Unions are not the only ones to make their financial statements difficult to access. Many other quasi-public organizations are resistant.
Among them are private schools in Quebec, although they are largely funded by taxpayers. I looked around the websites of several establishments in the hope of finding the famous financial statements, but without success. Sometimes there is an annual report, but forget the financial data, it’s not there.
I made the request directly to some schools, but they refused. This is the case of Jean-de-Brébeuf college or Regina Assumpta college, in Montreal. Other schools did not respond.
More than 660 million from the state
However, the Quebec government pays more than $660 million per year to private schools – approximately 60% of their funding – and parents, probably more than 400 million, according to my information.1. Is this part not sufficient to have access to the financial statements?
I still managed to obtain the subsidies that each of these establishments receives, but without the details offered by the financial statements. (The ranking by school is at the bottom of this column.) A taste: the Charles-Lemoyne college, on the South Shore of Montreal, is the one which received the most from the State this year, i.e. 16.1 million.
On May 7, I recounted the battle of a union member in the education sector who tried to obtain the financial statements of her union, but in vain. An article in the Labor Code should have made her task easy, but she was only able to obtain a summary in the end.2.
At the Federation of Private Educational Establishments (FEEP), I was told that private schools are not required to disclose their financial statements, being “private corporations”.
In certain cases, parents could learn about it at the school’s general meeting, if they are invited, spokesperson Geneviève Beauvais told me.
Verification carried out, this is not the case for Jean-de-Brébeuf and Regina Assumpta colleges. “Being a private non-profit organization, Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf made the decision, several years ago, not to share its financial statements, regardless of the origin of the request,” the spokesperson replied. by Jean-de-Brébeuf, Jonathan Gagné.
At Regina Assumpta, they wrote to me that “only members of the board of directors and general management have access to this data”.
However, the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies is clear. Article 6 specifies that private schools are part of the educational organizations which must show a clear credential “with regard to documents held in the exercise of their functions relating to the educational services subject to accreditation and to the management resources allocated to it.
On this subject, Geneviève Beauvais explains to me that access has sometimes been accepted for the educational portion of the establishment, but not for the rest of the financial information (rental of premises, etc.). She adds that financial statements are examined for license renewal by the Private Education Advisory Commission, which reports to the Ministry of Education.
End of inadmissibility also to the Ministry of Education of Quebec (MEQ). The Ministry has certain financial statements, but it does not release them, since they are “generally considered confidential information,” I am told at the MEQ.
Well, you’re talking…
$5,668 per student
In the absence of financial statements, the Ministry still sent me, at my insistence, a document which contains the subsidies which were paid to each of the private schools for the years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024. The document is 3843 pages long!
I stuffed the document to extract information for the main private schools in Quebec.
On average, therefore, private schools received $5,668 per student in 2023-2024. The basic allowance is $5,325 at secondary level and $4,154 at primary level, to which are added certain sums for specific missions (culture, reading, IT). Vanguard School, whose students have learning disabilities, receives three times as much ($18,592).
Subsidies are therefore proportional to the number of students. The establishment with the most students is the Charles-Lemoyne college (2,807 students), on the South Shore. Its subsidies amount to 16.1 million.
Followed by Stanislas College (13.2 million) and Durocher Saint-Lambert College (13.6 million). Regina Assumpta is at 4e rank (12.8 million), while Brébeuf comes in 28e rank (6.8 million). I excluded from the ranking schools that have fewer than 1,190 secondary students or fewer than 2,000 students in total.
It was Letendre College, in Laval, which managed to obtain the most per student ($6,333), notably due to an allocation for “microcomputing for educational purposes”.
In short, private schools receive a lot of public money and it is unacceptable that they have the right to hide their financial statements.
After all, charter universities, like the University of Montreal or the University of Laval, have a status similar to that of private schools, with state subsidies, and they publish their financial statements in full on their website. Why not private schools?
1. Generally, it is estimated that private schools are 60% funded by the Quebec government, with gaps varying between 45% and 72%, depending on estimates. For the rest, it is the parents who pay, in addition to the income that the schools earn from external activities, such as the rental of their facilities (swimming pool, gymnasium, etc.).
2. Read the column “Epic Battle for Union Financial Statements”