OCSTA challenges Calandra’s proposal and defends Catholics’ rights
TORONTO – The OCSTA (Ontario Catholic School Trustees Association) submitted a compelling argument against Minister Calandra’s proposal for governance change in English language school boards on August 12, 2026.
The proposal does not refer to French language boards nor to those whose students are primarily (almost exclusively) Aboriginal. To have done so might arguably have triggered “constitutional” debate with the potential to ignite divisive “rights” issues so divisive in our historic and ongoing inter-jurisdictional differences.
Instead, the proposal, and responses to it by affected stakeholders, is restricted to English language as the sole identifier – in the constitutional context – thereby clouding/ignoring the rights of Catholics on which (for Ontario at least) the Constitutional arrangement permitting Confederation in 1867 is founded.
In its submission, OCSTA alluded to its “repeated requests to engage in discussions [apparently rebuffed] … to determining practical measures that serve to strengthen governance, accountability and transparency within the province’s publicly funded education system”. That “system” accounts for approximately $32 billion to $41 billion in annual Ontario budgetary expenditures.
The Minister’s solution – now more than a year old – was to place eight boards “under supervision”, suspend their local boards of trustees, appoint part-time Supervisors (at full rate of pay) to make some symbolic cuts requested “by the offending Staff” and effectively ending the process there. According to latest StatsCan figures, Catholics still comprise more than 22% of the population.
While not all Catholics can, or do, send their children to Catholic schools, all Catholics directly or through their “recognized representatives”, have a right to the process affecting their schools. OCSTA founded in 1930, oddly enough in the middle of an ongoing acrimonious debate regarding the rights of Separate Schools, is one such representative.
It claims to represent:
- 237 locally elected trustees from 29 Catholic District School Boards (CDSB)
- CDSBs educate more than 590,000 children from JK through high school.
- over 59,000 teaching, school support, and administrative staff
- operations in 1,320 elementary and secondary schools
- more than 2.2 million Catholic ratepayers who self-identify as such for taxpaying purposes.
Yet they, OCSTA, are shut out of the debate that belittles, compromises, and limits the “denominational rights and privileges guaranteed by section 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867”. In unequivocal language, they call on the Minister to withdraw the proposal. Their brief suggests that to support it would make anyone complicit in (1) undermining the “separate” nature of publicly funded Catholic education, (2) curtailing the powers of trustees in matters such as hiring, setting budgets, developing curricula, purchase and siting of properties, collective bargaining, among other issues, (3) transferring veto authority to unelected officials, (4) reducing the voices of parents and guardians of Catholic parents.
None of these consequences of the proposal strengthen school board governance and accountability. Why is it even presented as a solution?