Canadians want options in classrooms

Activists are out of touch on religious schools

Canadians are clear. They prefer a diversity of options for educating our children. That’s why it’s not surprising that six in 10 of us support public funding for religious and faithbased schools, according to new research. And that means support for funding such schools, both independent and public, is the mainstream view in Canada.

The think tank Cardus teamed up with the Angus Reid Institute to ask almost 2,000 Canadian adults whether religious and faithbased schools should receive public funding. Fully 61 per cent said yes. Almost a third backed full funding that’s “equal to support for public schools” and another 30 per cent supported partial funding. The remaining 39 per cent preferred no funding for religious schools.

Frankly, the strong public support for government funding of religious schools isn’t entirely out of step with the reality of how religious schooling is funded in Canada.

In Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, governments fund a public Catholic school system in addition to a secular public system. And in those provinces anywhere from one-in-five to one-inthree students attends these public religious schools.

In addition, five provinces also provide funding for religious schools in the independent school sector: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec. In the four western provinces between 60 and 80 per cent of independent school students attend religious schools. In Quebec, more than a quarter do. The vast majority of these schools in all five provinces receive some level of government funding. Funding for independent schools doesn’t cover costs for capital such as buildings and land, but it does match anywhere from 35 to 80 per cent of what is offered, on average, to a local public school for the education of a student.

What do we take away from this? It is clear that activists petitioning for the cutting off of religious school funding are out of step with the majority of Canadians. Additionally a court ruling in Saskatchewan threatening provincial funding for non-Catholic students in Catholic schools is also out of step with widespread public sentiment. In Alberta and Saskatchewan, support is especially high where upwards of 70 per cent support full or partial funding of religious schools. Governments that fiddle with those funding arrangements do so at their peril.

Parents want a diversity of educational options. For many of those parents, particularly those in Ontario and in the Atlantic provinces, the choice to get their kids into schools that reflect their religious beliefs and values involves great financial sacrifice. In the vast majority of cases, religious schools aren’t elite schools reserved for the wealthy. They are small schools, often in rural or semi-rural settings. So, it stands to reason that 61 per cent of Ontarians and 52 per cent of Atlantic Canadians also say they’d like to see at least partial government funding for religious schools.

If the mainstream view in Canada is support for some level of government funding of religious and faith-based schools, what about the minority view? The poll doesn’t get at why opposition to funding exists. But if the opposition is based on concerns about the type of Canadians such schools turn out, that’s worth a closer look.

Religious independent schools in Canada, a recent study shows, continue to produce excellent contributing citizens. The 2016 Cardus Education Survey found that religious school graduates such as those from evangelical Protestant schools exhibit a wide variety of civic contributions. Compared to public school graduates, for example, they donate more money, are more likely to volunteer for arts and cultural organization, are more willing to give blood, and are as likely to be politically active as their public school peers.

Canadians see the benefits of having a diversity of educational options available for their children. The majority sees the need for at least some government support for it. That kind of funding is the norm in half of Canada’s provinces. If Ontarians and Atlantic Canadians are a touch jealous of that funding, they’ll need to make themselves heard.