Quebec's funding formula for minority schools may violate the Charter
Shaun Peppy, President
Regional Association of West Quebecers
Return to Home
Quebec's funding formula for minority schools may violate the
Charter
Shaun Peppy, President
Regional Association of West Quebecers
Education, schools, and respect for minorities are valued by Canadians in the most fundamental ways. Parents value the important role schools play in preparing their children for the rigours of adult life. Communities value schools as institutions that unite their people. Businesses and policy makers value educational institutions because they feed a modern economy that is driven by the knowledge and skills of its workers. As an officially bilingual country we value providing linguistic minority communities with fair and equal educational opportunities. Given these fundamental values, why was John Paul ll school in Campbell’s Bay recently closed?
A BUDGET QUESTION...
Parent’s of the students at J-P ll were understandably upset and dismayed when the Western Quebec School Board recently decided to close their school. From a strictly accounting perspective the Board made the right decision. It simply does not have enough money to operate all of its schools. When the funding formula they use to distribute funds from the provincial government to individual schools is mostly based on enrolment, it’s hard to keep a school with a declining number of students like J-P ll open. The equalization payments the Board makes from urban to rural schools seems unsustainable.
... OR A RIGHTS QUESTION?
Aside from the narrow question of budget allocations, there is another element to this story that has been largely ignored. The English students in Campbell’s Bay have the right to be educated in their own language in an institution that puts pedagogical and community concerns ahead of strictly financial ones. It is true that the term ‘right’ is one whose meaning is casually tossed around in our increasingly rights-conscious society. But let’s be clear, in this case the right of linguistic minority communities to access education in their own language is guaranteed in section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This right is of the highest order in Canada. It is guaranteed in the Constitution of which the Charter is a part. This is the very document that says what Canada is and lists the rights that we cherish most as Canadians. By including section 23 the framers of the Charter recognized the real challenges faced by people whose first language is not that of the majority in their province. The wisdom of this section is that providing minority language schools will help minority communities flourish by giving their young people the best possible start in life.
The only proviso in section 23 open to interpretation is that provincial governments are only obliged to provide linguistic minorities with an education in their language where numbers warrant. Cases involving various Francophone communities outside Quebec have set some standards as to how many students are required for this right to be exercised in an individual school. For example, the Supreme Court ruled that section 23 required an autonomous French school in Summerside, PEI, with only 34 pre-registered students, be kept open. There are currently 183 students pre-registered to attend J-P ll in 2006-07. Numerous other court decisions have protected Francophone schools outside of Quebec. To date, judicial intervention in minority language education issues in Quebec has been mostly limited to questions of access arising from Bill 101’s restrictions on who is eligible to attend an English school. How well the province is furnishing Section 23 rights has yet to be thoroughly considered by the courts.
QUEBEC DIDN'T ACT
The way the Quebec government funds and supports English schools needs to be re-examined. The per-capita enrolment based formula simply does not make sense for demographically vulnerable minority communities, especially those in already vulnerable rural areas. The province was provided with an opportunity in 1991 to fix this problem when its Task Force on English Education recommended that “the Minister of Education revise the budgetary rules to ensure that school boards receive more adequate funding for small schools, particularly in small centres…” Had the province acted on this recommendation J-P ll might not have been closed.
The closure of J-P ll raises an important question that is relevant to the entire province of Quebec: Does the way the province funds English minority language schools allow section 23 rights to be fully exercised? The Western Quebec School Board is not in a position to seek answers to this question. As rights holders parents and community leaders must rise to the task of ensuring their rights are being protected. All Canadians have an interest in ensuring that the value of education and minority rights has the same meaning across the country. If we don’t, two of the defining characteristics of what it means to be Canadian are at stake.
Submitted to the West Quebec Post on July 7th, 2006