End All Faith-Based School Funding in Ontario

The Ontario election is over, but the issue of funding faith-based schools has not gone away.

We should address the issue of discrimination in funding faith-based schools, as recommended by the United Nations.

However, we should also address the human rights of aboriginal people in Canada, what I think is one of Canada’s biggest embarrassments, and we should be taking demonstrable action on climate change, instead of just playing politics with the Kyoto Protocol. The difference is that faith-based funding has a powerful lobby group.

Let me be clear, I agree with the conditions attached to the basic premise, “Our plan would invite these schools and the 53,000 kids into the public education system as long as they: 1. Teach the Ontario curriculum. 2. Hire only fully-qualified Ontario teachers; and 3. Agree to ongoing accountability (student testing, inspection).” These are important controls that we should have on all schools in the province.

And I’ll say it up front, I have no particular problem with Jewish, Islamic or Hindu schools. My objection is not in any way about xenophobia. I may use specific groups as examples, but it’s not intended to pick on them, it’s just for examples.

First, Christian Conservative makes a pretty good case that Tory’s solution is not such a great idea, saying “people who choose to send their kids [to private faith-based schools], like my parents, often do so to REMOVE their kids from the influence of the public system, and the boards that run them.” Some schools will reject the public money because of the conditions that come with it. These are the schools we should be most concerned about, and this plan will do nothing to bring them under public control.

So right away, we can subtract some unknown number from the quoted 53,000.

My main problem is with the unknown number that would be added, and the potentially devastating impact that would have on our public schools.

According to the Dufferin-Peel CDSB, there are over 650,000 students enrolled in Ontario’s catholic schools. Clearly, the bulk of these students would not be there without the funding that Catholic schools currently enjoy. The same applies to today’s 53,000 private school students – once there are publicly-funded schools for Protestants, Jews, Hindus and Muslims, there’s every reason to expect that many, many more students will register. The cost of John Tory’s proposal is quoted between $400,000,000 and $500,000,000, but how much more would be needed if the 53,000 swells to 100,000 or 200,000 or more? Think how that number will mushroom once there are enough Hindu schools in Peel that we need to create a Peel Hindu School Board to oversee them. We already have too many school boards in every jurisdiction, this would multiply the problem.

Anecdotally, I understand that Catholic high schools have substantial numbers of non-Catholic kids, many of which are “new Canadians” and one of the most common reasons parents give for sending their kids there boils down to, “At least it’s about God”. These parents would probably be among the first to choose a faith-based school of their own religion. So even Catholic schools could see declining registration.

It seems obvious to me that many immigrant parents also specifically choose public schools, for their own reasons. I’m not saying that everyone would make the same decision, and I certainly don’t speak for the many valid reasons parents use to choose a school for their kids.

Which brings me to my son’s public school. As I’ve said before, the reality at his school is that “visible minorities” are the vast majority of students. The elementary part of the school is so small, it’s almost an afterthought. If any significant number of students leaves his school, it may have no choice but to shut down, leaving him to travel even further to school every day.

Meanwhile, there’s a Catholic elementary school down the street that he’s not allowed to attend because he’s not Catholic. If we feel that the local Catholic school would provide the best educational environment for our son, how is it fair that we cannot send him there?

I’m trying not to sound all alarmist here, but I think this plan would mean:

- even more schools that my kids can’t or wouldn’t want to go to (i.e. it doesn’t address the basic issue of fairness)

- way more duplication, bureaucracy and waste

- huge disruption in public school registration and budgets

By the way, here’s how other provinces deal with the issue (from thespec.com, with no mention of Saskatchewan):

* Alberta: full funding for faith-based and charter public schools, partial funding for private schools meeting provincial standards.

* B.C., Manitoba, Quebec: partial funding for religious schools meeting provincial standards.

* Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and P.E.I.: no religious school funding.

Ontario is not the only province with partial funding, in fact only Alberta mentions “full funding” but it also mentions “partial funding”, so I don’t know how to interpret that.

There’s really two separate issues here: 1. Solving the current unfair situation of funding Catholic schools only, and 2. Curriculum, staffing and accountability for existing private schools.

