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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Woman sues to send Catholic school funding back to 1867

By: Andrew Duffy

Posted: 01/14/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

OTTAWA -- A Toronto woman has filed suit against the Ontario government in a bid to turn back the clock on funding for Catholic schools to 1867, when the right to a separate system was enshrined in law.

Reva Landau, a retired business systems analyst, concedes in her application that the Constitution protects Catholic school funding in Ontario.

But Landau argues that giving Catholic schools more money than is strictly required by law offends the Charter of Rights and Freedoms' equality provisions.

"In an ideal world, I'd like to see one public school system," said Landau, who holds a law degree from the University of Toronto.

"But we do have the Constitution. So I'm saying OK, if you insist we have to have Catholic schools, they should not get one penny more than they were entitled to in 1867."

Canadian courts, she argued, have consistently said that legal decisions that limit charter rights must be interpreted narrowly.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled already that Sect. 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which guarantees Catholic school funding in Ontario, is immune from charter challenges. (The charter specifically exempts from review all rights guaranteed in the Constitution.)

In Landau's application, filed in the Superior Court of Justice, Landau asks for an order that eliminates all government aid for Catholic schools from Grades 9 to 12.

She also seeks an order that limits the funding of Grades 1 to 8 to "only that aid available in 1867, that is, only property taxes from Catholics who declare themselves to be separate-school supporters and who live within three miles of a separate school, and property taxes from wholly Catholic-owned businesses."

She argues the current funding system unjustly forces her, through the tax system, to support Catholic schools.

"It means I'm being forced to fund a system that has sectarian views of which I do not approve," she said. "I'm therefore being discriminated against because a Catholic is not being forced to fund a system of which they do not approve."

Landau's legal gambit, which could renew the emotional separate school debate, faces an uphill battle.

The Supreme Court has twice ruled on issues related to Catholic school funding in Ontario. It upheld Premier Bill Davis' decision to extend full funding in 1984 as a valid exercise of the province's constitutional power. And it later dismissed an argument, made on behalf of parents from other faith-based schools, that the system discriminates against them.

In its rulings, the high court has noted that the Catholic school funding guarantee was an important compromise on the road to Confederation.

Landau, however, contends that the court should reconsider its reasoning in light of the 1997 constitutional amendment that allowed Quebec to reorganize its schools along linguistic rather than religious lines.

"The other party to the historic compromise, Quebec, has already opted out," she said. "That argument is now much weaker and it has to be reconsidered."

The last time the Catholic school funding issue made headlines in Ontario was in 2007 when Progressive Conservative leader John Tory made the politically disastrous promise to extend full funding to all faith-based schools.

-- Postmedia News

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 14, 2012 A13

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