Toronto Catholic District School Board: who really deserves to return?
TORONTO – There is an eclectic selection of candidates from which electors must determine merit for public office as municipal councillors or trustees for school boards. Some candidates are better than others, and, normally, the Corriere Canadese, does its utmost to promote or stay silent on competence and/or motivation.
Having said that, one cannot sit idly by in an environment where motivation and integrity are specifically introduced by a “superior”/provincial jurisdiction to whom those local authorities must swear allegiance, as per the Constitution have become an issue, if not the issue.
Nor can one ignore that the base salary of a City Councillor is $173,000 (as of March 2025) indexed to inflation. An MPP’ base salary – indexed at 75% of a federal MP’s salary – is a paltry $167,000. If you still following this, we have not left the topic of motivation, unless you are one of the “unbelievers” who cannot swallow the argument that more bike lanes is the panacea for all that ails Toronto.
Trustees, on the other hand, cannot be criticized for motivation based on remuneration in terms of base salary – they are currently under suspension and receive zero honoraria, except for Catholic school board trustees “entitled” to 25% of honorarium. For them, the political critique can only be guided by the question of integrity.
The Ministry has place both Toronto boards “under supervision”, following a financial audit by third party investigators. For both boards, two separate investigators affirm evidence of financial incompetence and mismatching of expenditures to student needs. The director of the public board was terminated; the one for the Catholic board was promoted, in salary and title.
As to the trustees, the number of “electable” was reduced from 24 to 12 for the public. There will be justifiable “casualties”. Trustees to the Catholic board are free to do what they want. Here are the circumstances they left behind: a $75 million deficit, reduced marginally by eliminating the International Languages Day program and firing 77 language instructors. No Senior Staff were even reprimanded.
Three of the ten trustees left to seek office as City Councillors. Two (Frank D’Amico and Nancy Crawford) were acclaimed; a fourth, Garry Tanuan is remaining steadfast; a fifth, Teresa Lubinski is fighting hard to maintain the Catholic nature of the board an also keep International Languages, even if it means challenging the Staff (see articles in Corriere April 22 and July 6).
Why the others are still in the running beggars credulity or spurs cynicism. De Domenico is on a blame game attack on Minister Calandra. Ok … and contemporenously he and his colleague M. Rizzo are setting up candidates to challenge Lubinski. Li Preti is courting Federal Liberals after having suffered a defeat as a Provincial Liberal in the last election and is now a stalwart supporter of Progress Toronto. Angela Kennedy is a perennial nominee for the provincial PCs. Their focus seems to be anywhere except on catholic education. But they were there to support staff on its flights of fancy.
In the pic here below, Frank D’Amico and Nancy Crawford
