Jean Robert

School boards to seek injunction against spending restrictions

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , , , , , , , ,

School boards to seek injunction against spending restrictions

Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

The organization representing Quebec’s nine English school boards may take the Quebec govern- ment to court if it doesn’t loosen restrictions on how the boards can allocate funding.

Earlier this summer, the Quebec government announced $570 million in across-the-board cuts to fund- ing for schools. On July 19, amid a growing public outcry, Education Minister Bernard Drainville announced that the government would reallocate $540 million to be distributed among French-language school service centres, English boards and eligible private schools, on the condition that the institutions “show that efforts are being made to reduce administrative costs, and ensure the money goes to student services only.” School boards have been told they cannot dip into surplus funds or run budget deficits in order to further cushion the impact of the cuts.

“It is misleading when the government announces that the cuts are being walked back,” Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA) president Joe Ortona told the QCT. “They maintained the cuts and then said, ‘We’ll put new money into education, but in order for you to be eligible for this money, there are hurdles in place that are difficult for school boards to meet.’ The government has been clear that we’re not allowed to use our own surplus money which we have accumulated through our own careful management … which is absurd.”

QESBA intends to mandate law firm Power Law to “challenge the validity” of the budgetary restrictions and request an injunction blocking their application. The Central Québec School Board (CQSB) has passed a resolution supporting QESBA’s decision.

QESBA and its nine member boards, including the CQSB, are currently in a drawn-out court battle with the Quebec government over Bill 40, the 2020 law which transformed French-language school boards into government-run service centres; if fully applied to English boards, it would legislate them out of existence. In April of this year, a Quebec appeals court panel upheld an earlier Superior Court ruling that found that abolishing elected school boards and replacing them with service centres would infringe on the English-speaking community’s Charter right to manage its own schools. Ortona and Jean Robert, the chair of the CQSB Council of Commissioners, argue that the legal precedent in that case — over which the Quebec government intends to appeal to the Supreme Court — strengthens the school boards’ case for an injunction blocking spending restrictions.

“If we accept [these restrictions], we are accepting that we don’t have a say in what happens in our schools,” Robert said. “The fact that there were adjustments [to the cuts initially announced] doesn’t change our resolve to say that the Constitution protects us.”

Ortona said there has been no communication or collaboration from Drainville’s office regarding the school boards’ concerns. “We have made it very clear that these cuts with the hurdles and parameters are unconstitutional and a violation of the Bill 40 judgment that says the government cannot micromanage our finances,” said Ortona. “He has not acknowledged these letters – we have received no reply of any kind. Their mind is made up – they have made it clear that they are not allowing us to use surplus money. We have been clear that that is unconstitutional.”

Ortona said the most recent cuts would still require boards to make difficult decisions about “sports programs, music programs, child psychologists, speech therapists, childcare workers, cutting teacher positions and overcrowding classrooms.”

Robert said CQSB personnel are still figuring out how the cuts may affect services. “You could not ask for a worse time for us to redo all of this work,” he said. “If we had access to our surplus, we would say we’ll give ourselves time to make the changes next year, but now we’re being asked to make changes [for a second time] while everyone is on holiday … and that is unreasonable.”

Education Ministry spokesperson Bryan St-Louis said the financial statements of school  school boards and service centres have been consolidated with those of the government. Consequently, “any surplus or deficit incurred by a school board affects the government’s financial position. ”

“The [previous] surplus appropriation rule was intended to allow a service centre or board to run a deficit up to the permitted appropriation limit, without having to apply to the ministry,” he explained. “For the 2025-2026 school year, it was decided to review the appropriation rule in order to limit the increase in education portfolio spending, in line with the budgetary context.”

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Government slashes funding to school boards, service centres

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Government slashes funding to school boards, service centres

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

Quebec’s English school boards reacted with alarm and frustration after the Ministry of Education imposed at least $510 million in across-the-board cuts to the public school system. Education Minister Bernard Drainville told reporters last week that the ministry’s expenses have grown by seven per cent per year since 2018, a rate he called “unsustainable.” Next school year’s increase has been capped at 1.8 per cent – below the rate of inflation – as part of a wider effort by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government to rein in the growing deficit.

“The direction I have given to school service centres is to make this money work better, to be more efficient, to respect budgets without touching student services, or without touching them as much as possible,” Drainville said.

