Extend faith-based school funding

Re: Ontario’s Forgotten Students, Noam Goodman, Sept. 13; Separating Church and Classroom Adam Radwanski, Sept 16. Adam Radwanski’s response to my column incorrectly assumes that fixing school funding discrimination requires “establishing a broad array of religious public school boards.” In fact, that would not be a practical or necessary way of extending funding to the 7% of faith-based schools in Ontario that are not already funded.

Funding could be extended to this relatively small group either by way of tax credits or by direct funding to schools without creating multiple new bureaucracies. Either way, the government could impose conditions that would ensure appropriate public accountability.

Removing funding from 700,000 Catholic children who currently receive it is not politically realistic. All three parties at Queen’s Park support separate school funding and for good reason, as it enhances Ontario’s harmonious multiculturalism. Extending funding to the small non- Catholic minorities who seek it is the only fair and practical solution. Mr. Radwanski agrees with Mr. Goodman that religious discrimination in school funding in Ontario is unacceptable. But he implies that fixing the discrimination by extending funding to non- Catholic minorities will lead to “a failure of minority groups to integrate into mainstream society.”

That fear is unfounded. Only a small percentage of the population uses nonCatholic religious schools, though for them it is often seen as a necessity. In the 1996 Adler case, the Supreme Court held that Ontario has the constitutional power, though no obligation, to extend equal school funding to religious minorities. Evidence accepted by the court showed that “the Jewish community’s survival as an identifiable and practising religious community depends upon broad access for Jewish children to Jewish day schools.” Other small distinctive minorities are similarly affected.

Mr. Radwanski fails to recognize that for these minorities, access to faith-based schools is essential to their cultural survival. While effectively forcing everyone together in the same school may produce a kind of social harmony, it is wrong to purchase social harmony at the cost of the cultural existence of distinctive religious minorities. One can still have social harmony without forcing everyone into the same schools, as shown by Ontario’s long experience with Catholic separate schools. Post’s