Most people who have lived in Ontario for a while know that Catholic schools, and no other religious schools, receive 100% of their funding from taxpayers.

Fewer know that all taxpayers bear the costs of Catholic schools equally. All Ontarians bear a tax burden based upon their income and property, not their faith.  School support designations on municipal tax forms have no effect on the total funding any school board receives.  School board funding levels are now determined based on enrolment and other documented needs.

Fewer still know that public funding for Catholic schools began way back in 1841, when Ontarians were a lot more religious than today and could generally be classified as either Catholic or Protestant -- neither of which had much tolerance for the religious teachings of the other.  While the law allowed each group to have schools and teachers of their own “religious persuasion” (the term used in the law), in practice that right only really applied to Catholics.  The “Protestants” (non-Catholics) were all lumped together, despite the objections of Anglican  clergy who agitated for their own separate schools.

Ontario has changed in many ways in the ensuing years.  The mutual intolerance that might  have provided a justification for Catholic separate schools in the 19th century is largely non-existent today.  Where it does exist, it tends to focus on non-Christian faiths.  The Catholic faith, in fact, is now uniquely privileged in being the only faith for which religious education is still  funded at all.  Far from being a disadvantaged minority, Catholics are now the largest religious group in the province by a wide margin and are arguably the least in need of special consideration or government largesse.  Catholic families alone are guaranteed a choice of schools wherever they live in Ontario.  Catholic school boards, though funded by all taxpayers, have an absolute right to reject non-Catholic children until grade 9, when “open access” (non-discriminatory admission) is supposed to apply.  Catholic school boards have an absolute right to reject non-Catholic teachers at all grade levels -- a right they seem to exercise to the fullest.

Today Ontario is grappling with fiscal challenges of historic proportions.  The province has a monstrously large deficit and a debt of such magnitude that it threatens to unravel the rich tapestry of social programs to which Ontarians have become accustomed.  Over $10 billion is lost to interest on Ontario’s debt every year, representing an enormous opportunity cost.  Debt servicing, in fact, has become Ontario’s third largest expenditure behind health and education.  Debt rating agencies have already downgraded Ontario’s debt rating or have put the province on credit watch with a negative outlook -- developments that will lead to even higher debt servicing costs going forward.  If corrective measures are not taken quickly, events will spiral out of our control.

To deal with their fiscal crisis, the Ontario government is now, somewhat arbitrarily and heavy-handedly, imposing wage restraint and fee rollbacks on doctors, teachers, and other public  servants.  Predictably, these groups are none too happy about that.  Doctors, nurses, and teachers form the vanguard of what many Ontarians regard as the most important of our social programs: health and education.  Before asking them to take it on the chin for the good of the province, the government had better be able to demonstrate that it has done what it can to minimize their pain by eliminating unnecessary expenditures first.  We do not believe the Ontario government can demonstrate that -- particularly and perhaps most notably in the education sector.

Ontario currently funds four overlapping school systems where only two would do the job.  Too many communities have both an under enrolled public and Catholic school that could be combined into the better of their two buildings to create a more cost effective, fully enrolled school.  Hundreds of thousands of Ontario children are bussed past their nearest publicly funded school each day to attend another one farther away.  Tens of thousands of high school students are being short changed academically, attending low enrolment high schools that cannot achieve the critical mass to offer the same level of program choice as their higher enrolment counterparts.  Most often they cannot achieve that critical mass only because high school students in their communities are divided into Catholic and non-Catholic camps.  All Ontarians, regardless of faith, pay a steep price to offer the members of an unjustly favoured faith a “choice” denied to all others.  That price is paid in opportunity as well as in dollars.

In 21st century Ontario, Catholic school funding is not necessary.  The exclusivity of that funding for the Catholic faith alone offends the equality guarantees of nearly every major human rights instrument to which Canada is a party.  Catholic schools are also a  significant expense that if eliminated would provide savings to blunt the effects of austerity on our truly essential programs.  It is time for fair and fiscally responsible education reform.

Ontario's constitutional "obligation" to fund Roman Catholic separate schools is largely illusory, as  it can be removed very quickly or can even be ignored.  Quebec, Newfoundland, and Manitoba all removed or ignored very similar constitutional  "obligations" before moving to a single public school system for each official language (English and French).  It is time Ontario followed their example.
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Happy Catholic Education Week 2012 (May 6-11)!  God bless you premier McGuinty, Tim Hudak, and Andrea Horwath for upholding the Catholic faith above all others before and under Ontario law.  You uphold Catholic school funding in the face of fiscal austerity in health care and education.  You uphold this funding in the face of wage freezes for public sector employees.

