To put the current dispute between Good Spirit and Christ the Teacher school divisions in perspective, it is instructive to recall some history of public and separate education in Canada.
The principle of public support of denominational schools goes all the way back to The British North America Act of 1867 (The Constitution). It was enshrined to protect minority religion rights during the confederation of Upper and Lower Canada because Protestants (mainly Anglicans) dominated Upper Canada while French Catholics were the overwhelming majority in Lower Canada.
In the early days of public education in Canada, there was no separation of church and state. Indeed, it was assumed every student was a Christian, either Protestant or Catholic, and adherents of the minority religion in a given area had the right to establish separate schools that would receive public funding.
The Act was written so the educational funding regime of a given jurisdiction at the time the jurisdiction entered confederation would be maintained and constitutionally protected. Consequently, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Newfoundland and Labrador, are the only provinces that have or did have separate religious-based publicly-funded education systems. Quebec and Newfoundland have since changed theirs by Constitutional amendment.
Over time, core public systems have evolved into much more secular enterprises. Still, up until very recently, those systems were still denominational. Older Catholics will recall calling their rival public school the “Protestant school.” Older public school graduates will recall when the school day still started with “The Lord’s Prayer.”
Catholic schools have admitted non-Catholic students for a long time on the basis parents accept the fact their children will be exposed to a Catholic, religious-based education and will be required to participate in certain religious activities such as take Christian ethics classes in high school.
That is one of the main reasons why non-Catholic parents might want to send their children to Catholic schools. Some parents want their children to have a religious-based education, even if it is not their particular brand of religion.
And then there is location, the source of the decade-long litigation between the public and separate systems over the school in Theodore. In 2003, the public division, then called York School Division, decided Theodore Public School was simply no longer viable and decided to close it.
One can hardly blame parents and the Town itself for not wanting to lose their school. Who wants to have to bus their children to another town? They came up with a very clever solution. They created a separate school division and Theodore Public School became St. Theodore’s Catholic School with the blessing, so to speak, of the provincial government.
The problem, from the public board’s point of view, was that most of the kids who enrolled in the new “Catholic” school were not Catholic and, perhaps more importantly, those kids represented dollars that would no longer find their way into public school coffers.
As long as the parents don’t have a problem with the religion-based education and since the Province is going to provide funding for the student one way or the other, what is the problem? In fact, what religious education means from a practical point of view is questionable. Separate schools are required to follow the same curricula as public schools and are responsible for the same educational outcomes. Furthermore, the Catholic Church has long accepted scientific facts taught in the provincial curriculum that other religious groups find controversial, such as evolution and even the Big Bang.
“The Big Bang, which is today posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creation, rather, it requires it,” stated Pope Francis, adding, “evolution of nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation because evolution pre-supposes the creation of beings which evolve.”
So, essentially, education in Saskatchewan has evolved into two parallel public systems, one that actively promotes a specific Christian religion and another that does not and both of which are responsible for the same educational outcomes. Public education is an increasingly expensive business. At the very least, it is worth asking the question whether maintaining two public systems makes sense.
The case being heard at Court of Queen’s Bench in Yorkton right now may have some implications in that regard. In Saskatchewan, minority religion education rights (which in this context means only Catholic) are still protected by the Constitution, but Saskatchewan has changed dramatically. The conversation about what it means to protect minority religion education rights in 21st century has barely just begun.