In my opinion, Ontario should not be in the business of teaching religion in school, we should seek the required constitutional amendments to eliminate Catholic school funding. We should have a single, outstanding public school system. Strong public schools would create a much closer sense of neighbourhood for everyone, would not encourage ghettoization of immigrants, would help new Canadians join the mainstream and provide the best education all our kids need and deserve.

Of course, people would have the still option of sending their kids to a private faith-based school, but none of them would be funded by the government.

Second, we should change the law such that even private schools have to follow the Ontario curriculum, hire qualified teachers and submit to similar accountability. I see no reason why any private school should not follow the same basic curriculum, at least as far as English, Math and Science are concerned. There can be flexibility for religion, culture or languages other than English and French.

As far as I can tell, public schools have made great progress in being inclusive to everyone. I think there’s even been a backlash to the “Eid, Diwali, Kwanzaa, but no Christmas or Easter” brand of political correctness, so that even Christianity is being accepted. I firmly believe that the best thing we can do for all our students is keeping them in a strong public school system so they can all learn what it means to be Canadian, how to understand each other and just get along.

Faith-Based School Funding in Ontario

Some things have changed since my original post, “I Didn’t Want To Get Political Here…” concerning the PC party’s election issue of extending funding to all faith-based schools.

First of all, soon after I posted, John Tory clarified his position that he does believe in evolution, and that creationism would only be taught in religion class. Fine, we’ll leave that alone and not assume that we’re about to become another Kansas.

Yesterday (Oct 1), he announced that MPPs would be allowed a free vote on the issue.

Most people seem to look at this as a fatal flip-flop. I see no problem with listening to the people, in fact, I think it’s something politicians should do more of. And I respect his “principled” stand because I agree that the current system is unfair.

Also, I totally get the point about public funds meaning that we will have more control over curriculum, staffing and the rest.

However, he still stands behind the original idea, and we all know what politicians do after they’re elected, or how much a “free vote” means. It doesn’t mean your MPP is going to vote the way you want him to.

I’m still opposed to the concept for these reasons:

1. I don’t think religion should be taught in schools, period. Solving the current inequity by extending funding to all religions is the wrong way to be going. Religion should be taught at home and at your place of worship. Too many religious values clash directly with my view of where Canada should be headed.

2. You can call it segregation or whatever you want, the point is, it will make it too easy for new Canadians to choose their religious school, and by not being in the public system, the kids are not truly integrating into Canadian society. It doesn’t even have to be about immigrants – I don’t like the current situation where kids from one neighbourhood, regardless of their ethnicity, choose between public, Catholic or French immersion schools. Never mind the local arts or business high schools, private schools, or going outside of school boundaries. I think our public schools are the best way we have of raising children who see themselves as “Canadian” first. Our public schools are inclusive and teach “Canadian” values.

3. It will take money away from public schools, who desperately need it. In areas where there are enough people to establish other faith-based schools, whether they be Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Protestant, Orthodox or whatever, many students will leave the public board. In the GTA, where “minorities” are becoming the majority, some public schools could be decimated. The number we hear quoted is 53,000 students who currently attend faith-based schools, but I expect this number will grow exponentially with Tory’s plan.

4. A separate issue about money – look at the waste today with so many school boards in every jurisdiction in Ontario. We would add a whole new level of bureaucracy if we end up creating even more school boards, for example the Peel Hindu School Board or Peel Muslim School Board. Again, it’s not about xenophobia, we’d possibly also have a Peel Protestant School Board. I only choose Hindu and Muslim because they’re the easiest to identify, and because my perception is that there’s a large enough population of both groups that each would have several schools in Peel Region.

5. Some private schools will choose to remain private because they object to the conditions that come along with the money. These are the ones we have most to be afraid of, and we would get no control over them.

6. It still doesn’t solve the unfairness that I, as a non-Catholic, cannot choose to send my kids to the local Catholic elementary school. It would only exacerbate the problem, because there’d be a whole bunch of schools that they couldn’t get into.

