Separate School Funding

Ontario PC leader John Tory has recently promised to extend public funding to Jewish, Muslim and Christian schools that agree to follow the provincial curriculum, calling it a matter of fairness. His announcement followed an Ontario Green Party pledge to end public funding of Roman Catholic Schools.

The Liberal Party of Premier Dalton McGuinty remains firmly in favour of a status-quo, and the Premier was quoted earlier today as stating that “he didn’t think that Ontarians believed that improvement or progress was defined as inviting children of different faiths to leave the publicly funded system and go to their own schools,” and “That's the system that we have inherited,”.

It certainly looks as if the funding of separate schools in Ontario is emerged once again as a hot-button issue, and the stakes this time are as high as they ever were: a PC victory would most probably mark the beginning of a new era in the Ontario education system, while a second Liberal triumph would confirm the status-quo as the preferred option and keep the issue buried for another twenty years.

The separation of church and state has long been a requirement for a country to achieve true legitimacy and righteousness. In 1966, the right to a secular state was enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Canada adhered, and in 1982, we Canadians made it a fundamental part of their identity by including it section 2 of our newly repatriated constitution.

The present funding system in place in Ontario clearly violates this principal, and was ruled discriminatory by both the Supreme Court and the United-Nations. Yet Ontarians chose to do nothing, our leaders preferring the status-quo to a political minefield which would necessarily pass through an amendment of the BNA Act and a battle with the powerful Catholic Lobby.

But now, two new party leaders are proposing a change. The first one, towards full funding for all religious schools, and the second, towards a final end to state funded separate schools. Both changes would bring back full secularity for the Ontario government, so the choice left to voters is namely the choice of secularities.

The European vision of a secular state is of one which repudiates all demonstrations of religious faith and actively seeks to restrict them to the confines of private life. This explains legislation such as the infamous French law 2004-228 that banned “the carrying of symbols or garb which are religious in nature or appearance in public primary and secondary schools.”

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have John Tory’s vision: a state that seeks to satisfy all religious groups by segregating them into separate systems specifically tailored to fit their religious values and beliefs. This vision is an inefficient as it is divisive, and quickly becomes, as Ontario Green Party leader Frank de Jong put it: “a can of worms”.

A successful secular state is neither of the above. It does not seek to take religion out of the public eye, but neither does it aim to satisfy everyone by funding independent religious communities. Rather, it simply accepts the beauty of all religious beliefs that don’t go against fundamental rights of citizens, and avoids using them as a basis for discrimination.

The current funding pattern goes against a UN convention and the Charter; it is simply wrong. The PC vision will create conflict, division, and will see students placed in artificial religious communities resembling in nothing the real world for which school is supposed to be preparing them. Only the Green Party proposal corresponds to the definition of a thriving and successful secular state, as it promotes sharing, understanding, tolerance and non-discrimination.