s of the educational departments may
change to become more efficient in their administration but should
never touch the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

In Canada the protection of the minority rights is a principle embodied
in our Constitution, in the Imperial Statute of the British North
America. Act. Even where the letter of the Provincial Law has
established the "public school,"--as is the case in the Maritime
Provinces--the spirit of the law is generally observed, and by a
compromise and tacit agreement the rights of the minority are to a
great extent recognized.

In the West, Manitoba stands out in Canadian History as the battlefield
of educational rights. Although the British North America Act,
1867,--that intangible charter of Canadian liberties--stipulates,
section 93, that in the carving out of new Provinces in the vast
domains of the North West Territories the existing educational rights
guaranteed to the minority should be respected, yet, the Manitoba
Legislative Assembly has broken away from the letter and spirit of the
Constitution and constituted a grievance which demands rectification.

The Federal Parliament partially recognized the principle of Separate
Schools in the formation of the Provinces of Saskatchewan and of
Alberta, by introducing, in section 17 of the Autonomy Bills of 1905,
the section 93 of the B.N.A. Act, and by reasserting the existing
rights granted by the N.W.T. School Ordinances of 1901. We say
"partially," for it is not the right of collecting separate taxes and
teaching Religion during the last half hour of the school-day that
constitutes a really Catholic school.

The "Separate schools" in Saskatchewan and Alberta stand on the solid
granite of our Constitution. The highest tribunals of the land and the
Empire have implicitly recognized the principle of the minority-schools
in many of their decisions. Moreover, let us not forget it! the
separate school system in Canada is "_protestant_" in its origin. It
was to protect the protestant minority of Lower Canada that this
system, Catholic in Ontario, Protestant in Quebec, was adopted on
September 18th, 1841. In the West the minority school-law was also
enacted to protect the protestant minority of the Territories. Our
Non-Catholic opponents should not forget this origin of our separate
schools. What their fathers appreciated then for their children, we
appreciate now for ours. The principle remains unch