While the public isn’t united in picking a side on who to blame for the current labour unrest in Ontario’s school system — backing neither the province nor the unions —they are united in calling for an end to separate school boards.
A DART & Maru/Blue Voice Canada Poll conducted for the Toronto Sun finds that 71% support the idea of merging the Catholic and public school systems.
“A strong majority of Ontario citizens have an appetite to merge both the Ontario public and Catholic school boards to create efficiencies and save money that can be put back into the classroom,” said John Wright, partner at DART.
Wright said that his poll didn’t find significant difference among demographic groups.
“The support is found across the board with the highest from those who are oldest and those with the highest income,” he said.
Support was lowest among Ontarians aged 18-34 and those earning $50,000 or less annually.
Interestingly, about 30% of Ontario students are enrolled in the publicly funded Catholic school system and these numbers could mirror the Catholic/public system split.
The Ford government has dismissed the idea of doing away with the province’s Catholic school system, which is constitutionally protected. That rejection came after Ontario Liberal Party leadership candidate Alvin Tedjo in October suggested merging the boards.
“We have multiple systems and we don’t need that,” Tedjo said when announcing his plan.
Many Liberals distanced themselves from the idea, as did the Ford government.
“We will defend vigorously the maintenance of that system notwithstanding the requests by many Liberals including leadership aspirants to remove that choice from parents,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce said in response.
Scrapping the Catholic school system would require a constitutional amendment but not one that other provinces would have to agree with. At this point, no party officially endorses the idea.
The survey was conducted among 593 randomly selected Ontario adults on Dec. 4. The results are considered accurate to within +/ – 4.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/merge-ontarios-catholic-and-public-school-systems-poll?utm_source=TVO&utm_campaign=808a538165-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_1_17_2019_10_56_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_eadf6a4c78-808a538165-68105177
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