7. Religious schools would be primarily about their own ethnicity, they would not be inclusive the way our public schools are today. How would you address the issue of racial equity in staffing? Would they be required to have a mix of teachers or to accept all students, regardless of religion?

8. This would exacerbate the issue of “ghettoization” of immigrants – a new family might choose to live in an area, specifically because their ethnic school is already open there.

On a personal level, my grade 8 son’s school is about 3 km from our house, across two major streets and has no school buses, meaning we have to drive him to school and pick him up every day. Because of the demographics of the area, it is both a senior elementary and a high school – it goes from grade 7 to grade 12. This is a huge range. My son tries to avoid any confrontation, though he could defend himself against someone of similar size. But he felt very intimidated last year as a grade 7, being in a school with kids up to 5 years older than him. It creates an atmosphere where the middle school kids have to project strength to avoid bullying from older kids, but that almost makes you more of a target.

Meanwhile, there’s a perfectly good Catholic K-8 school on our street, that he cannot get into.

Last year, there were 138 kids in grade 7 in his school, about 30 of which had what I’d consider recognizable “European” names. The remaining 100 or so, I could not tell you if it was a boy’s name or a girl’s name. Of those, if even half left for a Hindu or Muslim school, the school would be decimated. In all likelihood, it would have to be closed, or even become a faith-based school – either way, my son would have to go even further to find a public school.

The current situation works best for Catholic kids, who can make their own decision which school to attend. Funding all faith-based schools would extend the same privilege to whatever groups are large enough to establish their own school in the area. Others would effectively be excluded from all but the local public school. John Tory’s plan does not solve the fairness concern, it only makes it worse.

In my opinion, the only real solution is to get the required Constitutional amendment, cease funding Catholic schools and have a single school system teaching the approved curriculum. But the PC plan would be worse than doing nothing at all.

Since I know the rest of their election platforms are just lies anyway, I have to consider this the one “hot-button” issue. The sad reality, therefore, is that I have a natural inclination to vote Conservative, I think John Tory would make an excellent Premier and I still feel very strongly that Dalton McGuinty should be punished for his blatant lies during the last election campaign, but I will be voting Liberal because I know where John Tory stands, and I think it’s the worst possible position on this extremely important issue. Too bad he opened this can of worms…

I didn’t want to get political here…

…but apparently I have to. You see, the thing is, we’re having an election in Ontario on October 10 2007.

Here’s how I see my choices: In my riding, Mississauga-Erindale, if you don’t vote Liberal or PC, you’re wasting your vote. In the last election (when the riding was called Mississauga-Centre), 47% of the votes were for Liberal Harinder Takhar, 41% for Conservative Rob Sampson. Now there’s nothing wrong with wasting your vote, if you want to make a statement, it’s just not much of a statement if 2% of people vote for the Green Party.

The choices for local representative are actually pretty good: Harinder Takhar, the Liberal incumbent, seems to have done a good job – under the McGuinty government, he served as Minister of Transportation and then Minister of Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

The Tory challenger is David Brown, and he seems qualified to do an excellent job as well.

The problem is that we also get a Premier when we vote for our MPP. Dalton McGuinty has the distinction of being the most bold-faced liar during the last election campaign, but it also seems like he represented us reasonably well, if unremarkable, as Premier. John Tory, who seemed to be an outstanding candidate when he ran for Mayor of Toronto, is the Conservative leader.

We should all know by now that campaign “promises” are really just lies, where we’re supposed to be impressed by how much of our hard-earned money they’re gonna spend. The Liberals are even promising us a new holiday in February, (which may cost the economy as much as $2 billion, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business – Toronto Star, Sep 5 2007).

Campaign “promises” are one thing, but I tend to hope that once elected, the governing party usually ends up doing what it has to do. Bob Rae’s NDP government did a lot of things that you wouldn’t have expected them to do. So I don’t worry too much about who’s “promising” what, because I know it’s all nothing but lies.

