The word is getting out about the Town of Morinville, but unfortunately it’s for all the wrong reasons.
An ongoing battle for secular education that’s been playing out at school board and town council meetings, in local news stories and letters to the editor the past few months exploded last week when the country’s national newspaper put the issue under a much larger and more uncomfortable microscope. The rest of the nation recognized what most of us have known for years — the Morinville situation is unacceptable and can no longer be ignored by the province.
The crux of the issue is the absence of a true public school in Morinville, at least in the sense of how the rest of the province views and is served by public education — free of religious traditions or teachings. Not so in Morinville, where instruction at all four ‘public’ schools is permeated with Catholicism, run by Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools. It’s an up is down, left is right situation that owes itself to the area’s French Canadian roots and ties to Catholicism and has relegated the bordering secular Sturgeon School Division as a separate district. The trouble is Catholicism hasn’t been the majority for decades and some parents in Morinville want real public education for their children — in their own community.
Honouring history is great but sometimes you have to turn a page, especially in a community where today only 30 per cent of the population is Catholic. So far the Catholic board isn’t interested in change, at least not if it means offering secular programs at its schools. Sure, the board has agreed to bus children to area schools, but that solution leaves Morinville parents voiceless in their child’s education since they wouldn’t be able to vote for trustees in a neighbouring district. Not only is the situation unfair to them, the attention could hurt Morinville’s future growth as would-be residents realize Catholic school is the only option.
Change has to happen provincially and that means no longer turning a blind eye to the inequity in Morinville, no matter how small the affected group of dissident Morinville parents exercising their right to freedom from religion. Whether he likes it or not, Education Minister Dave Hancock is stuck in the middle of this war and has to come up with a solution that results in secular instruction in some form somewhere in Morinville’s boundaries.
This situation is a quirk that’s existed far too long because the province has been too content to pass the buck as a matter of local jurisdiction. However, when the school board refuses to act, the province has to step in. Whether the proper course of action is a new school is perhaps doubtful since it would require a groundswell of support beyond the small parent group. It’s more likely a compromise of some sort, perhaps a parallel secular program, that is needed.
One solution that won’t be discussed but is overdue if we’re to truly turn a page in history is changing the inequity in how religious education is funded across Alberta. The constitution guarantees Catholic school districts have the right to exist, however that doesn’t mean taxpayers should continue footing the bill, especially when all other religious schools aside from Protestants get nothing. It’s unreasonable for a secular and multicultural society in the 21st century to treat faiths so unequally and is nothing short of discrimination, as the United Nations Human Rights Committee judged Ontario’s system, which is similar to ours. If that sounds too drastic then an alternate course of action would be to follow the B.C. model and give equal funding to all religious schools. Of course such a change would require healthy political intestinal fortitude, something rarely seen in recent history.
Bryan Alary is an editor at the Gazette
