TORONTO – You may be confused about what a trustee in a school board spends his/her time doing, or what preoccupies the Minister of Education. Yesterday the number of students registered as having contracted Covid-19 reached record levels (333). Students are exiting live classrooms at alarming rates (over 25% in the TCDSB; a 4th TDSB high school shut down for virus contagion). We know the Minister will have a press conference… on something or other… so that he will not have to reveal the advice of the McKinsey Report(s), commissioned last Spring at a cost of $4.8 million. The Management Consulting firm was supposed to lay out a safe and pedagogically sound return- to-school program. The Legislature has closed its doors until next Spring, so we will have to wait.
School boards must live in a parallel universe. Some of their trustees are tilting at nonexistent windmills and imagined bogeymen. Take for example trustee Norman Di Pasquale, whose behaviour resembles that of a known cartoon character, and his “work” at the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB).
Tuesday, Norm took exception to an article in the Corriere Canadese, and immediately (11:37 AM; he is a late riser) tweeted a noted lawyer/journalist/expert on anti-Semitism – Warren Kinsella – about his concern respecting that article. “Mudslinger Norm”, who finds readings from the Catholic Catechism to be “dangerous” and “inappropriate” in a Catholic environment, mustered every millilitre of sleaze oozing from his pores to query Kinsella whether the article amounted to “hate speech”.
“It isn’t”. Was Kinsella’s abrupt answer, although he offered rather diplomatically for Norm’s solace that he, Kinsella, “… didn’t think it should have been published”.
Norm metaphorically flew immediately into Nicole Richard’s arms for consolation. “Den Mother” to radical Progressives, Richard did not disappoint Norm. She torqued her response as much as possible with a “there-there, now” pat on the head. “May not be criminal lacks fact checking… and perpetuates harmful myths about the LGBTQ community…” she wrote, without bothering with the inconvenience to list the facts that need to be checked or the harmful myths that are perpetuated.
Cunningly and slyly, she suggested what amounts to a drive-by smear campaign with the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada by affirming that the article “is clearly violating [its] code of conduct”. As “evidence”, she links to “a letter recently issued to address similar ‘hate literature’ among members”. It is a tactic best described as “throw as much as you can and see if anything sticks”. Her hands must reek by now.
Norm must have thought he had been given his marching orders. At 2:44 PM, he wrote this insipid, snivelling missive to the NEPMCC: “I would like to bring to your attention an article that NEPMCC member organization newspaper Corriere Canadese wrote that uses hateful, anti-LGBTQ language in it. I am concerned that the continued focus on this community by the Corriere Canadese is causing harm to our most vulnerable citizens”.
Again, no evidence of hateful language or harm. Much hypocritical concern about the daily paper’s alleged focus. It is a blatant effort at censorship coming from an elected official at the TCDSB.
Nicole Richard, by now expert at the tactic of intimidating supporters of “her enemies”, has been trolling the internet to see if anyone or any enterprise is helping finance opinions other than her own.
She found another target, a certain Edith Pearson who apparently contributed to a go fundme campaign in support of trustee Del Grande.
She wrote her as follows: “Hey … do you work @ TCDSB? Can we please get your professional legal opinion on how this CLC campaign you contributed to is in compliance with the Municipal Elections Act?”
What reprehensible scumbag tactics in a democratic society. We are subsidizing her post graduate studies.
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Big Brother Thought Police Alive, Well and Threatening
