Contributing Writer Robin Sears looks back on the Ontario election and wonders how, with all the challenges the province faces, it was transformed into a one-issue campaign on the public funding of private faith-based schools. And in a province where confessional schools have historically been a tinder-box issue, how and why did Conservative leader John Tory allow himself to be trapped on this question, making the campaign about one of his promises rather than his opponent’s record? Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals successfully “conjured up the prospect of immigrants with strange religions and foreign tongues…” writes Sears, while the Conservatives were never warned by their own research “how damaging a promise this could become,” derailing their entire campaign.

How Ontario got a one-issue campaign in this month’s issue of Policy Options.