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Language rights are not at stake in this debate:
"To realize that vision, OSSN seeks the establishment of a single secular school system for each official language, namely English and French public school boards."
Fair enough.
And a related thread here:
http://rabble.ca/babble/central-canada/incrementalist-approaches-elimina...
This same thought was shared by western world economists at start of the decade, and it said that government spending as a share of economic output should be reduced to somewhere between 15 percent and a third of GDP. But there is a wide array of excessive government wrt the unique setup in Canada. Our's must be the one of the few countries in the world to have this weird arrangement with weak central government and twelve provincial and territorial sub-governments, a model of duplicative excess and inefficiency constructed by 19th century ideologues Canada probably has more government bureaucracy than 90 percent of countries in the world. Reducing this kind of excess doesn't interest some Canadians apparently. The focus is on a specific religious group seen to be pulling the whole country down from their point of view.
I don't think the education budget should be trimmed at all - and the "saving money" argument doesn't appeal to me. I support ending the separate school system on principle.
The it's the right thing to do also appeals to my better judgment, LP. I can't argue against that very well.
About time to reduce the confederation to one of Canada, Quebec and Nunavut. France has about 62 million inhabitants and one ministry of education. Canada has half the population and 13 ministries of education. Ridiculous !
Seeing that education defines the culture of the next generation, you would think we'd support one single nationwide federal ministry of education. The problem though is that, unlike France which, like England albeit to a much lesser degree, has for the most part subdued its indigenous cultures (where do you think we learnt it from?), in Canada, the english have failed to subdue the French-Canadian population and the First Nations are still in a fighting stance of sorts. As a result, we're always trying to balance out competing interests. Clearly Quebec would never give up its ministry of education to the federal level. First Nations educaiton on reserves is funded by the feds. Then each province has its own identity. Canada is a UN of sorts, an international conglomeration.
Machjo,
I am not arguing for one federal ministry of education, but three. Canada, Quebec and the Aboriginals. I do wonder what is exactly this arangement that makes Ontario, PEI, Manitoba and the whole provinces of Anglo-Canada so different if not a modern day British tribalism.
Good points. Be aware though that the First Nations themselves are as diverse from one another as English-Canada is from French-Canada. I'm sure they're not interested in just assimilating into the more powerful Cree or Inuktitut communities either. For them it might be better to have one a ministry of department of education for each nation with federal transfer payments to them I suppose.
Linking this thread to related discussions for the benefit of those of us who never tire of discussing Ontario's wasteful and discriminatory dual school systems (until there is one anyway
):
Jan 13, 2010: In Ontario, in education, it pays to be Catholic II (full day kindergarten)
Jan 7, 2010: Ontario NDP Education Task Force starts
Oct 1, 2009: Catholic school fires teacher for changing God-given gender
Sep 26, 2009: In Ontario, in education, it still pays to be Catholic
Mar 25, 2009: Why the constitution is relevant to discussion of denominational schools
Mar 13, 2009: Is there a principled, progressive case for continued support for funding separate schools?
Closing for length.