2025

A famous aphorism holds that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The same observation could be applied to Canada with its education system. When Egerton Ryerson reorganized the funding scheme for public schools from taxing only those with children to taxing all property owners, he surely had the best of intentions with respect to educating all Canadians, not just the children of the rich, Anglican elites. However, by doing so, he laid the groundwork for the massive property and income taxation schemes we are being crushed under today, as well as creating the centralized school boards which have now been taken over by Marxists and collectivists. When Ryerson then introduced compulsory education laws 1871, he essentially created a government monopoly on education, forced everyone into using its services, and further determined how much everyone would pay for it.

As foundationally broken as Ryerson's design was, it worked quite well until the 1990's, simply because the community had not yet broken down to the level where residents were not involved in their kid's schooling. However, over time, four structural changes strained the education system beyond the point where it could recover. First, and most importantly, rather than the community paying for their schools, the money now went to the province, and the province, in effect, equalized those payments to different communities. Second, negotiations with the teacher's unions drifted from the municipal level to the provincial level, where unions could make decisions with the MLAs with less push back from the parents. Third, massive education levies and disproportionate taxes were introduced to tax the affluent in West Vancouver, which then went to the province, and which then was shared with the less affluent communities. Finally, and a point that is particularly offensive when taken into consideration along with points one and three, students no longer had to reside in a community to attend school there. When we add to this the fact that Marxists have taken over the public education system and are teaching perversions to our children, we end up with a system which we do not want, which we cannot easily escape from, and which we are paying too much for.

Provinces need to give up their stranglehold on education. Next, education curricula must be set at a local level so that if a community disagrees with a subject, for example describing sexual acts to third graders, the community can remove it. Furthermore, it must be funded at the local level such that residents do not find themselves paying 10x more than they should. Finally, by pushing education to the local level, parents who are unable to change the curricula, or reduce the costs of education in their communities can, as a last resort, pick and move to a community better suited to their needs. In short, we need to foster school choice in Canada.