My official rejection of Catholic schools in Ontario.
September 16th, 2009
I got a request for information from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) in the mail yesterday. MPAC is a Minister of Finance appointed bureaucracy that collects data on properties and homeowners to provide the different levels of government with information. Primarily, it provides property assessments according to the Assessment Act.
I was pleased to find it in the mail because it gave me the chance to officially reject the Catholic school system. By checking the box (actually mine was already checked off, how did they know?), I ensure that my tax dollars go to public schools.
Of course, it doesn’t actually work that way. Catholics like to argue that by checking off the separate schools box, they’re funding the school system themselves through their own tax dollars. And yet, school support is distributed based on the provincial funding formula, not by property assessment forms so it doesn’t matter what box you check because your local Catholic school will receive the same funds as the public school across the street.
The only purpose for these forms is to let the government know how many Catholics live in the area to best decide where to build new schools. Catholics don’t fund separate schools, everyone does.
What I didn’t expect to see were the instructions to the right that tell you what box the check. It turns out you have to be a Roman Catholic to support separate schools. I always thought anyone could support separate schools. The separate school boards like to pretend that they have a wide variety of supporters (other religions, etc) but if only Catholics can be supporters, the separate school system is clearly a discriminatory leftover of Confederation and should be abolished.
For now I’m glad to do my part. The family that used to own my house was Catholic (they had Catholics For Dummies on their bookshelf), so I figure as more non-Catholics move into any given area, it’s safe to reason that our separate schools will eventually disappear.
I’d like to look into how other provinces fund their separate schools, at least those who haven’t gotten rid of them yet.
Alberta’s the exact same, you have to be Catholic to check the little box, and then they claim your property tax goes to separate schools, but its not traceable. AB also funds fundie-charter schools that make the most strict Catholic schools look tolerant by comparison (for many you have to sign a declaration of faith that basically says your a creationist).
Huh. Im glad I read this. I got this form in the mail, had never seen it before and nearly threw it out. Now that I know what it’s for I’ll take a closer look. Society sucks because of people like me.
Hi Canadian Iconoclast: You should check out http://www.OneSchoolSystem.org and http://www.onessn.org sometime. You are basically correct in saying that it doesn’t matter one bit how someone designates their “school support” on municipal tax forms. Schools are funded completely by formula based on enrollment and documented needs (number of special needs students, ESL students, geographic circumstances, etc). Even some Catholic board advertising acknowledges this now and states pretty directly that school support designations serve only a political purpose today. The more people who sign up as “Catholic school supporters”, the logic goes, the more reticent politicians will be to dismantle the uniquely Catholic privilege of publicly funded school choice.