About Us

Home School Legal Defence Association of Canada

HSLDA is a non-profit organization devoted to protecting, empowering, and advancing home education in Canada. We provide legal services and professional homeschool support to help our member families flourish. Since 1991 we have represented homeschoolers in the courts and legislatures across Canada and worked to promote parent choice in education.

Our Mission

At HSLDA, we believe all parents should have the right to choose home education as the best option for their child and our mission is to:

Equip new families as they begin their homeschooling journey,
Empower existing families as they homeschool to the best of their ability, and,
Protect families across the country from whatever legal challenges may come their way.

Our History

In the early 90’s homeschooling was not what it is today. There were substantial challenges for Canadian home educators, legally, politically, and socially. The public school establishment was quite hostile towards home education. Many were convinced that the government, not the parents, had the primary responsibility of educating children. Indeed, some parents were even threatened with jail for daring to teach their children at home!

In 1991, HSLDA Canada was founded as a not-for-profit, membership-based organization to advocate for the right of families to choose home education. We started out with just a single lawyer who was passionate about defending our rights in a nation where homeschooling often fell into a gray-area of the law. Three decades later, we are a nation-wide organization providing a range of professional homeschool support services, along with an expert legal team, and homeschooling is now legal in all provinces and territories.