As public purse strings are stretched to the limit in response to growing needs across the board and the economy teeters on the precipice of a trade war with the U.S., a historical pressure point in Ontario could dramatically change the face of education.

For the 2024-25 school year, Ontario is investing $29 billion in education. Of that, the Catholic school system will receive around $9 billion. Currently about 570,000 students are enrolled in Ontario’s Catholic schools.

Many argue that providing public funding for Catholic schools in Ontario is unfair and outdated, that it contradicts the principle of separation between religion and the state and is therefore an inequitable use of taxpayer money.

Defenders of this longstanding practice argue that the historical and constitutional foundations of the funding justify its continuation.

The constitutional protection of Catholic schools in Ontario is based on the British North America Act of 1867, which grants educational rights to certain religious minorities. Section 93 explicitly guarantees the continued existence of separate schools for Roman Catholics and Protestants.

This protection was further reinforced by Section 29 of the Constitution Act of 1982, which guarantees that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms will not infringe upon rights related to denominational and separate schools.

Public schooling is not “neutral”

Legal arguments aside, there is a myth about public schooling that needs correction. It is not and never has been truly neutral and secular.

The public education system reflects and reinforce the values, traditions and holidays of the cultural majority. The public system in Ontario was historically Protestant, a reality that continues to shape its approach to education, even if it appears to adopt a more generalized worldview today.

Blatant examples of this include maintaining Christmas and Easter as statutory holidays that are baked into the school calendar. At the same time, any request for accommodations for minority religious observances often feels like asking for privileges.

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Ontario’s Catholic schools were a response to the need for minority protection. By contrast, Manitoba had a Catholic school system from 1870 until its abolition in 1890.

But in Ontario the separate school system was rooted in a political and cultural compromise. This mutual arrangement provided protections for the English Protestant minority in Lower Canada (Quebec) and later extended the same protections to French Catholics in Upper Canada (Ontario).

A growing success story

Amid the never-ending debate over public funding for Catholic schools, there is an undeniable fact: demand for spaces in Catholic schools has never been higher.

Increasingly, non-Catholic parents go to great lengths to enroll their children, not for religious reasons but for the reputation of academic excellence. That is happening for a few reasons, including families that choose Catholic schools as an alternative with more structure, a quality of instruction and sense of community that they believe is lacking in the broader public system.

In many cases, they appear to be right.

Given comparable resources, Catholic schools frequently outperform their public counterparts. Some offer cutting-edge arts programs, great science labs, and well-maintained campuses, drawing families who prioritize quality education over confessional identity.

At the same time, some religious parents who are not Catholic still prefer to send their children to the Catholic school system because they feel more at home with curriculum that openly makes reference to a higher power.

Double standard

All of this highlights the public system’s frustrations with Catholic school funding that ultimately boils down to one issue: unwelcome competition for scarce resources.

Calls to defund Catholic schools frame the issue as a push for fairness and neutrality. But scratching below the surface of that argument reveals a deeper resistance to institutional pluralism.

If concerns were truly about fairness, then why don’t those same voices call for something similar to the model in Scandinavian countries, where so-called “private” schools representing a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds receive the same funding?

In Finland, for instance, approximately two per cent of students attend “non-public” schools, which are highly regulated and publicly funded. They adhere to the national curriculum and qualification requirements.

To operate, they require a government license and are subject to strict government oversight. The Finnish constitution prohibits charging tuition in basic education, ensuring that it remains free.

In Ontario, debates over separate schools have often been more about conformity than about equity. The argument against Catholic school funding ignores the larger inequities in Ontario’s education system, where access to high-quality public schools is often determined by postal code and income bracket.

If the Catholic school system ceased to receive funding and disappeared, the public system would need to absorb hundreds of thousands of students, requiring significant additional government spending on infrastructure and staff. In other words, defunding Catholic schools would not eliminate costs — it would simply shift them to the public school system.

A historical creation that fills a modern need

The practice of providing public funding for Ontario’s Catholic schools is a constitutional commitment that reflects the province’s pluralistic roots. Despite ongoing calls for change, few politicians are eager to tackle this issue head-on, with the notable exception being the Ontario Green Party, which has made defunding Catholic schools a policy position.

If Ontario truly values fairness in education, then the conversation going forward should focus on ensuring that every student, regardless of religion, income or geography is provided with a high-quality education. That objective could be further reinforced by introducing tax credits for families that choose to invest in their children’s education beyond the public system.

But the goal of delivering quality basic instruction to as many Ontario children as possible will not improve by taking a hatchet to funding for Catholic schools.