Ontario Provincial Election Issue…
……The Question Of Public Funding For Religious Schools

Some Perspectives…..
In the National Post, Sept 06, Father Raymond J. De Souza writes…

Catholics need not apologize
Like most parish priests this first week back I was over at the local Catholic school, welcoming everyone, blessing the students and teachers, wishing them well for the new year just begun. Does that constitute something unfair? Are my ministrations a threat to the common good of society? Is that something that should be stopped in Ontario?

With an Ontario provincial election slated for Oct. 10, and all but the keenest observers unable to distinguish any great difference between the two major parties, the question of public funding for religious schools has emerged as an issue on which the parties have achieved a genuine disagreement. The Liberals favour the status quo, in which there are publicly funded Catholic schools, as guaranteed in the Constitution, but otherwise government funds would remain only for public schools. The Conservatives have proposed the status quo plus public funding for other religious schools -- Protestant, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, etc. And other voices have chimed in to say that the Catholic school system should be abolished altogether, as either unfair or divisive, or both.

He goes on to say…..

Ontario Catholics have nothing to be defensive about. Our publicly funded schools are part of the constitutional and social history of Canada. Their existence, by near-universal consensus, makes our public education better, not worse.

And Concludes…..

As Ontarians somnambulate toward their provincial election, there are fearful sounds about education funding becoming a so-called wedge issue. Perhaps it will be. But what is needed in Ontario is to remove the wedge that separates some parents from the choices they would like to make for their kids. That would be a wedge issue worth discussing.

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Faith Leaders Fail To See Value Of The Status Quo
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/255953
September 13, 2007- By Roger Hyman

Excerpts…
Some pastors, imams and rabbis are embracing John Tory's promise to fund faith-based schools from tax revenues. But old truths are being conveniently forgotten and some key questions are going unasked.

There is no question that the funding of only Catholic schools is inequitable. This funding was founded on a 19th century constitutional provision that by the 1980s had long been a historical anomaly. Better, many Ontarians believe, that this provision was not in force; better yet that the decision to extend that funding past Grade 10 had not been made. But it was and we're stuck with it, and some leaders of other faiths have been gnashing their teeth ever since.

Understandably, they want their children to learn the history, ritual and culture that makes them different from members of other faith groups. But they wish to do this in classrooms unaffected by the influence of those faith groups or the practices of the secular system. And they want to do this at public expense. That, goes the argument, is what the Catholics have.

But what Catholics have is different from what the Tory proposal will provide. A Catholic school is catholic in the broader sense – it is multi-ethnic, multi-racial, culturally and economically diverse. Faith-based, yes, but large enough and broadly enough constituted that in every other way it mirrors the culturally diverse Ontario community. This is not likely to be the case with much smaller faiths or those with a far more homogeneous demographic. Their classrooms would mirror themselves and that self-absorption threatens the assumptions of an inclusive civil society.

That being said, there is still an undeniable inequity that makes many of us uncomfortable. The Conservative proposal would deal with that inequity, but in doing so would place at risk the great Ontario achievement of pluralistic public education, turning it into merely another commodity to be bartered in the political marketplace. The proposal is playing well among some religious special interest groups. Happily, polls tell us that the vast majority of Ontario voters understand that it is far better to endure the present unfairness than to suffer the threat to social cohesiveness implicit in a faith-based school system.
…..
Public funding of some of these schools would only increase the number of children out of touch with the cultural diversity outside their classrooms. This is especially the case with some fundamentalist faith groups, which in whole or in part reject the values of the larger society. In a system that funds those schools, the best hope will be for a lack of understanding of the other, and the toxic worst is always a possibility – that those who are different and unseen will be perceived as different and dangerous.

Statistics Canada Today Releases A "Family Portrait" Of Canadians
http://www.statcan.ca/cgi-bin/DAILY/latest.cgi
Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Married people are in the minority in Canada for the first time, according to census information released Wednesday by Statistics Canada.

2006 Census: Families, marital status, households and dwelling characteristics Statistics Canada today releases a "family portrait" of Canadians using the third set of data from the 2006 Census. This release examines developments in families, marital status, households and living arrangements in Canada between 2001 and 2006, and how children fit into these evolving family structures.

In addition, it provides information on the number of same-sex couples, both those living in a common-law union and, for the first time, those who are married. In total, the census enumerated 8,896,840 census families in 2006, up 6.3% from 2001.

