garnsworthy took part in a high-profile dispute with the government of ontario from 1984 to 1986, after progressive conservative premier bill davis made a surprise decision to fund ontario's public and catholic high schools on an equal footing. (the province had previously funded catholic education only as far as grade ten.) garnsworthy strongly opposed the decision and wrote an article complaining that the religious and moral values of the roman catholic church had in effect been given official state sanction. in particular, he wrote that he did not accept the catholic positions on family planning, contraception, and abortion, nor did he accept the church's claim to be the sole arbiter of religious truth. some believe that this intervention had the effect of dividing the funding issue along religious lines. garnsworthy responded that he was not anti-catholic and did not want to revive sectarian conflicts from the nineteenth century, but that he believed in and wanted to defend ontario's public education system.