It’s been 25 years since the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that the Ontario government’s continued funding of a Catholic school system was a violation of international civil rights. A CBC news article from the day of the ruling, back in November 1999, wrote that the decision would “likely bring extra pressure” to finally scrap the public funding of a single religious school system. Plenty of other news coverage from back then predicted similar outcomes.
And then… nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Everyone just sorta pretended it never happened and moved on.
Since then, plenty of ink has been spilled about how Section 93 of the Constitution Act basically makes it impossible to end public funding of Catholic schools in Ontario. That’s a myth. A pervasive fallacy repeated over the years by people who want to keep the status quo, when in reality (as outlined by the Ontario Law Review in this extremely detailed article from 2022) it would be pretty simple to fix this issue.
But we won’t, and it all comes down to one annoying thing. There is a very lengthy list of reasons why we should stop funding a Catholic school system in Ontario, and only a single reason why we shouldn’t: politics.
Ending the public funding of the Catholic school system would be politically unpopular. Whichever party does it would lose votes. Thus, there is no political will to do so. Therefore, it will almost certainly never happen.
But it should. We should not be publicly funding a Catholic school system (or any other religious schools) and the scenario that unfolded at a recent Niagara Catholic District School Board meeting highlighted exactly why.
The long and short of what happened is that a Catholic school board trustee brought forward a motion that would have prevented NCDSB schools from flying the Pride flag. If you want a much more detailed account of what happened that night (including how police had to get involved) you can check out PelhamToday’s excellent coverage of the controversy.
The short version is that this particular Catholic board trustee believes the Pride flag shouldn’t be flown at Catholic schools, because what the Pride flag stands for runs against traditional Catholic teachings. And unfortunately, that’s correct.
While the Catholic church’s views on LGBT issues have certainly softened under Pope Francis, it’s still a very fraught relationship. Just last year, the Pope reiterated that the Catholic church remains opposed to same sex marriage, and maintains the position that homosexuality is a sin.
These are the official positions of the Catholic church, and yet we continue to use public tax dollars to fund Catholic schools.
Because of this, I think Catholic school boards across Ontario are keenly aware that they are on thin ice. Very thin ice.
And as such, they recognize that in order to keep those tax dollars flowing into their Catholic schools, they need to extend some olive branches. Which is why most Catholic school boards in Ontario have (often reluctantly) passed motions within the past couple years which allows the Pride flag to be flown, even though that doesn’t quite square with the messages the Pope is sending out.
Which brings me to the actual meat of matter, which is the motion from the Catholic school board trustee to ban the Pride flag. Lots of people were very upset that this trustee brought this motion forward.
Personally, I don’t think she did anything wrong. Now, I certainly think her motion, and the views she holds, are abhorrent, and I couldn’t disagree with her more.
But she was elected in a free and fair vote. She never hid her agenda. She was honest about her goals, and enough people agreed with her that she was voted into her trustee position, and now she’s simply following through on what she said she would do.
Nothing wrong with that. If you don’t like it, just as I don’t, then next time vote for someone else.
Or, even better, just ask yourself: isn’t it time to stop funding religious schools with tax dollars?
Like my mom would say: Does the Pope wear a funny hat?
James Culic hopes his Catholic mother-in-law doesn’t read this week’s column. Find out how to yell at him at the bottom of this page, or take him by the ear to confession by writing a letter to the editor.
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