Catholic Problems in Western Canada

by George Thomas Daly

Others may claim that the State has a right to "Uniformity in the education of its citizens." This is the pretension of those who now are advocating so strongly and so widely the "federalization of our schools." We will not discuss the value of this plea for uniformity. It would open a very interesting pedagogical debate and we are inclined to believe that the "anti-uniformists" would carry away the honors. We do not pretend that the State has no rights in matters of education. But its interference should be consistent with the prior and more fundamental rights of the individual and the family and not become a usurpation or abrogation of them. Otherwise it would be the wrong way of doing the right thing.

IV.—A National Reason

The Constitution of a country has as its specific object the maintenance of the perfect equilibrium between authority and liberty. "It is the charter of a people's liberties, the shield of the individual against the possible tyranny of government, the effective check upon the ambition of every government to extend the sphere of its delegated powers. Unlike the law, its primary purpose is to restrain the Government, not the citizen. . . ." (P. Blakely, S.J.) America, Sept. 18, 1920.

The greatest liberty for the individual, combined with the greatest good of the commonwealth, has always been the ideal aimed at by the Fathers of a democratic country. To tamper with the Constitution on vital issues, to conceive it as an experiment, to ignore its spirit,—that obvious intention of its framers—is always eventually fatal to the peace and welfare of the nation. No one lays hands with impunity on that Ark of the Covenant. The essential changes in the Constitution of a country act as a time-fuse. An explosion necessarily follows, although it may take years and generations for a faulty legislation to disclose its real consequences. This is particularly true in matters of education. Laws of the educational departments may change to become more efficient in their administration but should never touch the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

In Canada the protection of the minority rights is a principle embodied in our Constitution, in the Imperial Statute of the British North America. Act. Even where the letter of the Provincial Law has established the "public school,"—as is the case in the Maritime Provinces—the spirit of the law is generally observed, and by a compromise and tacit agreement the rights of the minority are to a great extent recognized.

In the West, Manitoba stands out in Canadian History as the battlefield of educational rights. Although the British North America Act, 1867,—that intangible charter of Canadian liberties—stipulates, section 93, that in the carving out of new Provinces in the vast domains of the North West Territories the existing educational rights guaranteed to the minority should be respected, yet, the Manitoba Legislative Assembly has broken away from the letter and spirit of the Constitution and constituted a grievance which demands rectification.

The Federal Parliament partially recognized the principle of Separate Schools in the formation of the Provinces of Saskatchewan and of Alberta, by introducing, in section 17 of the Autonomy Bills of 1905, the section 93 of the B.N.A. Act, and by reasserting the existing rights granted by the N.W.T. School Ordinances of 1901. We say "partially," for it is not the right of collecting separate taxes and teaching Religion during the last half hour of the school-day that constitutes a really Catholic school.

The "Separate schools" in Saskatchewan and Alberta stand on the solid granite of our Constitution. The highest tribunals of the land and the Empire have implicitly recognized the principle of the minority-schools in many of their decisions. Moreover, let us not forget it! the separate school system in Canada is "protestant" in its origin. It was to protect the protestant minority of Lower Canada that this system, Catholic in Ontario, Protestant in Quebec, was adopted on September 18th, 1841. In the West the minority school-law was also enacted to protect the protestant minority of the Territories. Our Non-Catholic opponents should not forget this origin of our separate schools. What their fathers appreciated then for their children, we appreciate now for ours. The principle remains unchanged.

Some may be surprised at our contention to make an argument in favour of separate schools out of the very point on which rests the scaffolding of those who oppose them. They claim that the minority school principle is the greatest enemy of Canadian Unity. What we need, they say, is to standardize our schools, and bring all Canadian children under one system. No genuine "Canadianization" is possible without this unity of education. The advocates of these ideas are now at work promoting through the country the "nationalization of schools." The Conference of Winnipeg, 1919, was the first tangible result of this movement. A National Bureau of Education—a non-government institution, at least for the time being; a survey of school text-books throughout the Provinces, a study of matters affecting the status of the teaching profession—such are the duties that this National Council of Education has assumed at its first gathering.

This movement towards Federal control of schools involves the denial and the eventual suppression of the minority-principle in our system of Education. This nationalization of Education, we claim, is erroneous in its principle, anti-constitutional in its operation, and dangerous in its consequences. Uniformity in education, as a source of efficiency, is one of the fallacies of our materialistic age. Schools to be successful have not to be submitted to the same laws of a commercial or industrial combine. Ethnical and moral values do not follow the laws of the mart and the stock exchange. If in our extensive Dominion even a unity of tariff, readily acceptable to the East and to the West, is Utopian, how much more so would be the unity of the school system? Education, to be effective, must take the colour of the environments to meet the needs of the community. The levelling process would be most detrimental, for uniformity in education is the seed of decay.