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Catholic schools under fire |
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Written by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
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Friday, 04 May 2007 |
 Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynne has said her government is intent on keeping the Catholic education system as it is. (Photo by Michael Swan)
The non-binding motion from Mississauga East MPP Peter Fonseca, a backbench Liberal, called on members of the legislature to “oppose any attempt to take public money and hand it over to private schools.”
The motion was aimed squarely at Conservative education critic Frank Klees, who has been making overtures to immigrant communities with a promise of some form of funding for non-Catholic religious schools. Though it is rumoured the Conservatives favour tax credits, which they will call vouchers, Klees has not yet revealed the nature of financial assistance his party will offer to Muslims, Jews, Evangelicals and other groups who operate faith-based private schools.
In 2003 the new Liberal government cancelled a Conservative tax credit for private schools that covered both faith and non-faith based schools.
Klees greeted Fonseca’s motion warmly, relishing the opportunity to oppose it in defence of immigrant families who are paying both tuition and education taxes.
“We live in a multicultural society,” said the Oak Ridges MPP. “We take great pride in welcoming cultures and diversity of religions and celebrate them. This (Liberal) government and this member (Fonseca) today take a stand to say that it’s all OK for Catholics, but other faiths should have no room.”
While Conservatives and the Ontario Multi-Faith Coalition for Equal Funding for Faith-Based Schools want to put other faiths on an equal footing with Catholics, another province-wide campaign would answer the fairness question by eliminating Catholic schools entirely.
The One School System campaign (www.oneschoolsystem.org), based in Ottawa, has the support of Ontario’s Green Party. Green Party leader Frank de Jong, a public school teacher who once taught in the Catholic system, said his party’s position in favour of eliminating Catholic school boards is based on ethics.
“Catholics support social justice and fairness. So, even Catholics would be in favour of not discriminating against people from other religions,” de Jong told The Catholic Register.
In an era of declining enrolment, the province could save money by merging Catholic and public school boards, argued de Jong.
“We will save several hundreds of million dollars by not having a multiplicity of systems,” de Jong said.
De Jong and the One School System’s campaign for amalgamating Catholic and public school boards has been bolstered by several public school boards with declining enrolment that have passed motions in favour of eliminating Catholic boards. A petition campaign organized among public school councils has been raising signatures on a petition due to be presented at Queen’s Park this spring.
Multi-Faith Coalition chair Ira Walfish doubts that amalgamating Catholic and public boards will save money.
“You just look at other areas in government where there has been consolidation. There’s no efficiencies,” he said. “Are there efficiencies because in Toronto we now have one (city) council?”
But Walfish does believe the fairness issue — highlighted by a 1999 United Nations Human Rights Committee finding against provincially funded Catholic schools and reiterated by the same committee in 2005 — will catch fire among voters.
“The point is it’s discrimination. The point is it needs to be rectified,” Walfish said. “It makes no sense to have faith groups that are outside the system who receive no funding and in one case you get 100-per-cent funding.”
Adding the 53,000 students now going to faith-based private schools would increase the province’s education funding commitment by about seven per cent, according to Walfish. The province can well afford it, he said.
Aware that Ontario’s bishops have long held the position that other parents should have the same right as Catholic parents to choose their children’s education, Walfish wonders why the Catholic community isn’t more vocal in supporting the education rights of other faiths.
“The louder we get, and the louder voices calling for one school system get, the more precarious the position of the Catholics becomes,” he said. “I don’t think it’s to their advantage not to advocate for funding for all the faith groups.”
Veteran Toronto District Catholic School Board trustee Catherine Leblanc-Miller said the Catholic education establishment has been too quiet on the issue.
“We can’t just lie low,” she said. “When push comes to shove, we support other faiths.”
Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association president Bernard Murray makes the point that Catholic school trustees have always supported the right of other faiths to choose an education system that hands on their faith. But Murray doesn’t think Catholics should get involved in a debate over whether the Jewish and Armenian schools should get direct funding with strings attached or tax credits for parents.
“That’s not our right to do that,” Murray said.
Fending off the call for amalgamation is an old challenge, said Murray.
“We contribute very much to the common good of our society,” he said. “We just have to bring to the attention of people the job that we do.”
Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association president Donna Marie Kennedy thinks Catholics shouldn’t help the One School System campaign by reacting to their rhetoric.
“We have to look at this from a legal perspective,” she said.
Ontario’s Catholic schools were born in an arrangement made in pre-Confederation Ontario in 1863. That deal was eventually incorporated into the British North America Act of 1867 and the Constitution Act of 1982. A deal is a deal, said Kennedy.
Bruce-Grey Catholic District School Board trustee Bev Eckensweiler remembers travelling to Toronto for a Maple Leaf Gardens rally in the late 1970s where students, parents and teachers argued that Catholic schools make a positive contribution to society, that it was unfair to extract education taxes from Catholics and then make them pay tuition — the same arguments non-Catholic faith-based schools are making today. She’s also acutely aware that the school board which shares bus routes with Bruce-Grey, the Blue Water District School Board, has just passed a motion in favour of eliminating her board.
“The one board thing is very disturbing,” she said.
Eckensweiler wants Catholics to start reminding the rest of the province about the positive influence of the school system which educates a third of its children.
Meanwhile the governing Liberals are positioning themselves as champions of publicly funded education, and of Ontario’s unique system. In an April 27 address to Catholic trustees, Education Minister Kathleen Wynne started off by calling the Catholic system “part of our history, part of our heritage” and got a standing ovation.
Wynne dismisses the idea there’s any threat to Catholic funding, saying that the issue comes up from time to time but Catholics can rely on the guarantees in the Constitution as far as her government is concerned. Conservative and NDP leaders have also said their parties won’t try to change the Constitution to achieve a single school system. Even de Jong admitted to The Catholic Register that there is some dissatisfaction in his party about its official position, and it may come up for review at the Green’s next policy convention after the Oct. 10 election.
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Michael Swan, The Catholic Register |
| About the author: |
| Michael Swan is Associate Editor of The Catholic Register. He is an award-winning writer and photographer and holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University.
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