Canada: Lobby group fights for religious neutrality in school system

[Ani_Ibi]

Digitonomy:

I can see where making 93B identical to 93A might still leave in place some of these laws that existed prior to the Constitution - unlike in Quebec, where the protections and funding systems were extended to Lower Canada when the Constitution was enacted. But they could make 93B slightly more verbose to correct for that.

I know it may seem redundant, but could you quote the text to which you are referring please? Makes for easier reading, particularly when I am using my other screen to track down the Scott Act. Thank you.

Sorry I’ve been away for a bit. I’ve been searching against all odds, it seems, for an e-link to the text of the preConfederation statutes (The First School Act for the Province of Upper Canada, the Tache Act, the Scott Act).

Forget about trying to find anything on the English law websites – unless you are a lawyer. And obviously the Canadian and Ontario law websites don’t have them.

Sheesh! The Ontario Ministry of Education referred me to the Education Act when I asked for pre-Confederation statutes. Makes you wonder if they even noticed that Canada had gained independence from England. And then the school board referred me to the planning department!

I realize I’m coming at this from an American perspective, but my understanding is that what is in the Constitution is what goes. If you amend it, said amendment can alter or rescind previously granted rights.

Yes. That is what I said about rights in place before or at the time of Confederation.

Your argument that the Constitution, including new amendments, does not have paramountcy over rights in place at the time of union does not seem to square with 93A, or with the rest of the Constitution that I’ve read.

You have to read the application of the policy. The Constitution reflects the rights in place at the time of the union.

I’m certainly open to correction on this, but I would think as sweeping a principle as this would have some documentation somewhere to support it and explain it in further detail.

I have provided it. And, as I said, am fervently searching for the preConfederation statutes. As soon as I have them, I will post them.

And I don’t buy the idea that those who are protected by the rights have to give them away, though I can’t definitively refute it at the moment.

I concede that from a legal perspective you are correct. But from a practical perspective, that is what will happen to Ontario unless Ontario Catholics wake up.

Catholics compromise the largest religious group in Canada. If Manitoba, Newfoundland, and Quebec Catholics lost their educational rights then there is something seriously wrong with the picture.

When I get more time, I’ll try to find more detail on the Newfoundland issue. I can easily imagine that the Pentecostals were stripped of their educational funding over the wishes of the vast majority of them.

Lets remember that the date of their union with Canada was something around 1949 or thereabouts.

Sorry to be contentious without providing more documentation, but I wanted to state my two or three main objections to your explanation, though I’ll have to dig around for supportive links tomorrow or the next day.

In Quebec the majority were Catholic preConfederation. It was minority rights that were protected there, not majority rights.

As it stands minority Catholic rights were won in Ontario essentially through the lobbying of the Quebec Catholic Church! Ironic, n’est-ce pas?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Here is a news and opinion update.

Mississauga News (nothing new)

Board must move on

Trustee complaints

Toronto Star:

A case of déjà vu with school board

… Education Minister Kathleen Wynne is attempting to revise history. She claims that the principal difference between the two situations is that Norbert Hartmann, appointed supervisor of the Dufferin-Peel board, attempted to involve local trustees in his efforts from the start of his review, and contrasts this by saying that “what happened in Toronto is we… were frozen out from the beginning.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Trustees compare takeovers

… [the] takeover of the Peel Catholic board…
was a vivid reminder of a dark period in the Toronto District School Board’s history, which in 2002 was seized by the Conservative government… after Toronto’s trustees refused to cut pools, parenting centres, outdoor education and staff from the $2 billion budget.

The… Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board… refuse to cut… [only] $7.5 million… But at Queen’s Park, opposition party members are smiling as they prepare for a provincial election in October…

[Current Toronto chair] Sheila Ward… says: “We were $45 million in the hole when he (Christie) arrived and we were $95 million in the hole when he left”…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

From Random Access blog:
Careful what you ask for

… The current imbroglio with Queen’s Park over the Catholic board’s budget deficit has been brewing for many, many years… There is no doubt that trustees are right when they state that most of their deficit problems stem directly from the inadequacies of the provincial funding formula. The Ministry… loves to mandate new programs… and then issue grants that cover only a portion of their costs.

