Manitoba Schools Question

The Manitoba Schools Question (French: La question des écoles du Manitoba) was a political crisis in the Canadian Province of Manitoba that occurred late in the 19th century, involving publicly funded separate schools for Roman Catholics and Protestants. The crisis eventually spread to the national level, becoming one of the key issues in the federal election of 1896 and resulted in the defeat of the Conservative government, which had been in power for most of the previous thirty years. Because of the close linkage at that time between religion and language, the Schools Question raised the deeper question whether French would survive as a language or a culture in Western Canada.

The result of the crisis was that by the end of the 19th century, French was no longer supported as an official language in Manitoba or the neighbouring North-West Territories, which in turn led to a strengthening of French Canadian nationalism in Quebec.

Manitoba became the first western province to join Confederation in 1870. The province was created through negotiations between Canada and the provisional Red River government of Louis Riel, following the Red River Resistance. One of the key issues in the negotiations was the question of control of education in the new province. There was considerable pressure for a system of denominational schools in the new province, for both Protestants and Roman Catholics. Although framed as a religious issue, there was also a question of language politics involved, since at that time, most Protestants in Manitoba were anglophones and most Roman Catholics were francophones. Religious control over education thus also related to the language of education.

The Act of Parliament which created the province, the Manitoba Act, responded to these concerns by giving the province the power to pass laws relating to education, but also by giving constitutional protection to denominational school rights which existed "...by Law or practice in the Province at the Union." The exact meaning of this provision, and the scope of the constitutional protection it provided, subsequently became a matter of considerable political and legal debate.

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