We should stick with the Lord’s Prayer

Not long ago, I informed readers of this column that Premier McGuinty had struck an all-party committee to review the more than century-old tradition of beginning each working day in the Legislative Assembly with the Lord’s Prayer.

Folks from all across our great riding of Haldimand-Norfolk have visited my offices in Simcoe and Dunnville to sign my petition to keep that tradition. I have presented to the Ontario Legislature petitions bearing thousands of names from Haldimand-Norfolk. I thank all of you who have collected signatures and I encourage others to do the same before the committee reports back to the House this fall.

The committee charged with reviewing the fate of the prayer, has established a form online so that Ontarians can have their say – at www.ontla.on.ca.

Members of the committee state the majority of submissions send a clear message that we should stick with the Lord’s Prayer. MPP Garfield Dunlop is the Opposition member of the committee – he feels that the Lord’s Prayer is inclusive as it covers different backgrounds ranging from Armenians, Assyrians, Copts and Ethiopians, Russians, Romanians and Poles, to Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants of every rite and denomination.

“Adding the reading is part of Ontario’s history,” MPP Dunlop recently told the media. “You have to take that into account. It’s not just about religion, It’s about tradition.”

The Premier has said he is reviewing the prayer because he wants to “look at how we can move beyond the Lord’s Prayer to a broader approach that is more inclusive in nature.” Ironic, that the Premier labelled segregation and sequestration to allow faiths, other than Catholics, to access public school funding but is now sidling up to these same groups by trashing the Lord’s Prayer. Another example of the hypocrisy that plagues this current government.

Christina Blizzard said it best in the Sunday Sun on May 11, 2008: “If McGuinty cared one iota about multiculturalism and inclusiveness, he would do something meaningful --  like change this province’s discriminatory policy on religious school funding.”

I believe the people of my riding, and Ontario on a whole, would prefer that we debate things like the plummeting economy and the restoration of law and order.

United Church Minister and New Democrat MPP Cheri DiNovo hit the nail on the head when she said that “The background of all of this is a province with one-in-eight children living in poverty. We could be spending all this money and all this time addressing that.”

Nobody has complained about the Lord’s Prayer in my riding or in the Ontario Legislature so I question why we are spending time debating something that isn’t broken.

The entire British parliamentary system was based on Christianity and can be traced back to the Magna Carta. In fact the first parliamentary sessions in Great Britain were held in churches.

The Lord’s Prayer is something that I hold in the highest regard as do the majority of people of living in Canada. The Lord’s Prayer is a comforting tradition that is recited by people of all faiths who would agree that it has done them no harm.

In my view, we cannot afford to further abandon the Christian values that our country has been built upon and to date it seems that the majority of Ontarians feel the same – Amen!