Boards have been shuffling money from other programs to cover chronic shortfalls for programs such as special education and busing for years and raiding their reserves until, as in the case of Dufferin-Peel, they ran out of them… The legislation requiring a balanced budget led to the annual shell game where trustees “balanced” their budget by assuming the ministry would give them the money they needed to break even during the year.

Which the government often did… As a voter, you can’t help but have mixed feelings about this situation. Would you rather have an unelected bureaucrat… making the critical financial decisions at Dufferin-Peel or an elected trustee who can be held responsible at the next election?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Further on the Scott Act: there are several Scott Acts: one about temperance one in the US and so on. The one we are looking for which is relevant to Catholic education in Ontario is cited as:

An Act to Restore to Roman Catholics in Upper Canada certain Rights in Respect to Separate Schools

---

Sir Richard Scott, K. C.

(I’m still looking for a link to the Act itself.)

By an Act passed in 1843 [in]… Upper Canada… the right of either Protestants or Catholics to establish their own schools and share in the rates, was expressly recognized [but]… several provisions of the Act of 1841…

… Year by year, the privileges enjoyed by the Protestant minority in Lower Canada were being increased, while those of the [Catholic] minority in Upper Canada were being curtailed.

In 1846… the law… required twelve Catholic ratepayers to apply for the formation of a separate school… Catholics living in different sections could not unite for this purpose. The application… was required to be addressed to the reeve of the municipality or to the chairman of the committee of the school board, officials who… frequently succeeded in defeating the application…

In consequence, an agitation was launched for… amendments to the law [to]… render the separate school system workable. As a result of this agitation, an Act was passed in 1855, granting certain concessions, but it was considered so unsatisfactory that Bishop de Charbonnel resigned as a member of the School Board…

John A MacDonald:

The Bill will not injuriously affect the Common School System… The Separate School Bill of 1855 is a substantial boon to the Roman Catholics… If the Bishop makes the Roman Catholics believe that the Separate School Bill is of no use to them, there will be a renewal of the unwholesome agitation which I thought was allayed.

…the Liberal Opposition was flatly opposed to [a workable Catholic education bill]**. The bill **was **introduced in… 1860, 1861, 1862 and 1863… but owing to vigorous… underground opposition, it was not until the session of 1863 that a vote… could be secured…

The passing of the act marked the culmination of a quarter of a century of agitation. It bore the significant title “An Act to Restore to Roman Catholics in Upper Canada certain Rights in Respect to Separate Schools” [and]… made it plain that Catholics might establish and support separate schools, by taxes levied upon their own property, at a rate fixed by themselves, and that all property of supporters of such schools should be exempt from taxation for the support of common schools.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Mississauga News:
Catholic advocate calls on parents for support

http://www.mississauga.com/images/mi/xtq_pictures/20070220-images/3063.jpg
Photo by Derek Woollam
Sister Clare Fitzgerald… founded the Catholic School Leadership Program at Boston College and is considered an expert on Catholic education in Ontario [and in the US].

The school board trustees were taken over by a Provincially-appointed supervisor earlier this year after refusing, time and again, to make any cuts in order to balance their budget. “Support the Dufferin-Peel trustees in their stand,” she told the audience of nearly 100 parents. "They drew a line in the sand with your government. They’re taking a big risk. Support them …

In turbulent times, Catholic parents have a pivotal role to protect and promote Catholic education… But most Catholic students in Canada and the U.S. don’t attend church, making the schools responsible for much of the teaching of the Catholic faith. And if the publicly-funded Catholic school system crumbles, there will be one less place to learn that…

That’s the point of Catholic education, we have an alternative point of view. If you don’t buy the story, get out of the system… With a culture that is making children “spiritually deaf,” parents and teachers must challenge young people. If they don’t… the Catholic education system isn’t worth fighting for, as it will no longer be about being Catholic."

