Joanna DeJong VanHof, education director with Cardus, a non-partisan, faith-based, think tank with offices in Hamilton and Ottawa, whose expertise and resources GAJE has often relied upon, was recently asked by National Post reporter, Donna Kennedy-Glans, to comment on the recently concluded public teachers strike in Alberta.
VanHof studies various approaches to independent education. She focuses on ways to ensure accountability within the alternative education systems. As a result, she is uniquely qualified to comment on the demand of the Alberta teachers to cut or eliminate funds for independent private schools. Not surprisingly, the teachers contend that money spent on independent schools is always to the detriment of public schools. Funding is a zero-sum exercise, they contend.
The teachers’ argument, however, is not sound. Expenditures are not necessarily zero-sum. But they are necessarily, always a reflection of policy priorities, choices, decisions, which are themselves, a reflection of a government’s governing philosophy and objectives.
This is at the heart of VanHof’s response to the teachers’ approach. She contends that continually advocating the same approach to providing educational solutions, is “a failure of imagination not to see how we can do education better.”
She points out that support for more parental choice in education is burgeoning across Canada. Educational choice is no longer simply a “conservative value”. Indeed, all the western provinces and Quebec fund independent schools to some degree in pursuit of the policy objective of achieving the best educational system for their respective provinces.
“Parents do want options,” VanHof concludes. “Even in Ontario, where there is no funding provided for independent (private) schools, the appetite for alternative educational options continues to grow. The number of independent (private) schools that exist in the province also continues to grow. Parents are finding ways to access those when they feel they need them, despite very formidable barriers.”
According to experts like VanHof, the key question of the educational funding debate should be how to best meet the educational needs of all or most families and to try to meet them as the best learning fit for the children of those families.
The Post story emphasizes that “the wider cultural narrative we’ve adopted around education in Canada — the zero-sum, public vs. private education debate — hasn’t been that helpful. Joanna (VanHof) laments. “It’s a kind of circle that we can’t get out of,” she says; it’s a difficult cultural narrative to displace.”
VanHof proposes to reframe the conversation to ask: “What is education ultimately for? What is its purpose? Why do we do it?” She answers her own questions thus: “Education should be about the formation of humans, about flourishing, and in order to achieve that in a diverse country like Canada, that means having educational options for families.”
GAJE shares VanHof’s view of the purpose of education. We would hope most Ontarians do as well. Studies – and experience – have proven that implementing such an educational vision is not to the detriment of the public school system. In addition, we must not ignore the deeply felt educational funding wound that cannot heal under present circumstances in Ontario: The government funds the education of one religious community only to the exclusion of all others. This is simply unfair and, in the year 2025, an affront to conscience. It should also be an affront to the law.
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The National Post article can be read at:
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GAJE’s legal team will appear before the Court of Appeal in two weeks, November 21, 2025 at 10:00, to argue that the Divisional Court was wrong, in September 2024, to reverse Judge Papageorgiou’s decision of August 2023 that had allowed our case to proceed.
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)
November 7, 2025
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 