So I try to look more at the character of the leader and is he someone I want representing Ontario in front of the world. Here’s the real problem, that just came to light yesterday. John Tory announced in July that a Conservative government would extend funding to all faith-based schools. While I’m completely opposed to this move, I saw it as another one of those lies that they would immediately back-track on once they got in power. It’s so clearly designed to attract the immigrant vote, who according to the experts, are such faithful Liberal supporters.

To me, keeping religion out of schools is every bit as important as the separation of church and state. Schools should be for teaching language, math, science, history, geography, music, art and other subjects, but not religion. Religion should be taught in sunday school and at church. Period. As I understand it, the unfortunate fact that Catholic schools get full funding stems from a constitutional compromise in the 1800’s, without which Canada might never have become a country.

As with any issue between the Liberals and Conservatives, the cost of funding all faith-based schools is not agreed on. Kathleen Wynne, the Minister of Education who is ironically running in the same riding as John Tory, says it would “strip about $500 million out of public schools” (Globe and Mail, Aug 23 2007) whereas “Mr. Tory has promised to give private religious schools $400 million if they opt into the public system” (Globe and Mail, Sep 5 2007). Regardless, this move would clearly cost Ontario taxpayers a lot of money and cause huge damage to the public school system, at a time when many public school boards across the province are already facing funding crises. Anything that takes away from Ontario’s public school system is a bad thing in my eyes.

On a personal note, the outcry when many Christians realize their tax dollars are also funding Islamic, Jewish and Hindu schools would actually be fun to observe. Outside the GTA, where I think people tend to be more conservative, I’m sure many would love funding for Christian schools but I doubt they want anything to do with funding other religions.

In many areas of the GTA, “visible minorities” aren’t even a minority anymore. In my son’s school, visible minorities are the overwhelming majority. If the Hindus and the Muslims at his school suddenly left for a fully-funded faith-based school, the public school would probably have to be closed.

I was hoping to stay out of the pros and cons of immigration and multiculturalism, but I will say this: I think it’s a very good thing that people from different backgrounds go to school together and learn about each other. This is something that the world desperately needs. Sadly, what I see at my son’s school is that the various ethnic groups tend to stick together, leaving him part of an almost invisible minority. But this isn’t about whining about his situation.

I understand it’s not fair to fund only one religion, but this isn’t the way to solve the problem. To me, the only acceptable option to resolving the inequity of only funding Catholic schools is this: Withdraw funding to Catholic schools. This isn’t likely to happen, so I say we have to accept an unfair situation as a legacy of our past.

But my biggest concern with John Tory isn’t about the money, because I just consider it a cynical campaign lie to attract ethnic votes.

On September 4th, he announced that “publicly-funded religious schools would be allowed to teach creationism and other theories.” (Globe and Mail, Sep 5 2007, emphasis mine) Let’s get it straight, evolution is science, creationism is religion. Ms. Wynne got it right, “teaching creationism alongside evolution would be a violation of the curriculum…. Catholic schools are allowed to explore creationism but only in religion – not science – classes.” (from the same Globe & Mail article).

John Tory has shown himself to be the kind of person I don’t want representing Ontario. This is not Kansas, the world doesn’t need another leader who misunderstands science and evolution, who thinks in any way that there’s a “debate” between creationism and evolution or who believes he was chosen by God.

I actually have so little faith in either party that I’d love to vote for someone really different, but who?

I’m fiscally conservative, so I’ll never vote NDP. I’m content to accept that in any minority government, the NDP may control the balance of power in a coalition with the governing minority.

On the big issue of the environment, the only ones with any credibility are the Green Party. I believe they’re more idealistic, in it for what they truly believe is best for the world, not just for the power. But currently, like I said, a vote for the Greens is a wasted vote. Perhaps that would change if the Mixed-Member Proportional Representation referendum is accepted. I’m still undecided on that, but I do see a scenario where, with enough “list” seats, it might be the Green Party who holds the balance of power and that might the best scenario I could hope for.

In summary, yes, McGuinty should be punished for his flagrant lies during the last campaign, but more important is not electing someone who thinks creationism should be taught in Ontario classrooms. It becomes a vote for whoever has the best chance of defeating John Tory, and that means McGuinty.