Ontario 2018 election

[Dipper Josh]

Of course, I don't understand conservatives very well,

Don't sell yourself short. I'd say you're more knowledgeable than 95% of MSM pundits, even on conservatism.

Well it hasn't helped that there were 13 years between federal leadership races, so not much experience to figure out what kind of factions existed within the Conservative Party membership. Provincially, I hadn't paid much attention to the 2009 race, and so all I know about the hive mind of the Tories in this province I learned from the last federal and provincial races.

In other words what I have learned is that social conservatives may not be a majority of the party (be they from minority communities or from evangelicals or Catholics, etc), but they vote as a bloc, and are a very important constituency in terms of winning the leadership. Both Andrew Scheer and Patrick Brown can thank them for their victories.

So, this is why I think Doug Ford will win. He will get most of Patrick Brown's votes, plus anything that Granic Allen can pull in.  However, his biggest hurdle will be ensuring he can galvanize enough of Patrick Brown's supporters behind him to the point where they actually vote. Many, I think will not bother.

I am very curious to see the extent of 'Fordnation' outside of the 416. Obviously it will extend to the immigrant rich suburbs of Toronto such as Markham and Brampton, and he's probably also popular with the Italians in Vaughan. How well will he do with White conservatives in the rest of the province though?

Id be rather surprised if Browns support doesnt leak to Mulroney, she seems to be that brand of politician and the most likely to play the red tory card.

[Dipper Josh]

Where is the mention of getting rid of the Catholic schools?

Getting rid of Catholic schools require amending the Constitution, which the Federal won't do unless there is a general consensus (like there was in Québec and Newfoundland).

All other provinces that got out of it were able to do it.  If Ontario wanted out of the business of being discriminatory, and fully funding these schools, they could do it.

Andrea Horwath's message to young Gay francophones (who can't work openly in a Catholic system): I think you should only have access to 20% of teaching jobs.  That's the message I'm getting anyway.  

The solution is to ban gay hiring discrimination there.

Which essentially makes them non-catholic.  Most of the Catholic schools (particularly in areas of the GTA like Peel) are filled with non-catholics.  So why even have them?

The other thing that I take issue with is when people point to Johny Tory's PC party, and say "look it was a disaster then with what he proposed".  Yeah, it was a disaster because the PCs wanted to EXPAND funding of religious schools, which most Ontarians are against. The opposite, wouldn't you think, would get the opposite reaction (i.e., favourable).

The fact that this exists in 2018, in Ontario, is upsetting.
Again, the issue is more pronounced on the French side, where some 80% of the jobs in most areas with Catholic schools.  It's outrageously discriminatory towards Muslim, Sikh, Atheist, etc, Francophones more than anyone, as the French public boards are so small.
Again, Andrea Horwath is saying loud in clear: I think Muslim francophone teachers don't deserve as many job opportunities as Catholic Francophones for jobs (actually only 1 out of every 5).   Or you're a francophone Sikh family, your child will have to travel across town an hour on a bus to get to a French public school, even though there is a French-Catholic school across the street.  But the catholic family next door, your kids won't have to take an hour-long bus ride.   If people don't see that as discriminatory, than we have a larger problem in this province than we may have though.

Toaster, I'm on mobile, so you'll have to forgive me for not breaking out the paragraphs of your post/my response into seperate quotes.

1) Large numbers of non-Catholics putting their kids in Catholic schools indicates to me that the Catholic schools are providing something that parents want that they don't feel they are getting out of secular schools, whether it's quality of education, morals or something else. For example one of my good friends attended Catholic schools near Hamilton despite being raised Evangelical. He told me that it's semi common for Evangelicals to send their kids to Catholic schools due to the relative lack of secularism. To remove funding is removing options for parents who are dissatisfied with a uniform, secular public system. It's an indicator that there is a segment of parents who are dissatisfied with the public system and a good reason IMO to expand funding to additional groups, both secular and religious.

I think you're over thinking this a tad. I'm a secular senior in a catholic school in Belleville which has like 5 or 6 catholic highschools within the area and a majority of secular kids that go here are either for friend groups or geographical convenience. 
The secular population is so incredibly strong in these highschools that the religious church girl cliques are a tiny minority in the school atmosphere.
Another point I wanted to tackle, It's certainly not morals. Our school has just as much weed and vaping as the public schools and everybody knows it including the parents, the culture here and the schools is shockingly unreligious and even in religion class it's just them teaching about the history of the bible and a couple "ABSTINENCE IS THE ONLY OPTION" classes are mixed inbetween.
Even the notion of "parents sending their kids to school" i disagree with, its very culturally appropriate for highschoolers to pick where they go.

To circle back to my original, its really just geographical convenience.

If a party came out and proposed the abolition of the catholic school system they likely wouldnt lose any secular votes, its the the catholic portion of their voting base that theyre worried about.