Section 93 was the result of constitutional negotiations in the 1860s. Pre-existing rights for tax-funded minority Catholic and Protestant schools had become a major point for negotiations surrounding Canadian Confederation. Retention of separate school boards with public funding was a major issue, chiefly as a result of ethnic and religious tension between the (largely French-speaking) Catholic population in Canada and the (largely English-speaking) 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 Constitution was to the effect that the condition of education in each colony (or territory) at the time it entered Confederation would be constitutionally protected thereafter.