Dear Minister Calandra:
We congratulate and commend you on your appointment this week as Ontario’s new Minister of Education. The ministry has been entrusted to your stewardship because you understand the utmost importance of its mission in protecting, enhancing and securing the values that underpin our remarkable society and by which it advances while championing, each day, the sanctity of human life and the inherent dignity and worth of every human being.
It is our fervent hope that you carry well and loftily, with visible noble purpose, the weighty responsibilities that now rest on your shoulders. Your success will redound to the benefit of all Ontarians and Canada itself. Overseeing and facilitating the delivery of excellent education of the province’s children from their early years and kindergarten through Grade 12 will call upon all your abilities as well as call forth the wisdom that vexing problems of injustice that conscience and good policy always demand.
One such problem that has persisted in Ontario for nearly five decades, that the Ministry of Education has assiduously avoided trying to solve, yet publicly acknowledges, is blatant discrimination in educational funding. As you know, children who attend independent, denominational schools that are not Catholic, or who attend other independent schools, receive no funding from the province to help their families defray the cost of their education.
We plead with you to end this discrimination for the sake of enhancing excellence in education for all Ontario’s children while truly affirming their human rights in the process.
The following is a brief summary of the factors you might consider in ending the discrimination in educational funding.
• In 1996, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that such discrimination was lawful, primarily due to the constitutional bargain in 1867 between Ontario and Quebec – ensuring the mutual protection of minority rights in those provinces – that brought the provinces into newly confederated Canada.
• The plaintiffs in the above-referenced case did not ask Ontario to end public funding for the education of the children in Catholic schools. Rather, they asked for equal treatment for all children in other denominational schools. However, in ruling that Ontario’s educational funding policy was legal, the Supreme Court stated that Ontario was not prevented from extending public funds to the independent schools.
• Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE) contends that in the ensuing nearly three decades since the 1996 Supreme Court decision, societal circumstances have sufficiently changed, as has the relevant law, to warrant allowing the courts to reassess the decision. Should that decision still be binding in the conditions of life in Ontario in 2025? GAJE believes the 1996 decision should be reconsidered. Yet, Ontario refuses to agree that the courts should reconsider whether the 1996 decision should still apply today. Thus, as long as Ontario maintains the discrimination in its educational funding policies, GAJE has decided to launch an application asking of the courts to consider reassessing the correctness of the 1996 decision for 2025.
• Renowned independent think tanks and research facilities such as Cardus, the Aristotle Foundation, the Fraser Institute and others, have written about the anomalous nature of Ontario’s educational policies. It is the outlier in Canada. The western provinces and Quebec contribute public funds to their independent schools.
• The arguments against extending public funding to independent schools are essentially two. To do so is too costly for the public purse, and/or, extending public funding to independent schools would wreak havoc upon the public school system. Both arguments have been resoundingly proven to be false. (See research by Cardus and by the Fraser Instituter, for example. That research has been referenced in GAJE’s updates in the past.)
Thus, Minister Calandra, we plead with you. At least begin the discussion with your staff and officials about ending the discrimination in educational funding. Please bring Ontario in line with the other provinces of Canada, not to mention with the countries in the OECD western world.
All Ontario’s children are worthy. All Ontario’s children ask that you extend to them too, the sheltering canopy of equality under the law. The ongoing discrimination debases Ontario society. It makes a lie of our vaunted loyalty to the governing truths of rights and freedoms, even as it harms so many of the families striving merely to send their children to the school they deem most suited for them. Minister Calandra, please bring justice and fairness to all Ontarians.
Yours truly,
GAJE
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If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit, please click here. Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of helping to underwrite the costs of the lawsuit. For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com
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Shabbat shalom. Am Yisrael Chai
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
March 21, 2025
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 