Almost two-thirds of Village Media readers would vote in a referendum to merge the existing separate and public school systems into a single secular public school system, an online poll shows.
In 1995 and 1997, voters in Newfoundland and Labrador voted to move to a single public system in two referendums.
While a change of that kind in Ontario would require a constitutional amendment, that's not as high a bar as it might sound; a constitutional amendment that only affects one province just needs the consent of that province, and Parliament.
Graduates of Ontario separate schools said they would keep the existing system, though not by a large margin.
Women are more inclined than men to leave the system as it is:
There is a strong generational difference, though to be honest it didn't go in the direction I was expecting. The older the reader, the more likely they are to favour a single public system.
The party breakdown is interesting. PC supporters would vote more strongly to keep separate schools, but so would New Democrats, by almost the same margin:
University-educated readers were more likely to vote to abolish separate schools:
Broken down by region, we don't see a strong north/south difference. Some polls do, some polls don't:
We use a poll about whether people are worried about the cost of heating as a proxy for a broader sense of economic security or insecurity. People who are worried about being able to afford heating are more likely to want to keep separate schools:
Cross-referenced with other polls, we see support for separate schools correlate with a broadly conservative position on some other issues, in this case attitudes to the monarchy and the legalization of cannabis, and vice-versa.