The census enumerated 6,105,910 married-couple families, an increase of only 3.5% from 2001. In contrast, the number of common-law-couple families surged 18.9% to 1,376,865, while the number of lone-parent families increased 7.8% to 1,414,060.

Consequently, married-couple families accounted for 68.6% of all census families in 2006, down from 70.5% five years earlier. The proportion of common-law-couple families rose from 13.8% to 15.5%, while the share of lone-parent families increased slightly from 15.7% to 15.9%.

Two decades ago, common-law-couple families accounted for only 7.2% of all census families. Married-couple families represented 80.2%, and lone-parent families, 12.7%.

In Quebec, where the prevalence of common-law-couple families has been one of the defining family patterns for years, the number of common-law-couple families increased 20.3% between 2001 and 2006 to 611,855. They accounted for 44.4% of the national total. Close to one-quarter (23.4%) of all common-law-couple families in Canada lived in the two census metropolitan areas of Montréal and Québec.

Among lone-parent families, growth between 2001 and 2006 was most rapid for families headed by men. Their number increased 14.6%, more than twice the rate of growth of 6.3% among those headed by women.

Same-sex married couples counted for the first time
The number of same-sex couples surged 32.6% between 2001 and 2006, five times the pace of opposite-sex couples (+5.9%).

For the first time, the census counted same-sex married couples, reflecting the legalization of same-sex marriages for all of Canada as of July 2005. In total, the census enumerated 45,345 same-sex couples, of which 7,465, or 16.5%, were married couples.

Half of all same-sex couples in Canada lived in the three largest census metropolitan areas, Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver, in 2006. Toronto accounted for 21.2% of all same-sex couples, Montréal, 18.4% and Vancouver, 10.3%.

In 2006, same-sex couples represented 0.6% of all couples in Canada. This is comparable to data from New Zealand (0.7%) and Australia (0.6%).

Over half (53.7%) of same-sex married spouses were men in 2006, compared with 46.3% who were women. Proportions were similar among same-sex common-law partners in both 2006 and 2001.

About 9.0% of persons in same-sex couples had children aged 24 years and under living in the home in 2006. This was more common for females (16.3%) than for males (2.9%) in same-sex couples.

Households: Large increase in one-person households
Since 2001, there has been a large increase in one-person households.

During this time, the number of one-person households increased 11.8%, more than twice as fast as the 5.3% increase for the total population in private households. At the same time, the number of households consisting of couples without children aged 24 years and under increased 11.2% since 2001.

The households with the slowest growth between 2001 and 2006 were those comprised of couples and children aged 24 years and under; these households edged up only 0.4%.

Between 2001 and 2006, the number of private households increased 7.6%, while the population in private households rose 5.3%.

The census counted more than three times as many one-person households as households with five or more persons in 2006. Of the 12,437,470 private households, 26.8% were one-person households, while 8.7% were households of five or more persons.

More young adults living with their parents
Over the last two decades, one of the trends for young adults has been their growing tendency to remain in, or return to, the parental home. This upward trend has continued over the past five years.

In 2006, 43.5% of the 4 million young adults aged 20 to 29 lived in the parental home, up from 41.1% in 2001. Twenty years ago, 32.1% of young adults lived with their parents.

Among individuals aged 20 to 24, 60.3% were in the parental home in 2006, up from 49.3% in 1986. Among those aged 25 to 29, 26.0% were in the parental home in 2006, up from 15.6% two decades earlier.

Saskatchewan (31.8%) and Alberta (31.7%) had the lowest proportions of young adults aged 20 to 29 living in the parental home in 2006. Among the other provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador (52.2%) and Ontario (51.5%) had the highest.

Among the census metropolitan areas, Toronto had the highest proportion of young adults who lived in their parents' home in 2006. Nearly 6 in 10 (57.9%) young adults aged 20 to 29 lived with their parents in Toronto, well above the national average (43.5%).

Unmarried people outnumber legally married people for the first time
For the first time, the census enumerated more unmarried people aged 15 and over than legally married people.

In 2006, more than one-half (51.5%) of the adult population were unmarried, that is, never married, divorced, separated or widowed, compared with 49.9% five years earlier. Conversely, only 48.5% of persons aged 15 and over were legally married in 2006, down from 50.1% in 2001.

Twenty years earlier, 38.6% of the population aged 15 and over were unmarried, while 61.4% were married.

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