“School boards and service centres across the province were informed [June 12] that a staggering $510 million in additional cuts would be expected throughout the Quebec education system, on top of the $200 million already slashed earlier this school year,” the Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA) said in a statement. “These new cuts are expected to take effect in July, allowing only one day of consultation for school boards and service centres to react.”

“This government is expecting us to make these astronomical cuts on the backs of our students, which is completely unacceptable,” said QESBA president Joe Ortona. “The government has given school boards just 24 hours to respond to what can only be described as a direct assault on the viability of our public education system. This financial crisis was not created by school boards, and we will not allow our school system’s integrity to be sacrificed to solve this government’s deficit.”

Jean Robert is the chair of the council of commissioners of the Central Québec School Board (CQSB), which oversees English-language public schools in the Quebec City region, Mauricie, Saguenay and parts of northern Quebec. On June 20, he estimated the board would have to cut about $6 million from its budget. That was later revised downward to around $3 million, but the board was told it could not run a deficit or dip into its surplus. Robert said officials were still looking at ways to tackle the problem.

Robert expressed frustration at the ministry’s decision to announce the cuts in mid-June, after school boards had confirmed staff contracts for the coming year. “Because of the collective agreements, we need to do our staffing for September by June 1,” he said. “Had we been given a little more time, we would have been able to make adjustments like having one class of 34 [students] instead of two classes of 17, but we can’t do that at this point. … Why did they decide, at the last minute and without consultation, that they were going to cut?”

Education ministry spokesperson Bryan St-Louis said the board had been asked to “optimize its expenses” by eliminating $2.37 million in spending. He said boards had been informed of the cuts as soon as information was available.

Robert told the QCT boards would normally dip into their surpluses to absorb the impact of the cuts. The CQSB “does have a surplus … and it’s there for unforeseen circumstances, but now we’re being told we can’t use it.” He said the restriction on the use of surplus funds was contrary to the spirit of a recent Superior Court ruling affirming the English-speaking community’s right to govern its own schools. (Last month, the Quebec government announced its intention to apply for leave to appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.)

Robert said the ministry could limit the impact of the cuts by allowing boards to use surplus funds or spread the cuts out over several years. “We’re hopeful that the government will see how this will impact student learning, and then we will have to look at whatever options are available.”

The QCT contacted Drainville’s office for comment but did not receive a response before press time.

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Quebec applies to appeal Bill 40 decision to Supreme Court

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Quebec applies to appeal Bill 40 decision to Supreme Court

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

Quebec’s English-language school boards are preparing to defend their continued existence before the Supreme Court of Canada. On May 30, multiple sources confirmed that the Quebec government planned to request leave to appeal a ruling in support of the school boards to the country’s highest court.

In February 2020, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government passed Bill 40, which replaced elected school boards in both the francophone and anglophone sectors with government-run service centres overseen by volunteer boards with limited power. At the time, English boards argued the new law infringed on the English- speaking community’s right to control its education system, afforded to official-language minority communities in the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA) took the government to court, obtaining first an injunction which suspended the law’s application to English boards, then a ruling by a Superior Court judge which found the law did infringe on the community’s charter rights. The government appealed that decision, and in April of this year, an appeals court panel essentially upheld the Superior Court ruling. At the time, QESBA and its member boards hoped the government would accept the ruling and lay the groundwork for a new working relationship with school boards. That hasn’t happened.

The association said its members were “deeply disappointed” by the government’s decision to appeal.

“We were hopeful that the government would accept the unanimous ruling of the Court of Appeal and finally respect the rights of the English-speaking community,” said QESBA president Joe Ortona. “At a time when Quebec faces serious financial pressures, it is disappointing to see public funds used to continue a legal battle that so clearly infringes on the rights of minority communities.”

“As I said at the time, [the Appeals Court ruling] was a really wonderful decision for the English boards – there was a recognition that the Constitution gave us the right to govern our schools,” said Jean Robert, chair of the Council of Commissioners of the Central Québec School Board (CQSB), the QESBA member board which oversees English-language public schools in the Quebec City region and on the South Shore as well as in Mauricie, Saguenay and large swaths of northern Quebec. “The environment is such that I wasn’t surprised [an appeal was made] … but we were really hopeful that at the end of the day, the government would see that the decision was clear.

