Funding for faith-based schools predates country

Re To Fund Or Not To Fund, NovemberThe origins of state aid to Roman Catholic separate schools in Ontario dates (at least) to the 1863 Separate School Act, which established a share of municipal and provincial grants for the operation of such schools up to grade 10. This act, following an earlier similar one in Quebec, formed the basis of separate (or dissentient) schooling in these two regions, the principles of which were later enshrined in Section 93 of the1867 Constitution Act that gave religious minorities (Catholic or Protestant) in any province joining Confederation the legal right to separate schooling where numbers warrant.
The year 1985 is significant in this context primarily because it marked the first year in which full public funding was extended to Roman Catholic Separate high schools to the end of grade 13, a decision that some argue led to the defeat of the then Conservative government of Bill Davis in the next provincial election. Incidentally, it is also the year Bernard Shapiro (now the Federal Ethics Commissioner) submitted his Report of the Royal Commission on Private Schools in Ontario that recommended against any form of direct public funding to independent schools.
Newfoundland was unique in Canada in sustaining a denominationally pluralistic system of tax-supported separate boards and schools for the Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist and Catholic denominations, plus, from 1969, an Integrated Board representing Anglican, United, Presbyterian, Moravian and Salvation Army faiths. All this ended officially in 1998 following a provincial referendum the previous year that supported the abolition of the denominational system of schooling for a single public (secular) one, and the necessary Constitutional amendment.
Only three provinces—Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario—maintain the dual system (Public and Separate) and of these, Ontario alone provides no direct funding to registered private schools (religious or secular).
I sympathize with the growing number who see Ontario's continued funding of one faith-based school system, the RC Separate, to the exclusion of all other faith-based schools, as profoundly unfair particularly in a multicultural society that professes to value diversity (within a wider common framework to be sure) and in light of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) that re-affirms the principle of fairness.
The charges opponents typically bring against state aid to registered private schools—e.g., that they are socially divisive, foster intolerance, practice indoctrination and pose an economic drain on the public system—are arguably weak; and in the experiences of Alberta, Saskatchewan, as well as B.C., Manitoba, and Quebec which all provide various levels of direct funding, these charges have not been born out.