In this update, the first of 2025, we review the course of our cause to date and restate its first principles.
Ontario funds the education, through to the end of high school, of the children of only one denominational community in the province. Although this policy is discriminatory on its face towards the children of other religious denominations, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) determined in 1996 (the Adler case) through a set of complicated reasons, that Ontario’s educational funding policy was legal. The Court, however, did not preclude Ontario from also funding, fully or partially, the education of the children of other religious denominations.
Due to the inherent unfairness and injustice in Ontario’s educational funding policy and in face of the mounting financial hardships upon young Jewish families preventing so many from being able to ensure an education for their children at Jewish day schools, Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE) brought an application in February 2022 – naming both the Governments of Canada and of Ontario as respondents – to have the courts re-assess the 1996 SCC decision as the necessary first legal step in bringing fairness to Ontario’s public funding of education for all Ontario children.
The Attorneys-General of Canada and Ontario, respectively, brought a motion in Ontario’s Divisional Court to have GAJE’s application thrown out of court even before a hearing on the merits of GAJE’s application.
The Attorneys-General’s motion was heard in April 2023.
In a 46-page decision released in August 2023, Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou decided that the application against Ontario should proceed, while the case against Canada should not.
Ontario appealed the decision by J. Papageorgiou in a hearing that took place in June 2024.
In a nine-page decision released in September, 2024, the Divisional Court accepted Ontario’s arguments and dismissed GAJE’s application.
GAJE has appealed the September 2024 decision that dismisses our application, to the Court of Appeal. We are now awaiting the Court’s decision.
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It bears emphasizing that the Government of Ontario obstinately refuses to end its patently discriminatory educational funding policy. It also refuses to even allow a discussion on the merits of GAJE’s application, which, at its heart, seeks to discuss in court, the important legal, constitutional, educational, social and human rights policy matters that are bound together in the government’s anachronistic, unjust and inefficient educational, funding policies.
There have been significant legal developments since 1996 – when Adler was decided – that ought to be heard by the court. They bear upon GAJE’s application.
In addition, there have also been significant educational and societal developments since 1996 that bear upon our case. No development has been as profound as the torrent of antisemitism unleashed overtly and even brazenly upon the Jewish community since October 7, 2023,
in public spaces and in many of the institutions and organizations that are relied upon for the orderly conduct of life lived by the norms of democracy.
In the circumstances that have evolved over the past 15 or so months, GAJE’s struggle to assert the rights of the Jewish community in relation to fairness in educational funding is also a struggle to protect the Jewish community.
And as GAJE has often observed, protecting the Jewish community protects our society at large.
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If you wish to assist GAJE and contribute to our lawsuit, please click here.
For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com
Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.
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Shabbat shalom. Chag Urim Chanukah samayach
Our hopes and aspirations for a good new year of manifold blessings for our community and for the world… Am Yisrael Chai
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
January 3, 2025
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 