A School for Scandal: The United Nations versus Ontario

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Claudia Rebanks Hepburn

Ontario is used to being maligned by the rest of Canada. We at the centre of the Canadian universe have come to accept harsh comments from the "less fortunate" provinces with a polite turn of the other cheek.

We aren’t so comfortable with all criticism, however, particularly when it comes from the "less fortunate" abroad. Last month’s judgment from the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee against Ontario’s education system came as an embarrassment to this self-righteous province and raised some interesting questions about the justice of the publicly-funded education system in different provinces.

The UN ruling of November 5th declared that Ontario’s policy of funding Catholic schools, but not other religious schools, is discriminatory. Rational Canadians in all provinces would probably agree.

The historical roots of the policy in question make it no more equitable but somewhat more comprehensible. In 1867, the British North America Act affirmed the right of "The Queen’s Roman Catholic Subjects" in Ontario to their own publicly funded "Separate Schools."1 Clearly, the informing principle of the Act was that freedom of religion be maintained for the minority, as well as for the majority in the Protestant "public" school system.

As the province and the Protestant school system evolved over the next 130 years, that basic, informing principle of the Act, was lost. The numbers of non-Christian Ontarians grew, and so did the number of non-religious Ontarians. The Protestant school system reacted, or perhaps overreacted, to these changes by becoming inimical to any religious teaching whatsoever. It is now expressly forbidden to teach the Christian religion in Ontario’s "public" elementary schools. Consequently, there is now no publicly-funded education for the Protestant majority in Ontario and none for the non-Christian religious minority either. They all must attend the religion-stripped "public" schools, or pay again for education of their choice.

The United Nations recommends either that public funding be extended to all religious schools or to none at all. The negative option, to stop funding separate schools, is unfeasible as well as undesirable, given the constitutional guarantee of funding for separate Catholic schools in this province. The positive alternative, to extend funding to all religious schools chosen by parents, would be both more politically palatable and more democratic.

Critics disagree. Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association claims that such a decision would result in a "balkanizing of our school system along religious lines."2 Federal government lawyers, upholding Ontario’s peculiar policy of school funding, reiterated this argument when it came under fire from the UN: "Encouraging all other denominations [to] coexist in the public system fosters tolerance and multiculturalism."3

Do the critics have a point? Would Canada’s multicultural mosaic be shattered if education dollars were allowed to follow children to the school of their parents’ choice? Would the future Ontario look something like the former Yugoslavia if public funding followed children to independent religious schools?

The answers to these questions need not be conjectured. Publicly-funded choice of independent schools, including religious schools, has been practised for decades in other parts of Canada and the world. Ample evidence exists about the effects such a policy would have on the education system, parental satisfaction with that system, and on society as a whole. Ontario need only open its eyes to the evidence that, literally, surrounds it.

In Canada, British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba provide partial funding to independent schools regardless of their religious denomination. British Columbia has supported school choice and religious freedom for 20 years by providing a percentage of public spending per pupil to independent schools (between 10 and 50 percent) if they conform to certain stipulations. Alberta provides 60 percent of public spending to independent schools, and Manitoba gives them 80 percent. No one has pointed to BC, Alberta, or Manitoba to show how public funding of independent schools has wreaked havoc with social cohesion or fostered narrow-mindedness in the young.4

Indeed, abroad, countries that publicly encourage choice of schools are, perhaps, some the last one might label "balkanized" or intolerant. They include Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand.

Danish families, for example, who prefer religious or independent secular schools have received public funding for their choice of school as long as any government-funded system of education has existed in that country. Indeed, they consider school choice fundamental to a free, democratic society. This policy has brought about many benefits for parents and students, including an unparalleled diversity of independent schools and a government school system that responds to parental concerns. School choice has not balkanized Danish society. It has merely made educational opportunity more democratic.5

Those who predict that a similar policy would bring about fragmentation and intolerance in Ontario have not considered the evidence. Publicly-funded school choice would merely bring democratic and competitive-market forces to bear on a "public" education system that, without it, is almost entirely unaccountable to the families it serves.

And, finally, if Ontario heeds the UN ruling and offers all its families educational choice, there will be an added bonus for us all: Canadians from the "less fortunate" provinces will have one less reason to call Ontario narrow-minded.

Notes

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Last Modified: Wednesday June 9, 1999.