Confusing and conflicting agendas: Federalism, official languages and the development of the bilingualism in education program in Ontario, 1970-1983

Journal of Canadian Studies, Spring 2001 by Matthew Hayday

The province of Ontario did have some concerns regarding the BEP's funding arrangements. In 1973, the federal government paid the province $15 million to support its official-language education programmes, but the real cost to the province in transfers to the school boards was in fact $17 million. This discrepancy was due to the higher than anticipated costs of the second-language instruction programmes.37 At the time of the first renewal agreement, however, most of the provincial concerns centred around the finer points of the non-formula payment programmes and the possibility of either cancelling or transferring funds between these programmes.38 The provinces, Ontario included, also began to move towards using the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) as a vehicle for discussions with the federal government about the BEP.39

Policy Disputes and Conflicting Agendas

In 1974, the federal-provincial agreements for bilingualism in education were renewed, without significant changes, for a second five-year period; however, some concerns over the programmes had begun to surface, and these grew in number and degree over the course of the second agreement. Many francophone associations were very upset with the manner in which these funds were being allocated by the provincial government. They also decried the lack of provincial control over the school boards. In 1972, for instance, the town of Sturgeon Falls, a community that was 87 per cent francophone, had to settle for a bilingual school, due to resistance of the local anglophone-dominated school board in North Bay to a French-language one.40 Of much greater concern, however, was the fact that monies allocated for minority-language education were being diverted into second-language instruction, while French-language schools were being shortchanged.41 A demand from the Association canadienne-franfaise de l'Ontario that the provincial government explain the shortfall42 was met with a provincial reply that full-day programmes in the minority language cost the province less than the 20-minute-per-day programmes for core French as a second language. The 1973 Allard study also triggered a similar study of the local school board by the Union des parents et contribuables francophones (UPCF). Under the federal formula, the Carleton Catholic Board should have been receiving $82.80 per student in the FML programme. Instead, it was receiving $47.36 per student, the same amount as it received for FSL on the English side of the board. In fact, instead of pro-rating the students on the English-language side at the rate of 15:1, the board was receiving funding on a per-student rate, and not on the basis of full-time equivalents. This averaged out to a shortfall of $200,000 per year that was diverted away from francophones in this particular board.3 While all the funds received by the province were going to bilingual education, the anglophone population was getting the greatest benefit from federal funding administered by the province.