TORONTO — With its huge timber beams and fieldstone spire, the Newtonbrook United Church has long represented a sturdy commitment to community. Lately, it has also become a sign of how the delicate curtain that separates church from state in Canada has been shifting.
Outside the church, beside the macadam parking lot, stands a historical marker. It designates the site where, in 1897, when this area was the woodsy outskirts of Toronto, a future prime minister, Lester B. Pearson, was born. His father, Edwin A. Pearson, was minister of Newtonbrook, a congregation with a social conscience in a country where the government has routinely provided grants to religious organizations that serve the disadvantaged.
The resolve of this Protestant church to help the needy has been tested. Trying to control spending, the federal and provincial governments have reduced support for an array of social services, including subsidized housing.
The consequences of the cuts have been enormous. Housing provides a powerful example of how the relationship between church and state is changing. As housing funds have dried up, the waiting list for housing classified as affordable in Toronto has grown to 60,000 families.
Although the government still provides some loans and grants, religious organizations unaccustomed to raising money for those purposes have had to respond to the growing needs virtually on their own, without the means or fund-raising know-how to proceed.
As the need exploded, the Newtonbrook congregation decided to build 60 apartments for low-income working families on its parking lot, with or without government aid.
"There is a perception by some Canadians that maybe this is a government responsibility," said Evelyn Robertson, president of the newly formed housing corporation at Newtonbrook, a member of the United Church of Canada. "But we as Canadians can't just turn our backs and say, `Let someone else take care of it.' "
Although Canada and the United States are alike in many ways, the Newtonbrook housing effort is one of those illuminating points that reveal deep differences.
Since President Bush came into office this year, he has promoted expanding government financing of faith-based organizations that provide services for the poor and the needy. His proposal has run into opposition from legislators, including moderates in his own party, who are worried about breaking down the barriers between church and state and about whether some groups would be excluded from being employees or recipients of such efforts.
In Canada, Mr. Bush's initiative would be superfluous, because the government has financed faith-based organizations for most of the last 100 years without any worry that church and state were too close. In some cases, the services are limited to people who belong to a particular religious group. In others, there are no restrictions. And the government does not prohibit the display of religious symbols or clerical clothes.
"If there's a service to be provided and a religious group can deliver the service, we'll sign a contract with them regardless of their connection," said Mike van Soelen, a spokesman for the Ontario community and social services minister, John Baird.
Of 323 major service agencies in the province, 14 have religious affiliations. They receive $92 million in government support, which is 8 percent of the province's $1.1 billion annual social service budget.
But now that the government is withdrawing the money, decades of reliance on it leave many religious groups incapable of raising substantial funds beyond the collection plate. The social safety net that gives Canada its reputation for compassion leads many Canadians to feel that taking care of the needy is solely the responsibility of government.
In addition, the cost of universal- care programs pushes personal income taxes sky high, and many Canadians are reluctant to reach into their pockets for charities.
The government has not abandoned housing completely. The City of Toronto has offered to provide a second mortgage to start the Newtonbrook project. But the church, along with the Taiwanese United Church, which shares space in the church building, will have to raise most of the $8.6 million price tag.
"There has been a fundamental change in all levels of government, because they had to find a way to cut the deficits," Ms. Robertson said. "I don't think it's good to have everything done by the government. But now I think that maybe this has shifted too far."
The close ties between church and state have their roots in the nation's origins. After the Protestant English conquered the Roman Catholic French in the late 18th century, an accommodation was made to keep the French from joining the rebellious American colonists. They were allowed to preserve their language and practice their own religion.
That accommodation sometimes resulted in founding parallel institutions, and government reliance on faith-based organizations developed without resistance.
In Ontario, the Catholic Children's Aid Society was established in 1894 and remains legally responsible for the protection of all Catholic children in the province up to age 16. It receives most of its financing from the federal, provincial and municipal governments.
Ontario Catholic schools are publicly financed. Even today, taxpayers there and in some other provinces have to decide whether to designate their property taxes for Catholic or public schools. And although other religions do not have access to public financing for schools, religious charities like the Jewish Child and Family Services have long worked with and been supported by the government.
Although the cuts in social spending have been felt across Canada, they have had a particularly acute effect on Toronto, Canada's largest city.
"The number of people we serve certainly has increased in the last six years," said Brother David Lynch, director of a shelter for the homeless and a multiservice center run by the Roman Catholic Little Brothers of the Good Shepherd on the east side of Toronto. "We increased our services to match the demand, but we're fast running out of space."
After identifying affordable housing as the greatest need, the Little Brothers applied to build 76 subsidized apartments on an empty industrial lot. But Brother David retracted the application when it became clear that the congregation would have to bear most of the capital costs.
He thinks that is typical of the new church-state effort in social services. "This is a relationship of necessity, and certainly not a partnership," he said in an interview in the chapel of the brothers' center on Queen Street. "We do 95 percent of the work for only 5 percent of the revenue."
He said he was continuing to negotiate with the government and would resubmit the application in September if more equitable financing could be found.
Caroline M. DiGiovanni, an executive of the Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto and a former City Council member, said it was clear that the government was more interested in curtailing its relationship with faith-based charities than in increasing support for them. Ms. DiGiovanni said she believed that the organizations had been slow to come to terms with the new outlook.
"It has taken the faith-based communities some time to realize the full impact of government decisions to get out of subsidized housing," she said.
But realization finally came, and along with it recognition that most religious groups do not have the wherewithal to take up the slack and that many Canadians are in no mood to pass the hat for charities.
"There is a significant role for faith-based groups, but I don't think they've lived up to it," Ms. DiGiovanni said. Given that fact and the history of church-state relations in Canada, she added, the most pressing duty of the faith-based groups is "to pressure the whole community for more government funding."