 

[Ani_Ibi]

More politics from the Liberals 7 months before the next election:

National Post:
Taxpayers may be on line for board’s overspending

… Moody’s Investors Service is re-evaluating the double A bond rating for the Ontario School Board Financing Corporation because of overspending at the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board and the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board… The Ontario School Board Financing Corporation… This spring the OSBFC floated $245 million in debentures and the local Catholic board received $45 million… [hmmm… that puts the Catholic boards financial situation in context

.]

“They haven’t seen our financial plan yet,” Marchini said of the possible bond downgrading. “It’s all what ifs.” Marchini said the board is not in jeopardy of defaulting on a loan, even though the board is projected to have a cash flow deficit. Marchini said the board has $11 million in reserves to cover bond payments… The Ministry is changing the rules. I can tell you right now, we aren’t going to be the only ones"…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Solidarity from Toronto board reported last October in the National Post:

Catholic boards defy province: Toronto board unfazed by threat to take over Peel counterpart

The chairman of the Toronto Catholic District School Board said yesterday it would not be intimidated by the provincial government’s move to seize control of the Peel Catholic school board… “Threatening supervision doesn’t in any way make the Toronto boards cower or feel they should back away,” said Oliver Carroll… “There is no doubt in our minds that we are headed in the same direction”…

The Catholic board has a $34-million shortfall, while the public board is facing $84-million in cuts over the next two years… A report released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives yesterday found that despite the province spending $600-million more this year than last year on education, 18 of the 72 school boards have less funding than they did in 1997.

Hugh Mackenzie… blamed a flawed funding formula that hurts urban boards such as the Peel and Toronto boards, which have older buildings requiring more maintenance and more adult students… “the underlying problems that the school board have been grappling with for the past eight years are still there.”

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Here is some history by Dr Mark McGowan, Principal of St Michaels College at University of Toronto. It is a PDF file so you will have to scroll down and click:

Section 2 - Catholic Education

… Catholic… schools… emerged at a time in the 1840’s and 1850’s when Egerton Ryerson… pushed for free, universal, and an academically progressive public school system in what had been Upper Canada (now Ontario). He believed such schools would promote loyalty to the Crown, solid citizenship, a sound curriculum, and a generic Christianity. Catholics… believed that the non-sectarian Christianity promoted in public schools, and fostered by the large numbers of Protestant schoolmasters, amounted to little more than Protestant proselytization…

Although caused, in part, by sectarian bitterness imported from Europe, Upper Canadian Christians created their own reasons to prey upon one another; the arrival of thousands of Irish Catholic refugees from the potato famine was regarded as a scourge upon the land…

What infuriated English-speaking Protestants in Upper Canada was that they did not want these schools in their section of Canada but were forced to accept them because of the preponderance of French-Canadian Catholic legislators (from the Lower Canadian section of the Assembly) who were determined to secure educational rights for their Catholic brothers and sisters, who were a minority in Upper Canada.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Archbishop takes interest in Peel Catholic schools

Archbishop… Collins… said he has vague knowledge of the much-publicized issues within the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board [but]…

wants to learn more about the problems because "Catholic education is enormously important.

It’s part of our whole historical tradition and it’s also a great vale for the broader community," he said… Seeing, judging and acting are the three keys to making "this world more in harmony with the way of the Lord, Collins noted.

(Archbishop Collins is the new Cardinal-elect for Toronto Archdiocese.)

 

[Ani_Ibi]

The Star: Working Paper: Education: A snapshot of reports on education

… The report raises concerns about the uneven performance by students of different backgrounds and asks whether Queen’s Park does enough to help children at risk, from funding community outreach to parenting centres… The Toronto Catholic District School Board has launched an outreach project in seven schools in the Malvern neighbourhood to build stronger ties to the community…

Ontario’s Literacy Secretariat sponsored a recent conference for parents of Portuguese heritage on how to boost their children’s achievement in school.
Parents now find tip sheets in various languages that help them navigate the school system and talk to their children’s teachers, thanks to a program by the non-profit research group People for Education.

In Regent Park, a community-based mentoring program called Pathways to Education has slashed a 56-per cent dropout rate to just 14 per cent in six years by providing free tutoring, free bus tickets to school and free career advice and encouragement. Yet many of these initiatives are on shaky financial footing…