Canadian Jews Demand Representation on Quebec’s Education Council

The Canadian Jewish Congress was disclosed today to have requested the appointment of a least one Jew to a proposed Superior Council of Education of the Province of Quebec. The Council proposal is a provision of an educational bill now before the Quebec legislature. A substantial number of Jewish children attend Protestant-sponsored schools in the province.

The CJC also demanded Jewish representation on the Council’s Protestant Committee, to be chosen after consultation with the CJC as the central representative body of Jews in Quebec. The demands were made at a meeting with members of the Protestant Committee at which provisions of the educational bill were discussed.

The CJC had previously submitted a brief on the issue to Paul Gerin-Lajoie, the Quebec Youth Minister, pointing out that numerically, Quebec Jews constituted the largest non-Protestant, non-Catholic part of the province’s population, and that “historically, we are the oldest ethnic group outside of the English and the French.”

The brief also noted that in Montreal “Jewish children number close to 25 per cent of the child population of the Protestant schools, and a considerable number of Jewish children attend independent Jewish schools” where “intense training in Jewish religion and culture” is coupled with a full secular curriculum.

The brief noted that special tax rolls identify Jewish taxpayers, “indicating the special position of the Jews in the school system. ” In the field of school taxation, the brief added, “about 75 per cent of the revenue of the Protestant schools from school taxation is being paid by Jews. For all practical purposes, Jews have been considered a part of the Protestant framework, even with regard to children” attending Jewish-sponsored schools.

“The Jewish community pays its school taxes to the Protestant school board and yet Jews are not free to present themselves for election or be appointed to any of the boards, ” the brief concluded, declaring that despite the admitted legal and other complications, the situation constituted “an inexcusable violation of even the most basic tenets of democracy.”

The Canadian Jewish Congress reiterated the Jewish community’s position previously presented to a Royal Commission on Education, asserting that it was “one of the most glaring undemocratic situations in that no Jews sit on the school board or have any say in the administration of tax monies, ” a “classical case of taxation without representation.”