At present Alberta doles out grants to more than 150 independent schools, most of them parochial, at a rate of 50 per cent of the per-pupil teaching grant the province's public schools receive: roughly $1800, versus $3600, respectively. The province announced this month it would increase grants to private schools to 60 per cent of the public school standard. This is fairly remarkable, as both the premier and his education minister are opposed to increased funding for private schools.

The total amount of money involved is not large: $40-million a year, versus the $2-bllion budget for the public school system. But the issue is a hot one, and nowhere more than inside Klein's Conservative caucus. A government backbencher had moved a private member's bill last year proposing to increase the private-public ratio to 75 per cent. Yet a party conference some months later voted resoundingly to abolish all funding for private schools.

At length, a government task force recommended the 60 per cent figure, which the government, anxious to defuse the controversy, duly adopted.

There is no particular reason to favour 60 per cent, as opposed to 50 or 75 per cent, except insofar as it might represent a weighted average of the preferences of the combatants. But it addresses none of the policy questions that have made the issue so divisive. Pro-funding advocates argue private schools save the taxpayer money, since the cost of tuition is defrayed in part by parents. At the same time, it is argued, the public subsidy keeps fees lower than they would be, making a private education more accessible to poor students.

Opponents worry that funds diverted to private schools erode the quality of the public system. They note, too, that private schools do not accept all applicants, but may discriminate on the basis of ability, income or religious affiliation. Why, they ask, should public funds be used to underscore social divisions?

These sorts of conflicting views cannot be resolved by some vague sawoff somewhere between the two "extremes," mixing private and public funding in some arbitrary proportion. Rather, the schools question is best considered in light of the principle that undergirds medicare: viz. either you're in or you're out.

Contrary to a common right-wing complaint, the Canada Health Act does not prohibit anyone from paying for health care with their own money.

Doctors are free to opt out of medicare; patients are free to pay them as much as may be mutually agreed. What is prohibited is extra-billing, or the charging or paying of fees on top of what the public plan provides.

The point of public health insurance, after all, is to ensure that everyone, whatever their income, has equal access to medical care. But mixing public and private funding defeats that purpose. In effect, it gives the well-to-do first claim on public health care dollars: so far as they are better able to afford the fees, they can buy their way to the front of the line.

The same applies in education. The "top-up" of private money does not increase accessibility, as its advocates contend; rather, it draws resources away from the public system. It would offend against liberty to prevent individuals from spending their own money as they please; but it offends against equality to let them take public funds with them.

None of this is to negate the possibility of market-minded reforms in either health or education, where competition and consumer choice dictate the allocation of resources. But it is possible, and preferable, to do this entirely within the publicly-funded universe. For the complicating factor common to both education and health, the thing that makes the application of market principles trickier here than in most other spheres, is that the customer -- patients or pupils -- is also the product.

The provider of health care or education may improve the quality of his "product" by the simple expedient of excluding those customers from the start who are likely to prove difficult or costly to serve: the chronically unwell, or those students who for one reason or another are hard to teach.

The proper amount of funding to provide to private schools, then, would seem to be 100 per cent of the public school standard, on two conditions: that they charge no additional fees, and that they accept all comers. Those private schools that objected to these conditions would be free to carry on, but without a dollar of public funds.

But those schools that did agree to these terms would make meaningless the whole private-public distinction. They would be private, in the sense of independently managed, free to compete for students. But they would serve, in return for public funding, some broader public policy objectives.