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25 Jan 2012 - We are in the process of moving our web site to a new host. It may take a week or two before all content is moved. Some content may not be available at the same URLs as previously.
We welcome comments. Please let us know what you think.
We welcome comments. Please let us know what you think.
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About Us
Education Equality in Ontario is a non-governmental human rights organization and education advocacy group seeking to educate the residents of Ontario, Canada, about the wasteful duplication and discrimination in the Ontario school system. Our objective in doing so is to promote the establishment of a single publicly-funded school system for each official language (one English and one French) as a principled and fiscally responsible alternative to the current system, which favours the members of one faith with choices and privileges denied to every other faith.
The Government of Ontario currently funds four parallel school systems: English public, English Catholic, French public, and French Catholic. The public systems are open to all without discrimination while the Catholic systems often deny admission to non-Catholic students and are essentially closed to non-Catholic teachers.
Ontario's present day school system had its roots in the 19th century, when Ontarians could generally be classified as either Catholic or Protestant and segregation was seen as an convenient means to address the sometimes violent Anglo-Irish, French-English, and Catholic-Protestant divisions that marked the society of the day. Constitutional provisions notwithstanding, religiously segregated school systems like Ontario's have now been eliminated in Quebec (1997), Newfoundland and Labrador (1998), and Manitoba (1890). Ontario is now the only province that funds the religious schools of the Catholic faith exclusively, a situation that led the United Nations Human Rights Committee to censure Canada for religious discrimination in 1999 and again in 2005.
We believe that now, in the 21st century, it is no longer necessary to segregate Ontario school children by faith. More importantly, the cost and consequences of that segregation are of a scope and scale that the province is no longer able to bear.
The immensity of the Ontario government's debt and deficits have brought us to the eve of what is expected to be an era of unprecedented austerity in government spending. Our truly essential programs, already inadequately funded in some cases, are expected to face even greater funding pressures as the province grapples with a rapidly deteriorating fiscal situation. It would be wrong to preserve funding for a non-essential like Catholic schools while expecting civil servants to endure wage freezes or allowing the quality of our truly essential services to suffer further decline. We hope that you agree.
The time for change is now.
The Government of Ontario currently funds four parallel school systems: English public, English Catholic, French public, and French Catholic. The public systems are open to all without discrimination while the Catholic systems often deny admission to non-Catholic students and are essentially closed to non-Catholic teachers.
Ontario's present day school system had its roots in the 19th century, when Ontarians could generally be classified as either Catholic or Protestant and segregation was seen as an convenient means to address the sometimes violent Anglo-Irish, French-English, and Catholic-Protestant divisions that marked the society of the day. Constitutional provisions notwithstanding, religiously segregated school systems like Ontario's have now been eliminated in Quebec (1997), Newfoundland and Labrador (1998), and Manitoba (1890). Ontario is now the only province that funds the religious schools of the Catholic faith exclusively, a situation that led the United Nations Human Rights Committee to censure Canada for religious discrimination in 1999 and again in 2005.
We believe that now, in the 21st century, it is no longer necessary to segregate Ontario school children by faith. More importantly, the cost and consequences of that segregation are of a scope and scale that the province is no longer able to bear.
The immensity of the Ontario government's debt and deficits have brought us to the eve of what is expected to be an era of unprecedented austerity in government spending. Our truly essential programs, already inadequately funded in some cases, are expected to face even greater funding pressures as the province grapples with a rapidly deteriorating fiscal situation. It would be wrong to preserve funding for a non-essential like Catholic schools while expecting civil servants to endure wage freezes or allowing the quality of our truly essential services to suffer further decline. We hope that you agree.
The time for change is now.
