Canada’s Educational Controversy
The educational controversy in Canada is becoming intensified, the charge being now made that Premier Laurier has been led in the matter by Rome. An Ottawa dispatch says:— A profound impression has been produced by the discovery that Mgr. Sbaretti, the delegate of the pope in Canada, has decided the policy of the government on the school question in the Northwest. It is asserted by opponents of the government that Sir Wilfrid Laurier has negotiated with the representative of his holiness with respect to this matter. The details of the school policy were submitted to, and were accepted by, Mgr. Sbaretti before Parliament was allowed to know what they were. The subsequent changes, it is asserted, were effected after consultations between Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the representatives of the pope. . . . The ministerialists strenuously deny that the representative of the Vatican has had a hand in shaping their policy. Still the opposition assert with equal force that they are in a position to establish the charge made. The papal delegate, it is said, insisted that separate schools for Catholics should be maintained by the government in the two new provinces now being created by Parliament, as is done in Quebec; and the proposition of the government to establish such a system in the Protestant Northwest started the controversy which has since been agitating Canada. It is a part of Rome's plan to strengthen her hold on that country.