Oh hey, actual Canadian here. Mind if I jump in?

Key piece of information about this story. It takes place in Toronto.

This is important for two reasons. One, Toronto has an absolutely massive immigrant population, making it entirely possible that this school is majority muslim. And two, Toronto is home to the Toronto Catholic District School Board.

From the wiki link:

The Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) is the publicly-funded Catholic school board for Toronto, Ontario, Canada, headquartered in North York.[4] It is one of the two English boards of education in the City of Toronto, serving the former municipalities of Scarborough, North York, York, East York, Toronto and Etobicoke. With over 91,000 students, the TCDSB is one of the largest school boards in Canada.

Yup, Toronto has a massive, publicly funded religious school system. If you’re Catholic. So the level of “religious consideration” given to Muslim students is NOTHING compared to an entire, separate school system. That Muslim taxes are funding. Along with Atheists, Jews, etc. The budget is something like a billion dollars (seriously, its listed on wikipedia).

But of course a government funded school board has to take any student who applies right?

Enrolment of non-Catholics
While Catholic high schools are funded by the provincial crown, making them open to any students who wish to attend, elementary schools do not have to enroll non-Catholic students. Many argue that the practice of fully funding separate schools exclusively for the Catholic faith is discriminatory to other religions (i.e.the United Nations has twice chastised the province for this policy). Supporters of the current Catholic education system point out that it has existed, in some form or another, since Confederation, and that the Constitution Act, 1867, enshrines the right to government-funded religious education to all Catholics. The opposition, however, argues that this is an appeal to tradition and point to other provinces in Canada which amended the constitution to abolish Catholic school funding.

Well thats too bad.

So when you see this kind of concession made to other religious groups, as tends to happen every few years, its usually to avoid a full blown shit storm in Toronto over the Catholic Schools. Personally I think its pretty gross, but they also tend to outperform their secular counterparts. Its damn tricky, and things like what the article outlined are part of a much larger, older debate in Canada over the nature of religious education in Canada

//Canada rant off.