been raised with me," he says. "I'm not one of those politicians who's going to say yes just because you raise it now."

NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo says the government can't provide money to school boards for specific purposes.

"We can't tell school boards what to do," she says. "If you say, 'We'll give money to this little program and not that,' you starve the system."

But DiNovo says the NDP will take a close look at enforcement.

"If there are school boards that aren't providing safe environments, we'll be pretty hands-on about that," she says. "That's a civil rights issue. What we need is enforcement of the human rights code, which we don't have right now. We need inspectors who can go out for whatever ministry but you don't want to preempt the board. What the Ministry of Education should be doing is making sure that boards are doing what they say they're doing."

"If there are school boards that aren't providing safe environments, we'll be pretty hands-on about that," she says. "That's a civil rights issue. What we need is enforcement of the human rights code, which we don't have right now.