Election rules for Catholic boards unfair

Non-Catholics deserve same rights, says Rev. Andrew Love.

In a matter of days, eligible voters across Ontario will exercise a fundamental democratic right by voting in the municipal elections. This right includes voting for school board trustees. Everyone will have this right except non-Catholic parents whose children attend Catholic schools.

Within the debate about whether Ontario should continue to fund Catholic education, there is the neglected fact that the Education Act, reinforced by local Catholic school board policies, restricts voting for Catholic school board trustees to only those individuals who are in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

I discovered this recently when I tried to formally direct my education taxes away from the public system to the Catholic education system and, thereby, be eligible to vote for the school trustee in my ward within the Ottawa Catholic School Board.

However, to make this change happen, I would have to be dishonest by checking a box that says I am Roman Catholic. I would have to renounce my own baptism and beliefs. I cannot in good conscience do that.

Let me be clear. I am a non-Catholic parent with two children in the Ottawa Catholic School Board. I support Catholic education. I have no desire to weaken the Catholic theology that is taught in the school that they attend. In fact, I support more choice for parents in our education system.

Sadly, there are non-Catholic parents who have opted to put their children in the Catholic education system, then turn around and complain about religious instruction. I am not one of those.

Yet, it seems as if Catholic school boards are eager to attract non-Catholics. Under the provincial per-pupil funding model, every new student attending a Catholic school adds $12,300 in grant money from the Ministry of Education. In my case, that is $24,600 in additional revenue. One can argue that my taxes are eventually allocated to the Ottawa Catholic School Board. However, that ignores the fact that I cannot influence how that money is spent by way of voting for a trustee, or even running for a position as a trustee. This is truly a case of taxation without representation.

It begs a number of important questions. How many non-Catholic voters have falsely checked the box on the form and are going to vote on a fraudulent basis? Does the Ottawa Catholic School Board even check to see if voters are in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church? Conversely, how many non-Catholic voters do not even care that they are disenfranchised by the legislation?

We are not talking about a small minority. According to the Globe and Mail, in 2016, 26 per cent of the students in the Ottawa Carleton School Board were “not flagged as Catholic.” Growth in enrolment of non-Catholics in Catholic education across Ontario is steadily going up.

The Ontario secular public education system would love to see Catholic education disappear. The result would be one large, inefficient, monolithic education bureaucracy with no competition or choice. There is growing clamour from well-funded interest groups and teachers’ unions to realize this goal.

Moreover, recent legal decisions are weakening the argument that Section 29 of the Charter of Rights protects Catholic education rights. As recently as April, the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench ruled that the province does not have the right to fund non-Catholic students at Catholic schools.

This is significant because Saskatchewan is one of three provinces (along with Alberta and Ontario) that has a constitutionally enshrined provision protecting Catholic-based separate schools.

We should not wait for the inevitable appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. The time has come for Catholic educators in Ontario to embrace non-Catholic parents as an important group of allies.

We can be a significant voice of support pushing back against the amalgamation wave. Unfortunately, the legislation and board policies deny us the most important voice of all: marking an X on a ballot for trustees.

The new provincial government should remove the voting restrictions in the Education Act.

This would be greatly accelerated if Catholic educators would recognize they have more to gain by letting non-Catholics exercise their basic democratic rights.