Near the end of his tenure as premier, Bill Davis announced that he would extend full funding to the province's Catholic school system. Anglican Archbishop Lewis Garnsworthy, a vocal opponent of the plan, responded by charging that Davis had changed Ontario's education system "by decree", in the same way that Adolf Hitler had changed the education system in Nazi Germany. Rotenberg later said that Garnsworthy's comments created a climate of religious intolerance in the province, and took support away from the Progressive Conservative Party. "I think he would probably get the Ian Paisley award of the year, because his speech made it respectable to be anti-Catholic," Rotenberg was quoted as saying. Although the opposition Liberals and New Democratic Party also supported full funding for Catholic schools, the governing Conservatives were more seriously affected because some of their religious supporters abstained from voting, depriving them of significant support. Garnsworthy's speech was credited with prolonging the controversy during the 1985 campaign.