“I don’t know the timeline, but we’re talking about years of time and expenses and uncertainty,” he added. “We are convinced we will win – we have the two judgments in our favour, the last one was unanimous and they supported us on nearly every point.”

Robert told the QCT school boards would have to “rely on the generosity of the community” to continue the court challenge.

“They [the government] have all the legal resources in the world, and in our case, we’ll have to do fundraising for this,” he said. “When you go to the Supreme Court, you’re talking about over $1 million in expenses. The government has a slew of lawyers at their disposal, but we have to hire our own lawyers and do fundraising.”

Robert said representatives of QESBA member boards would meet on June 2 to plan next steps. “We will be looking at potential donors in the community, parents and graduates who are ready to donate,” he said. “We always said we didn’t want to use money that has been set aside for services to students. There have been some generous donors for the last Bill 40 case, but we can’t always [turn] to the same people … and the money has to come from somewhere.”

In the coming weeks, “our role will be to inform people on what this really means – it is about being the master of what we do,” Robert said. “It is a slippery slope to having our schools potentially become wings of the francophone system … we will continue to fight this with everything we can.”

The Quebec government does not generally comment on ongoing court cases.

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Bill 40 ruling a victory for English school boards

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Bill 40 ruling a victory for English school boards

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

Quebec’s English-language school boards are celebrating a major victory after the Quebec Court of Appeal largely upheld an earlier Superior Court ruling on the English- speaking community’s right to oversee its own school system as guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In practice, advocates say, the ruling means Bill 40 – the reform passed by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government in 2020 which replaced elected school boards with government-run service centres overseen by unelected volunteer boards with limited power – cannot be applied to English school boards. English boards, they say, will continue to function as they have since 1998, when language-based school boards replaced sectarian ones.

“We’ve been functioning as if Bill 40 didn’t exist, and we plan to continue functioning that way,” said Joe Ortona, president of the Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA), which brought the case along with Montreal’s Lester B. Pearson School Board and a concerned parent.

When Bill 40 was being debated, its backers argued that it would increase efficiency and remove the need for costly school board elections that relatively few people vote in. However, QESBA and its member boards saw an attempt to deprive Quebec’s English- speaking communities of their charter right to control their education system. Several months after the bill passed, a court suspended its application to English-language school boards while the case progressed. In August 2023, Superior Court Judge Sylvain Lussier struck down large parts of the law as it applied to English boards, in line with QESBA’s argument that the law limited the Charter rights of official language minority communities. In September of that year, the government appealed the ruling.

On April 3, the Court of Appeal essentially upheld Lussier’s original verdict. Judges Robert M. Mainville, Christine Baudouin and Judith Harvie found that the school governance scheme set out in Bill 40 infringed on the community’s right to control its education system and disincentivized parent and community involvement. The community is “entitled to independent school boards that must, at a minimum, allow minority language representatives to exercise exclusive authority relating to minority-language education and facilities,” they wrote, in a ruling that extensively cited jurisprudence involving francophone school districts in English Canada. “The court cannot accept the argument that the linguistic minority is represented through the staff hired by a service centre.”

“This is more than we could have hoped for,” Jean Robert, chair of the Central Québec School Board (CQSB) Council of Commissioners, told the QCT. “The major thing is that the ruling recognizes that Bill 40 was infringing on our rights under the Charter, which is the basis of all our arguments.”

“We have local elected representatives who are account- able to the English-speaking community, and that is how it should be,” Ortona said in an interview. “It means the community has a voice, because elected representatives [on] boards managed and controlled by commissioners are accountable to the community, rather than accountable to the minister elected by all Quebecers. Now, we get to cater to the will of the community when it comes to management. The French sector doesn’t have that.”

Eva Ludvig is the president of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), which was granted intervenor status in the case. “The QCGN had reminded the court that although Quebec has broad authority over education, that authority is not limitless,” she said in a statement. “If a law interferes with minority- language rights, the burden is on the province to justify it … and that is a high bar to meet. This is why today’s ruling is such a landmark win for our community.”

Katherine Korakakis, president of the English Parents’ Committee Association, said the parents’ group was “thrilled” with the “historic victory.” She called the deci- sion “a powerful reminder that our voices matter, and our right to govern our schools is non- negotiable.”

“We will be able to choose our own destiny, and the population will have the opportunity to choose their commissioners and their chairperson,” Robert said. “It will continue what we believe is a very successful way of governing our school system. … We can move ahead knowing the courts have clearly decided we have that right protected.”

