Retention of separate school boards with public funding was a major issue of contention in the negotiations that led to Canadian confederation, chiefly as a result of ethnic and religious tension between the (largely French-speaking) Roman Catholic population in Canada and the Protestant majority. The issue was a subject of debate at the 1864 Quebec Conference and was finally resolved at the London Conference of 1866 with a proposal to preserve the separate school systems in Quebec and Ontario. The way in which this agreement was written into the British North America Act, 1867 was to the effect that the condition of education in each colony (or territory) at the time it entered Confederation would be continued thereafter.