Culture Shock

I was walking back to my apartment thinking to myself that I was beginning to feel at home, when inside my mailbox I found...

The School Support Declaration

Edmonton has two education authorities (school districts): Public and Separate. The Separate school district is responsible for Roman Catholic schools, the Public school district for all other schools. In St. Albert this situation is reversed and Public schools are Catholic, Separate schools are Protestant. So far, so straightforward....

The school support declaration is a declaration of faith required from every home owner (not renter), including corporations:

Therefore I declare I am of the Roman Catholic Faith - Yes/No

The taxes of those answering Yes are then directed towards Separate schools and the taxes of those answering No towards Public schools. In the case where a property is owned by more than one person then the taxes are distributed in proportion to their level of ownership.

It is hard to understand how this system has come about in a country with strong privacy & human rights legislation. As far as I see it there are two serious flaws in the system and one marginal benefit... For the sake of an attempt at even handedness I'll start with the benefit..!

One of the often cited objections to state funding of religious schools is that taxpayers end up funding the teaching of a set of beliefs with which they do not personally concur, this system does away with this to an extent by ensuring that the proportion of school funding coming from property taxes is not directed to Roman Catholic education unless the owner declares themself to be of that faith.

Now for the disadvantages....

Somewhere in City Hall there is a list of all the Roman Catholic property owners in Edmonton, there shouldn't be. Period. My personal beliefs are personal, until I choose to declare them publicly, and even then the city has no business recording them. I do not for a moment believe that the City of Edmonton would use this information for nefarious purposes, but that is not the point. The fact that such a list exists, means that anybody now or in the future who wished to target Catholics or their property would have a complete checklist.

The other, and perhaps more immediate disadvantage is that education of Catholics is funded by their rate of property ownership & the value of the property they own rather than the number and needs of Catholic children within the community. I have no information on the relative economic strength of Roman Catholics in the city of Edmonton, but it would seem reasonable to suppose that over time this will vary due to changes in the origins of recent immigrants etc.

Apologies for the rather intemperate post, in particular to any Canadians reading who feel I should have kept my surprised shock to myself. All I can say is it was a bolt from the blue to receive a letter like this in a city whose enormous diversity and tolerance I appreciate greatly.