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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York City · June 11, 1896

THE SCHOOL QUESTION IN CANADA.

[The Outlook.]

The campaign of the Canadian general elections is now in progress. Parliament has been dissolved, and polling takes place on June 23. The main issues are tariff reform and the Manitoba school question. The former involves either the retention or the overthrow of the present protection system; the latter, remedial legislation compelling Manitoba to restore the system of separate schools abolished by the legislature of that Province in 1890.

In regard to the latter issue, a recent restatement of opposing attitudes and intentions by the leaders on both sides has deepened the interest of the contest. The policy of the Conservative party, which favors remedial legislation, is now directed by the new Premier, Sir Charles Tupper, whose speeches on opening the campaign give no uncertain sound, and are without the faintest tinge of compromise. The Hon. Wilfrid Laurier, the Liberal leader, advocates the appointment of a commission whose impartial investigation of facts may be expected to point a way out of the difficulty and facilitate the removal of the vexatious question from politics. Sir Charles Tupper insists vigorously that the question is really not one of separate schools so much as the carrying into effect of the provisions of the Constitution under which the educational rights of Roman Catholic minorities were guaranteed protection.

Mr. Laurier’s position is that, according to the judgment of the Imperial Privy Council in 1892, no educational right or privilege was taken away by the Manitoba Public Schools Act of 1890, and that the subsequent judgment of the same tribunal in 1895 did not touch that point, but gave the Dominion Government the right of interfering, if it should choose to do so, upon an appeal to it by the Catholic minority—the judgment not indicating any particular line of action, in fact not recommending any action at all. There was no necessity of bringing the question into Dominion politics, and it might have been referred back to Manitoba for settlement with quite as well founded a hope of peace and satisfaction as may be based on any threat of coercion.

A significant feature of the contest is the direct intervention of the Roman Church. Archbishop Langevin has been making vigorous efforts to influence the voters, and presumptively under his influence, a “Bishops’ Mandate,” signed by all the Roman Catholic bishops in the Province of Quebec, has been issued instructing Roman Catholics that it is their duty to vote for the Conservative government which is pledged to restore to the hierarchy their separate schools. It remains to be seen whether clerical interference like this will be effective.

Not long ago, in the county of Charlevoix,

in the same Province, a similar Episcopal interference was rebuked by the return of the Liberal candidate. In Ontario the Roman Catholic clergy have thus far given no sign of meddling with the civic rights and duties of their parishioners. There is greater probability of such interference in Nova Scotia, where a notable instance of some time ago caused much excited comment.

It should not be forgotten that, even should the verdict of the elections be in favor of remedial legislation (though this may be looked upon as improbable), new embarrassments would quickly succeed the old. For, independently of the question whether Manitoba ought to be coerced, there is another far more perplexing, namely, how can she be coerced? The Province controls the machinery of educational administration within her own limits. Can the Dominion, against the wish of the Province, effectually put that machinery in operation? Or can the Dominion set up its own administration of educational affairs in the Province and collect the funds for the support of separate schools? Greater than all legal or technical difficulties of interpretation or compromise is the paramount one of enforcing upon this strongly opposed Province a system of public education which has been found antiquated and unsatisfactory by a very large majority of the people.