[FORUM] What do you think of Ontario's publicly-funded Roman Catholic education system?

[rfmcdonald]

Canada has a reputation as a secular society, by world and by American standards. By and large, this is true. Unlike any American state that I'm aware of, however, the the public education system of the province of Ontario includes a denominational school system fully funded by the provincial government in addition to the main secular system, one associated with the Roman Catholic Church, providing instruction both in English and in French. This system has periodically sparked controversy, former Progressive Conservative leader John Tory's proposal in the 2007 to extend the Roman Catholic model to other religions prompting a massive electoral backlash, and more recently the refusal of Catholic schools to countenance explicitly gay-friendly policies notwithstanding the public mood and the board's commitment to equality. The idea of defunding the Roman Catholic schools has been coming up fairly frequently.

Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn posted an essay this weekend describing how this came to be. The Confederation-era ethnoreligious hostilities--between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and secondarily English Canadian and French Canadians--are responsible.

At the upcoming rally in Queen’s Park this Sunday to support gay-straight alliances in Roman Catholic schools across Ontario, we easily imagine students holding up signs proclaiming “Equality or Bust.” Forty years ago, placards with that message were also held up by pupils, but at a mass rally at Maple Leaf Gardens to urge the provincial government to fully fund separate secondary schools beyond grade 10. The current debate about the appropriateness of providing public money for religious education is the latest manifestation of an issue that has bedevilled Ontario educators and politicians since the days of the Family Compact.

There was a time when education in Ontario was headed down a non-denominational path. Back in the 1840s when, depending on the day, the province was known as Upper Canada or Canada West, Egerton Ryerson championed a “common school” system for all students regardless of their faith. While Ryerson envisioned a system free of church influences, politics scuttled his plans. Since the Protestant minority in Lower Canada/Canada East had obtained the right to their own schools, the Catholic minority felt they merited the same treatment. By giving the minorities funding, the religious majorities in both Canadas could be satisfied for a few minutes before their next squabble.

Despite his reservations, Ryerson agreed to clauses in a series of acts beginning in 1841 that established separate schools in the colony’s educational system (Toronto’s first, St. Paul, opened within a year). Though opposition was fierce—Protestant papers imagined “popish plots” galore—the establishment of a separate school system seemed secure following the passage of the Scott Act in 1863. Even then, there was a provision that later proved annoying for rural Catholics: “no person shall be deemed a supporter of any Separate School unless he resides within three miles (in a direct line) of the Site of the School House.” Those who lived four miles away were out of luck until a Canadian Supreme Court ruling nearly a century later.

Yet few supporters of full funding quote the Commons Schools Act or Scott Act. Instead, they point to the document that created modern Canada, the British North America Act of 1867. Section 93 covered the separate school situations in Ontario and Quebec by guaranteeing the rights of those that already existed. By the 20th century, the consensus was that the laws on the books covered funding for separate schools up to grade 10. Beyond that, students either entered the public system for free or coughed up tuition fees for private schools that covered the remaining secondary school grades.

[. . .]

At a rally sponsored by a Catholic high school student association that drew an overflow crowd to Maple Leaf Gardens on October 25, 1970, Minister of Education William Davis told the audience not to “hold out any false hopes” that funding would be extended. He was as good as his word: nearly a year later, on the eve of the 1971 election campaign, Davis, now Premier, rejected the idea on grounds that it opened up the doors to a fragmented education system. He believed full funding could be “tantamount to the abandonment of the secondary and post-secondary educational system as it exists today, in which the education of the student, while it reflects the ethical and spiritual values of the community, and while teaching respect and tolerance for all religions and creeds, remains, nonetheless, non-denominational and non-sectarian in character.” Though the Liberals and NDP campaigned in support of full funding, Davis’s Progressive Conservatives won the election. Case closed.

Flash forward to the end of Davis’s tenure. On June 12, 1984, he shocked Queen’s Park by announcing that as of September 1985, starting with one grade per year, full funding would be extended to separate secondary schools. Indicating that he hoped the move would heal “a long and heartfelt controversy,” Davis received a standing ovation from all parties in the legislature. Families would no longer have to pay up to $1,100 a year in tuition to send their kids to high schools that would no longer be private, while officials in cities like Toronto looked forward to easing their overcrowded conditions with new facilities. Some concessions were forced onto separate school boards: they would have to accept any students and, over the next 10 years, had to agree to hire any non-Catholic teachers laid off from the public system due to shifting enrolments.

There was backlash among traditional Protestant Tory supporters, who couldn’t believe what Davis had dropped on them. This betrayal was among the factors that helped sink the Big Blue Machine in the wake of the 1985 election, which saw several anti–full funding candidates run for office. New Premier Frank Miller indicated he would delay the implementation of funding, but his fatally small minority government had no chance to act. Under David Peterson’s Liberals, full funding rolled out as intended and sparked turmoil in some communities as public schools were closed or threatened with closure.

As Bradburn notes, Ontario's embrace of public funding for the Roman Catholic school system was out of step with world trends, with Newfoundland and Québec winding up their own denominational systems as ethnoreligious identities in those provinces mutated (in Newfoundland's case, child sex abuse scandals associated with the Roman Catholic Church helped), the United Nations even criticizing the special privilege granted exclusively to Catholics in a 1999 report. As I noted at the beginning of this post, there's little likelihood that the model of the Roman Catholic school system will be extended to other religious communities.

Through this weekend's [FORUM] post, I'd like to find out what you think about the Ontario model of a publicly-funded education system for the Roman Catholic Church alone. Is it a good thing? Should the model be ported over to other religions? Should it be ended? Should the system be forced to accommodate policies in the main education system--say, anti-homophobia initiatives--that might go against Roman Catholic norms because, well, it is being given government money?

Discuss.