In prime tv time this week, from the chapel of the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, Prime Minister Carney delivered a major policy address on fighting antisemitism in our country. Not surprisingly, the speech received mixed reactions: Critical, not enough substance, too much left out; Positive, a good beginning; important message; Unimpressed, a shrug-of-the-shoulder, we’ll-suspend-judgment-until-we-see-action.
We offer no assessment of the Prime Minister’s statement. We do, however, point to one key reference in his remarks that bears directly upon GAJE’s application for leave to appeal currently before the Supreme Court. Indeed, the language used by the prime minister echoed with singular resonance to language that appears in GAJE’s application.
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Prime Minister Carney said: “Pluralism in Canada is not the exception to the framework. Pluralism is the framework. Our secularism is open. The state takes no side in matters of belief, and the institutions of public life are not captured by any particular faith.
“In Canada, state neutrality does not empty the public square but ensures that no conception of the good — including humanism or atheism — is privileged by state power, and that every Canadian has the freedom of conscience to live as they believe.
“This means that the state—above the responsibilities we all have as citizens—has a special responsibility to ensure that no culture, faith, race, gender, or identity is threatened or suppressed. And it goes further to the responsibility of ensuring that everyone can be their whole selves in Canada.” (Our emphasis)
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To persuade the SCC that GAJE’s application deserves a hearing in court, we must prove that the law and society have “changed” or moved sufficiently in new directions since the court’s Adler decision some 30 years ago, in 1996 to warrant a reassessment of the case’s enduring applicability.
One of the developments in the law since 1996 to which GAJE has pointed, is the doctrine of “state neutrality” specifically raised by the prime minister, that was given life by the SCC itself, in 2015. To the prime minister, quite obviously, the doctrine of state neutrality in ecumenical matters, is now entrenched into the deep fabric of Canadian society.
GAJE’s legal team elaborated upon the doctrine of “state neutrality” in the material they filed in court. “In Mouvement laïque québecois v. Saguenay (City) (2015) this Court [the SCC] explained that the duty of state neutrality means “the state may not act in such a way as to create a preferential public space that favours certain religious groups and is hostile to others.” (The prime minister’s words echo quite strongly with the rule propagated by the SCC.)
“This issue was neither raised nor addressed in Adler because the doctrine of state neutrality had not been mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada as a pillar of Canadian law.”
“The current educational funding scheme, along with the current interpretation of section 93 of the Constitution Act, offends the state’s duty of neutrality. Ontario’s exclusive funding of only Roman Catholic schools to the exclusion of other religious schools, favours Roman Catholic communities while hindering other religious communities. Religious minorities are allowed to provide their children with the education they choose, but they do not have public support unless they choose secular or Roman Catholic education. This is both a breach of the duty of state neutrality and is also a breach of the section 15 equality rights guaranteed by the Charter.”
“[GAJE’s] application … questions the continuation of an exclusive and historical discriminatory funding model from 1867, when it does not need to be interpreted this way in 2026. With today’s values, the funding scheme in the Education Act ought to be interpreted in light of the advancements in the law and society present today in order to end the discrimination in education funding perpetuated by Ontario.”
“As this Court explained in Loyola: Religious freedom must therefore be understood in the context of a secular, multicultural and democratic society with a strong interest in protecting dignity and diversity, promoting equality and ensuring the vitality of a common belief in human rights. In the context of funding religious schools, the question is how to balance “robust protection for the values underlying religious freedom with the values of a secular state” while also upholding the principle affirmed by this Court in Loyola that “a secular state [cannot] support or prefer the practices of one group over those of another.”
Prime Minister Carney effectively stated that the doctrine of “state neutrality” is part of the fabric of Canadian multiculturalism today. It was not in 1996. We hope the SCC notices.
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If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit to achieve fairness in educational funding, 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 Thank you, in advance, for considering doing so.
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Shabbat shalom
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education
June 5, 2026
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 