"it was the conservatives that wanted to fund muslim schools?"

well, think about it for a minute. what, exactly. do you think is liberal about funding religious schools? i know that these words are flipped upside down in the united states - where liberals tend to support the democrats, which has always been the more conservative party - but it's kind of the most illiberal thing in the world, isn't it?

it should be expected that a modern conservatism would want to extend support for faith-based funding across the spectrum; but it also should be expected that a liberal party would oppose that, and would oppose any faith-based school funding at all.

the history here is complicated, and i'm not going to get into it, but the liberals have historically been a catholic minority party, and there's a lot of old identity politics around first french and then irish identity attached to this. i went to a catholic school high school in an italian neighbourhood that shipped a lot of irish kids in from the suburbs (st pius, in ottawa).

i don't actually know where the ndp stand on this issue.