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Latest News
- 18 Feb 2012 Blog entry: The interest on Ontario's debt -- and how one educational reform could affect it.
- 16 Feb 2012 News Release: Constitutional Cop-Out: Constitution No Obstacle to Amalgamation of Ontario's Public and Catholic School Systems (PDF, Word)
- The Agenda with Steve Paikin: Episode on Catholic school funding, 7 Feb 2012 (see the interview and debate).
- Toronto woman files suit against Ontario to scale back Catholic school funding, Jan 2012
- Recent letters
About Us
Education Equality in Ontario is a non-governmental human rights organization and education advocacy group seeking 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 everyone else.
The Government of Ontario currently funds four overlapping 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 Anglo-Irish, French-English, and Catholic-Protestant acrimony 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 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 overlapping 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 Anglo-Irish, French-English, and Catholic-Protestant acrimony 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 allowing the quality of our truly essential services to suffer further decline. We hope that you agree.
The time for change is now.
