Ontario’s public funding of Catholic schools wastes money. It also discriminates on the basis of religion. The Catholic and Public school systems should be consolidated for the following reasons:
- Public funding of one religion’s schools violates the right to equal benefit of the law without religious discrimination as outlined in section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights,
- The United Nations Human Rights Committee has censured Canada for its discriminatory funding of schools for a single religion.
- Religious requirements for employment in the separate (Catholic) school systems deny otherwise qualified non-Catholic teachers access to one-third of publicly funded teaching job opportunities,
- Ontario taxpayers fund 100% of the cost to build new Catholic schools and 92% of operating costs. Property tax school board designations fund only 8% of Catholic school operating costs,
- Funding a single, secular school system, with French and English boards, would save Ontario taxpayers approximately 1.5 billion dollars annually,
- The Ontario government can, by passing a resolution in the Legislature, eliminate the discriminatory public funding of the separate (Catholic) school systems, as has been accomplished by the provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland & Labrador in 1997 and 1998.