The Quebec government has 60 days from the date of the ruling to apply for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice declined to comment on the ruling “out of respect for the judicial process.”

Ortona and Robert said they hoped the government would not appeal, and would instead use the ruling as the basis for a new working relationship with English school boards. “We want to sit down with the government and say, ‘Let’s accept it and move on and see what’s best for the students,’” said Robert. “They may decide otherwise, but we are hopeful that [because] the decision was so clear, the government will accept it and we can work together.”

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New CQSB boss Robert ‘cautiously optimistic’ about new HS project

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New CQSB boss Robert ‘cautiously optimistic’ about new HS project

New CQSB boss Robert ‘cautiously optimistic’ about new HS project

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

“Cautiously optimistic,” is how Jean Robert, newly sworn-in chairperson of the Central Québec School Board (CQSB) Council of Commissioners, describes the board’s mood regarding approval of the new combined English high school project.

Robert was commenting on a report in the Journal de Québec last week saying only three new schools have been authorized to be built in the province next year. The report does not identify the three schools that got approved.

According to the Journal, the Quebec government has given the green light in 2025 to 28 projects, worth half a billion dollars, to add space to existing schools throughout the province.

The report said, “The budget dedicated to ‘adding space’ will mainly finance the acquisition of modular classrooms, since only three new constructions and four expansions have received approval from Quebec.” A spokesperson for Education Minister Bernard Drainville is quoted in the report, and does not deny the basic facts. Antoine de la Durantaye said, “We will continue to invest in order to meet the growing needs, while respecting our ability to pay.”

The QCT asked de la Durantaye via email whether the CQSB’s new high school was among the three schools approved for construction in 2025. Education ministry spokesperson Bryan St-Louis responded, saying, “The English secondary school project has already been announced. The process to obtain approval of the business case in accordance with the directive on the management of major public infrastructure projects is underway.”

Asked to clarify the statement, St-Louis said, “The business case must first be analyzed and authorized before confirming further details regarding the project.”

He said details on the project are available on the Treasury Board “dashboard” which indicates the project is managed by the Société québécoise des infrastructures (SQI) and has been at the planning stage since June 2022 and under study as of November 2019.

The “dashboard” description is this: “The project in- volves the construction of an English-language secondary school on the territory of the Central Québec School Board to replace the obsolete St. Patrick’s High School and Quebec High School secondary schools. Student places from Dollard-des-Ormeaux secondary school in Shannon will also be transferred to the new school. In order to reduce the space deficit recognized by the ministry, 183 additional student places are planned. This will bring the school’s capacity to 1,421 student places.”

On the SQI website, according to a document called “Tender calls to come” (appels d’offres à venir) and dated spring 2024, the CQSB school is slated for a call for tenders in the third quarter of 2024, and construction to be started in the first quarter of 2025.

The new English high school serving the greater Quebec City region is one of only five new school projects on the SQI list. The SQI manages large infrastructures in the province, with budgets of $50 million or more. The CQSB school is in the category of $150-$500 million.

Robert, who has succeeded longtime board boss Stephen Burke after many years as vice-chair, said that despite the “worrisome” report in the Journal, “We’ve been told we should continue to be optimistic” about the new school moving forward.

Robert said much has been invested already in the new school project, to be built on the site of the now-vacated St. Vincent Elementary School, including acquiring parcels

of land from the federal gov- ernment and a neighbouring school property.

This fall, CQSB opened New Liverpool Elementary School, its new school in Lévis, to accommodate a growing population of students on the South Shore who had travelled by bus to St. Vincent. Former students living on the North Shore were transferred to other board schools.

Robert said he will be meeting with government officials in the coming days to help ensure the project moves forward.

“We just want to get it started … get that first shovel in the earth,” he said.

In the event the new high school project is delayed, Robert said, “We’d have to invest so much in the existing schools,” both of which were built decades ago and do not meet modern standards.

The current St. Patrick’s High School building dates back to 1918 and was expanded in 1956. QHS opened in its current building in 1941.

Meanwhile, the demolition of St. Vincent is on hold. Robert explained that the plan is to tear down the old building at the same time as construction starts on the new one.

Robert said he is hopeful an announcement will be made soon on the new schools approved for 2025, possibly before Christmas.

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