Although the resolutions adopted at the 1864 Quebec conference placed education within the provinces’ jurisdiction, the federal government guaranteed the minority educational rights that then existed in Canada East (Lower Canada; present-day Quebec) and Canada West (Upper Canada; present-day Ontario).
In 1912 Ontario’s Conservative premier, Sir James Pliny Whitney, introduced the “Circular of Instructions 17” – known as Regulation 17. It limited French-language instruction in bilingual schools to the first two years of schooling. The regulation generated an exceedingly divisive battle between, on the one side, the government and the bulk of Ontario’s English-speaking residents, including Catholics, and, on the other, many of the province’s French-speaking minority plus the francophones and press of Quebec. The government was convinced that it was doing the best thing possible for the children of Franco-Ontarians and that it was moving to correct a deplorable situation. As premier, Whitney could not understand the aspirations of French Canadians or the anger the new rules produced. After a year of protests, walk-outs by pupils, and refusals to comply, the government modified the regulation: for the pupil who had not sufficiently mastered English by the end of the first form, French could remain the language of instruction. But the damage had been done and aroused French Canadians would cite Regulation 17 as an instance of English Canadian oppression for years to come.
In October 1925 the Conservative premier and minister of education, George Howard Ferguson, appointed Francis Walter Merchant to head a committee tasked with assessing the English-French schools’ efficiency and considering means of improving the training and recruitment of teachers. The committee’s August 1927 report noted that teaching in French had been drastically affected by Regulation 17 and urged, among its suggestions, that “the particular designation, English-French, implying as it does a special type of school with special privileges or restrictions, should be dropped, and all elementary schools … should be placed in either one of the two categories – Public School or Roman Catholic Separate School.” Soon afterwards Ferguson followed the report’s recommendations and ceased to enforce Regulation 17.