Ontarians can wait a little longer for essential medical services, go without them altogether, or pay for them themselves -- if they have the means.  Hospital expansions and renovations can wait.  Communities with both a half empty public and a half empty Catholic school can close one or the other and ship half their kids elsewhere to go to school, rather than combining the two student bodies into the best of the two buildings.  School maintenance backlogs, already on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars in some school boards, can grow for a few more years yet before the schools actually start to fall down.  Doctors, nurses, teachers, and other public sector employees can handle a few years of wage freezes or sub-inflation increases.  Our cities can learn to do more with less.

The important thing here -- the really important thing -- is that all Ontario taxpayers continue to fund the promulgation of Catholic religious beliefs to the 80-90% of Catholic families who use Catholic schools but do not go to Church.  God bless all of our Members of Provincial Parliament for setting proper priorities and for ignoring the majority wish to move to a single public school system for each official language.  That takes a truly breathtaking combination of callousness, insensitivity, and political cowardice.  In Ontario, we are fortunate to have politicians with all of these qualities in spades.
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The following interesting graphic shows very clearly where Ontario's money comes from and where it goes.  On the red side of the graphic at the bottom, you can see the amount that goes up in smoke in interest on Ontario's debt:  $10.3 billion in the past year alone.  That figure grows every year Ontario runs a deficit.

The growth in interest payments must be offset with revenue increases, expenditure control (program cuts), or new debt.  When budget balance is achieved through new debt, as it is now, Ontario's annual interest payments continue to grow.  Ontario's interest rates will also rise in that scenario as the province's lenders demand higher rates to counter the risk of our diminishing creditworthiness.

The interest on Ontario's debt is money that could have gone into program spending or tax relief each and every year if the province had been running balanced budgets.  It is a figure that the government's own 2011-12 budget projections predict will be $16.3 billion in 2017-18.  The Drummond Report predicts the interest on Ontario's debt will reach $19.7 billion in 2017-18 under the status quo scenario.

Eliminating Catholic school funding and the massive duplication and overlap it entails will take a significant bite out of Ontario's deficit.  It won't singlehandedly slay the deficit, but it is a reform that will help arrest and eventually reverse the growth in the amount of money lost to interest on Ontario's debt every year.

Ontario is paying for sectarian Catholic education, amongst other things, with borrowed money.  It has been doing so for some time.  As a result, the annual loss of provincial revenue to interest on our debt represents a significant opportunity cost.  That loss is already impacting our ability to adequately fund the programs that are truly essential:  those that alleviate pain and suffering, contribute to a well educated workforce, and help the genuinely disadvantaged among us.  Government inaction on the deficit will only worsen those impacts.

The Ontario government has already rejected the most significant of the education reforms proposed in the Drummond Report.  As Drummond warned, however, alternatives must then be proposed to produce equivalent savings.

We propose the amalgamation of Ontario's public and Catholic school systems into a single public school system for each official language.  Ontario needs to embrace this idea now more than ever.
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Click to enlarge at source (National Post, 2012-02-15).
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Friends.  This Wednesday, Feb 15th, is the scheduled release date for the Drummond report.   Mr. Drummond was tasked with examining all areas of government spending, identifying unnecessary and duplicate expenditures.  It is hard to imagine that he could miss the massive duplication and overlap in our school system.  We are confident that any competent and thorough examination of provincial programs would not fail to notice this and point it out.

Of greater concern to us than the possibility the waste in our education system could be overlooked is the relative certainty that Dalton McGuinty and company will summarily reject any recommendation to deal with it.  He has already said, at least twice that we know of, that he will not even consider any recommendation to eliminate public funding for Catholic separate schools.  That is unfortunate, as it all but ensures that austerity measures affecting our truly essential services will cut deeper than necessary.  There will be unnecessary pain.

Eliminating public funding for Catholic schools would not genuinely hurt anyone.  It would only result in Ontario Catholics having to take personal responsibility for the religious upbringing of their children.  It would only result in them being treated the same as every one of us who is not an Ontario Catholic.  Not eliminating that funding, however, will guarantee greater pain elsewhere -- probably in services that families cannot easily provide on their own.

Be alert for letter opportunities this week and beyond.  If you’ve never written letters to the editor, now is a good time to start.  See our letters page for ideas.  The Drummond report will be very big news.  Civil servants could face layoffs, wage freezes, unpaid days off, or outsourcing.  They might be interested to know that as this happens, unnecessary spending on religious  schools for a single favoured faith continues.  Vested interests will be lobbying furiously as the government decides where the axe will fall.  We need to point out the difference between essential and non-essential programs at every opportunity.  We need to point out that public funding for Catholic schools is not essential!

Please rise to the challenge.  It is time fairness and fiscal responsibility came to education in Ontario.

Education Equality in Ontario
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