CCPR/C/67/D/694/1996 Page 7 the purpose of article 18 is to ensure that religious observance, beliefs and practices remain a private matter, free from State coercion or restraint. It is the State’s obligation to provide an education open and accessible to all children regardless of religion. There is no obligation to either offer or finance religious instruction or indoctrination. While the province must ensure that religious freedom and religious differences are accommodated within the public school system, it has no obligation to fund individuals who, for religious reasons, exercise their freedom to opt out of the public school system. 4.4.2 The State party argues that failure to act in order to facilitate the practice of religion cannot be considered state interference with freedom of religion. It points out that there are many spheres of government action which hold religious significance for religious believers and the State party rejects the suggestion that it must pay for religious dimensions in spheres in which it takes a role, such as religious marriages and religious community institutions such as churches and hospitals. 4.4.3 In the alternative, if the Committee were to interpret article 18 as requiring States to fund religious schools, the State party argues that its limitation meets the requirements of paragraph 3 of article 18 as it is prescribed by law and is necessary to protect public order and the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. The objectives of the State party’s education system are the provision of a tuition-free, secular public education, universally accessible to all residents without discrimination and the establishment of a public education system which fosters and promotes the values of a pluralist, democratic society, including social cohesion, religious tolerance and understanding. The State party argues that if it were required to fund private religious schools, this would have a detrimental impact on the public schools and hence the fostering of a tolerant, multicultural, nondiscriminatory society in the province. 4.4.4 Public schools, in the State party’s opinion, are a rational means of fostering social cohesion and respect for religious and other differences. Schools are better able to teach common understanding and shared values if they are less homogeneous. The State party submits that one of the strengths of a public system of education is that it provides a venue where people of all colours, races, national and ethnic origins, and religions interact and try to come to terms with one another’s differences. In this way, the public schools build social cohesion, tolerance and understanding. Extending public school funding rights to private religious schools will undermine this ability and may result in a significant increase in the number and kind of private schools. This would have an adverse effect on the viability of the public school system which would become the system serving students not found admissible by any other system. Such potential fragmentation of the school system is an expensive and debilitating structure for society. Moreover, extending public school funding rights to private religious schools could compound the problems of religious coercion and ostracism sometimes faced by minority religious groups in homogeneous rural areas of the province. The majority religious group could reintroduce and even make compulsory the practice of school prayer and religious indoctrination and minority religious groups would have to conform or attend their own, virtually segregated schools. To the extent that full funding of private schools enables such schools to supplant public schools, the government objective of universal access to education will be impaired. Full public funding of private religious schools is likely to lead to increased public school closings and to the reduction of the range of programs and services a public system can afford to offer.