The Canadian government in recent years has struck an ambitious international human rights agenda and we did not imagine that it would risk compromising the integrity of those initiatives. Furthermore, the government had been found eight times before to be in breach of this particular international treaty, and in all but one of those cases acted to remedy the breach. Canadians expect the federal government to fulfill its treaty commitments. International law and the UN do not work that way. A nation state is responsible for what takes place within its borders.
All provinces save for Ontario provide funding to all religiously based schools or to none at all.
The reality is that in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Quebec, where there is public funding for religious schools of all denominations, public education continues to flourish. The experience of those provinces cannot simply be ignored in favour of unsubstantiated fear. Stockwell Day should be given credit for working within the federal-provincial boundaries to find a credible way out of the present impasse. Not to do so would be, in effect, to condone the continuation of a highly distasteful form of religious discrimination.