Loosely educated: latest attack on Separate Schools

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Mar 22

RE: Funding faith based schools a non-starter.  Op-ed by Malcom Buchanan, a member of the One Public Education Now group, which is suing the Ontario government over funding of Separate Schools.

If ever there was a testimonial to how bad public education has become in Ontario, the article at reference was it.  To begin with, the funding of Separate Schools in Ontario has been going on since Confederation, so that hardly qualifies as a “non-starter.”  Deeper into the article, we find that the real bone of contention is the full funding of Grades 11 and 12 in Separate Schools.  He goes on to describe as absurd the idea that funding two separate systems as being no more expensive than funding One Government Monopoly System.  Notice the slippage from objecting to the funding of Grades 11 and 12 to objecting to an entire separate system, something guaranteed under Section 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867?

Malcolm Buchanan’s invocation of Section 15 of the Charter to invalidate Section 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867, amounts to saying that his equality before the law is violated because someone else is getting government money.  And never mind that included in Section 15 are exceptions for programs of amelioration.

The madcap effort of the One Public Education Now group is to attempt an American-style use of the Courts to achieve what they cannot at the ballot box.  But not even U.S. courts would attempt to invalidate one section of their constitution on the basis of another section.

Ontario needs a Separate School system if only to see how badly run the public system is.

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