Fairness needed in school funding
Letter to the Editor

Regarding "Funding for faith-based schools is inevitable" (Sentinel editorial, Aug. 1):

Thank you for your insightful editorial on Ontario's current debate on the funding of faith-based schools. I received a faithbased education in Quebec, which subsidizes all nonpublic schools and am now the mother of four children who are enrolled in nonfunded faith-based schools. As an optometrist, I am left to wonder why my Catholic colleagues are able to benefit from their education taxes should they choose a faith-base education for their children while I am not.

The British North American Act of 1867 did not intend to create, nor did it create, an education system that supported only one denomination in Ontario. Rather, the intent was to protect the persecuted religious minority of the day, Catholics, while ensuring education funding for the protestant schools. The Catholic schools have maintained their autonomy, while the protestant schools welcomed all faiths and eventually forced to morph into our present-day secular public school system.

While Catholic school board chairs have publicly supported John Tory's plan to include all faiths in our public school system, Premier Dalton McGuinty, whose family benefited from publicly-funded Catholic education, insists on excluding non-Catholic faith-based schools.

The newspapers continue to be flooded with letters from taxpayers across this province calling for two scenarios: including all faiths in our public school system or the end to Catholic school funding. There has been no significant support for the Liberal platform - continuing with a school system that even the United Nations Human Rights Committee has ruled is unfair.

Since all three major political parties are unwilling to address our Constitution in order to eliminate guaranteed Catholic funding - and we all support fairness - we must move to make our school system welcoming for all religious communities.

Dr. Gila Gladstone-Martow,

Thornhill