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FOR UNIVERSAL, SECULAR, QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION: SEPERATE CHURCH AND SCHOOL
Statement from the Provincial Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada (Ontario), Feb. 24, 2000
(This article is from the March 16-31/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
THE UNITED NATIONS ruling that public funding of the Roman Catholic school system in Ontario is discriminatory, is a welcome decision for public education in Ontario. It opens the door to ending the funding of religious schools in Ontario, and that is what the government should do now.
Public education is being systematically dismantled in Ontario today as a result of extreme financial pressure caused by a decade of massive funding cuts, by the 1985 decision of the Bill Davis Tories to extend full funding to Catholic schools up to grade 12, and by the transferring of public tax dollars to the Separate School Boards following the passage of Bill 160.
All of this is in keeping with the neo-conservative agenda of privatization, de-regulation, and free trade being pursued by powerful corporate interests and their governments across Canada, and internationally. Corporations in hot pursuit of the profitable edu-business market see religious school funding as a can-opener. Vouchers and charter schools will be the first steps on the road to the privatization of the system.
Confounding the public for many years with the argument that Catholic School funding is protected by the Canadian Constitution, all three political parties in the Ontario legislature have ignored the fact that at the time of Confederation, all education in Upper and Lower Canada (English-speaking Canada and Quebec) was controlled by the church. In upper Canada, education was run by the Protestant churches, and in Lower Canada (Quebec) by the Catholic Church.
The 1867 Constitution in fact guaranteed the protection and continuation of French language education in Quebec. The French language education protections were the only guarantee of the continued existence of Quebec as a French speaking nation within English-speaking Canada. The Constitution also offered language protection to the French-speaking minorities living outside Quebec, as well as to the English-speaking minority living inside Quebec (who are also guaranteed the right to education and services in the English language).
In other words, it is not Catholic School Boards, but French-language School Boards, that the Constitution sought to protect in 1867, and ought to protect today.
The obfuscation of this central fact of Constitutional history creates conditions for the further religious fragmentation of public education in Ontario. How easily this could happen is shown in the growing campaign, and legal challenges, brought by coalitions of religious groups demanding that the Ontario governments also fund schools of other religious denominations and of other religions. The basis of their challenge is discrimination, and in that they are correct as the United Nations ruling confirms.
Democracy, religious tolerance, and the preservation of universally accessible, quality public education system, require the separation of church and school, and the funding of a single, wholly secular system of public education which is open to all regardless of religion, race, gender, national origin, ability, or sexual orientation.
The CPC (Ontario) calls on the Ontario government to gradually withdraw public funding from the Separate School system, and to fund one universally accessible, quality public school system in Ontario.
We also call on the Ontario government to take immediate steps to fund programs within the public school system, and within communities, to encourage acceptance and respect for the right of all believers to their own religious views and devotions, as well as for the right of non-believers.
Further, recognizing that this government's agenda is to privatize and corporatize public and post-secondary education in Ontario, we call on the federal government to introduce legislation prohibiting the public funding of religious or other private schools in Canada; to legislate the separation of church and school; to prohibit corporate intrusions into public education; and to introduce and enforce national standards for public and post-secondary education across the country.
Governments, political parties, the labour and people's movements, all have responsibilities to oppose fragmentation and privatization of public education in Ontario. A benchmark of our collective success will be the restoration of single, universal, quality public education system - with French-public and English -public School Boards - in Ontario.
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