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Op-Ed: The case for one public school system

11/2/2013

The following opinion piece by Leonard Baak appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on November 1st, 2013 and is reprinted below with their permission.

Op-Ed: The case for one public school system

BY LEONARD BAAK, OTTAWA CITIZEN

Ontario’s Liberal government launched an open policy initiative this month called “Common Ground”, for which they are using a website to crowdsource policy ideas for their next election platform. It is a relatively new idea that has the potential to revolutionize the concept of consultative government.

Proponents of one school system in Ontario can be forgiven for viewing the initiative with a healthy dose of skepticism, however — especially given Education Minister Liz Sandals’ arbitrary dismissal of the idea shortly after the “Common Ground” initiative’s launch. Sandals was quoted as saying that a move to one publicly funded school system (merging the public and Catholic school systems into one) was “not in the cards” because “both French and Catholic education are constitutionally protected and we will continue to respect the Constitution.”

Sandals conveniently ignored the fact that the very same Constitution that protects Ontario’s wasteful and discriminatory Catholic school system also provides a bilateral amendment mechanism to remove that protection. The Ontario government can propose an amendment rescinding denominational school “rights” at any time, after which the amendment would pass to the House of Commons and Senate for their approval before receiving royal assent. Such an amendment would remove the only legal impediment to the amalgamation of Ontario’s public and Catholic school systems.

Quebec and Newfoundland each secured this sort of amendment in the late 1990s, before each moved to a single public school system for each official language. The entire process took just over four months in the Newfoundland case. Clearly the Constitution is no more an obstacle to the creation of a fair and fiscally responsible school system than Sandals and her government wish it to be. As much was stated earlier this month in a judgment issued by Mr. Justice David Corbett of the Ontario Superior Court:

“The United Nations jurisprudence (finding the funding of religious schools in Ontario unjustly discriminatory) may be of persuasive authority in Canadian courts, but it cannot be used to amend or repeal constitutional provisions. Rather, it is a signal from the United Nations that s. 93 of the Canadian constitution offends international human rights norms. Solving that problem, if it is thought to be a problem, is a matter of political action: constitutional amendment, as was done in Quebec and Newfoundland.”

Sandals also raises a red herring with regard to French education. Those calling for one public school system almost universally support French education, insisting only that it be provided in a single French school system. Apart from being more cost effective, such a system would arguably protect the francophone minority in the province more effectively than the divided system they have now.

If the “Common Ground” initiative is really being conducted in good faith and not the appearance of such, the government must weigh the ideas presented there on their merits. Sandals or a successor will soon have to acknowledge that the continued public funding of a completely non-essential Catholic school system detracts from the government’s ability to fund the truly essential programs that contribute to a well-educated workforce, alleviate pain and suffering, and help the genuinely disadvantaged among us. They have but one pot of taxpayer money — and any funds diverted to non-essentials like duplicate, overlapping school systems take away from the funds available for the essential programs we truly rely on.

There is already no shortage of Ontarians affected by school closings, long school bus commutes, unreasonable medical wait times, wage restraint, or other cutbacks or funding shortfalls. At over $10 billion annually and climbing, debt servicing has become Ontario’s third largest budgetary expenditure behind health care and education. Those debt servicing costs represent an enormous opportunity cost.

Without some hard choices, austerity-induced suffering will increase dramatically when today’s historically low interest rates finally rise — and Ontario’s debt servicing costs with them. I am reasonably confident that Sandals and her colleagues could not possibly be cold-hearted enough to let that additional suffering unfold without trying to stop it. I am reasonably confident that the wasteful duplication represented by overlapping public and Catholic school systems will soon end. Fiscal circumstances will force the government’s hand. Far better that they recognize that now to reap the maximum benefits of the hard choices they will eventually be forced to make anyway. Failing to move swiftly to a single public school system will mean increased and unnecessary hardship later.

No more excuses, particularly of the especially feeble constitutional variety. It is a time for leadership.

Leonard Baak is president of OneSchoolSystem.org, Ottawa

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

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Publicly funded Catholic schools – A good idea in 2012?

5/8/2012

33 Comments

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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Op-Ed: The case for one public school system

Op-Ed: The case for one public school system

Publicly funded Catholic schools – A good idea in 2012?

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