The spectre of Muslim madrassa schools operating on the public dime will likely pay dividends for the McGuinty Liberals at the ballot box Oct. 10. Galvanizing both the intolerant redneck and the earnest leftie alike, an unseemly undercurrent of fear has been at play during this provincial campaign, and the Grits will all too happily suck up those uninformed votes come Election Day. In fact, they're counting on it.

But the truth is, John Tory's proposal to extend funding to non-Catholic faith-based schools has been incorrectly cast as a loathsome, shameless attempt at winning the hearts of minds of urban immigrant communities, as some of the Progressive Conservative Leader's critics suggest.

Forget for a second about Muslims, Jews and Hindus: Tory's pledge would also bring about fairness for the large majority of the independent faith-based schools in Ontario that happen to be - hold on to your rubber boots and tractor caps- Christian. Out of the 53,000 students attending privately funded faith-based schools in Ontario, an estimated 35,000 are Protestant Christians. Of those, the largest single group belong to schools owing much of their existence to farmers!

That's right, the same post-World War II Dutch immigrant farmers who played a vital role in reshaping this province's agricultural sector, who founded the recognized and respected Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, also created their own Protestant Christian schools. Unlike their Catholic brethren from Holland, who were fortuitously greeted with publicly funded schools of their own faith upon arrival in Ontario, the Protestant Dutch farmers and associated small businessmen - resourceful and infused with a Calvinist work ethic - established Ontario Alliance of Christian Schools (OACS).

The organization traces its beginning to a 1952 meeting in the 'consistory room' at Hamilton's First Christian Reformed Church - part of a North American denomination that might be described as the Dutch-rooted version of Presbyterianism. Today, the OACS serves 13,000 students in 79 Ontario schools.

In rural Ontario and dairy country, Tory's pledge resonates as an idea of natural justice for many, many people that have some sort of connection to an OACS school. If they haven't personally attended or supported an OACS school with their hard-earned money, while paying taxes at the same time, their neighbours certainly have. Back in the day, I was a farm kid attending elementary classes at Timothy Christian School near Williamsburg - each morning riding over the back roads of Eastern Ontario on buses operated by a Massey Ferguson dealership. How's that for rural?

The Ontario government already allows Christian farmers to forward their official farm "check off" money to the CFFO. Why can't the McGuinty Liberals demonstrate the same fairness on the education front, when it comes to school taxes and funding?

Actually, McGuinty's stance - that Ontario's current policy of educational discrimination must prevail, that the historical established order must never change, despite the condemnation of the United Nations Committee on Human Rights - ironically puts him in the shameful company of another farmer of Dutch ancestry, half a world away.

PW Botha, the last hard-line white president of South Africa, once blatantly thumbed his nose at the international community in favour of ongoing discrimination in his neck of the woods, too.