The public funding for Catholic schools issue has been simmering away on Ontario's backburner for a while, with Newfoundland and Quebec already having faced it down in the 1990s (and Manitoba too, but in 1890).
Note that I can't speak to what Quebec did, but Newfoundland didn't have a Catholic school issue, it had a no-non-religious school issue.
And yet, the only party that has it right is the Greens, whose leader, Frank de Jong, supports moving to one publicly-funded school system.
[Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty] defends this position with the Constitution Act, 1867, which in section 93 enshrines Catholic school rights in place before Confederation, a concession made to get the deal.Nonetheless, the province's exclusive jurisdiction over education means that act can be amended bilaterally through agreement with the federal government as provided for in section 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982, and already executed by Quebec.
"We got what we wanted from the Micks, now it's time screw 'em"
The equality rights argument has some teeth, despite a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 1996 that Ontario's refusal to fund other denominational schools was not a breach of freedom of religion or equality rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I.e. it equality rights argument has no teeth, as far as the law of the land goes.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee felt differently in both 1999 and again in 2005, censuring Canada for violating equality rights by virtue of religious discrimination in the Ontario school system.
Oh, well there you go -- a functionary appointed by the Chinese dictatorship was told not to agree with Ontarians having a parallel Catholic education system, I guess we'll have to ditch it.
Of course, equality is more than just a legal concept; one might be forgiven for having trouble understanding how in our current society public funding of only Catholic schools is fair and just.
I'll freely grant it's not particularly fair. Neither is a four-way stop, but I don't seethe with the injustice that some guy driving the opposite direction can cruise through the intersection in a few seconds because no one else was driving his direction. More seriously and to the point, no particular harm is being done to non-Catholics, a point which I shall return to in a moment.
Take for example, Catholic school boards across the province debating whether to ban Ontario's new HPV vaccination program on the basis it promotes promiscuity. All Grade 8 girls in the province will have free access to a vaccine that can prevent the HPV types responsible for 70 per cent of cervical cancer cases.
It is one thing to require parental consent, but to refuse girls access to this provincially mandated health program based on religious values in a publicly funded school obviously contravenes a decision made by our secular government. It is also possibly contrary to the equality rights of these young women.
She means "girls", of course. But this gets to the core of the issue: Catholics agreed to an Ontario under the condition that Catholics could educate and raise Catholic children in a manner consistent with Catholicism. The need for the deal then and now is obvious: Catholicism [1] is uniquely despised amongst religions by politically powerful (non-Catholic) organizations. Mann reinforces the point: she believes it a compelling reason for Ontario to strip Catholics of their education rights is that she is disgusted by Catholic values.
That money, along with the elimination of the duplication of resources for Catholic schools, could be directed to funding for autistic students, accessible post-secondary education and revitalizing a flailing public education system.
So could redirecting the money being wasted [2] on HPV vaccinations or CBC writers. This argument might make sense if there were half-filled schools and only one non-Catholic school board; as it stands, it's nonsense.
Of course, such a question is less about resources than about how we view accommodation and the secular state in our multicultural and religiously diverse society; all the more reason for a referendum enabling a government to act with less political fallout.
Michelle Mann is a Toronto-based consultant and freelance writer, specializing in social justice, human rights and Aboriginal issues.
Can you imagine the veins exploding in Mann's eyeballs if it was suggested we strip aboriginal title via "political will" or a referendum.
[1] note that I said Catholicism, not Catholics.
[2] there, I said it. I am speaking from purely a cost-benefit and risk management point of view -- it doesn't make sense to
doing this yet.
