"You've got to put your money where your mouth is": How Jewish Advocacy Organisations in Ontario Understand the Relationship between Public Funding for Faith Schools and Multiculturalism.

Abstract

<p>This thesis discusses the ways in which arguments for equity in faith-based education funding were constructed by some of the major advocacy organisations within the Ontario Jewish community during the period June-October 2007. On June 8th 2007 John Tory, the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, announced that if he should be victorious in the October Ontario provincial elections, his principal education policy would be to extend public funding to independent faith schools of all religions. He avowed that the extant system, in which the province of Ontario extends public funding to Roman Catholic schools, but not to schools of any other religious orientation, was fundamentally unjust. I discuss how Jewish advocacy organisations framed their constructions of equity for faith school funding as an election issue, and analyse how these organisations relate their search to secure equity for faith-based education funding to multiculturalism.</p>