Melanie Hubert

By Dan Laxer
The Suburban

Education Minister Bernard Drainville is putting at least some of the blame for the École Bedford scandal at the feet of the Alliance des professeures et professeurs de Montréal, the teachers’ union that is a part of the Fédération autonome de l’enseignement.

Drainville intimated last week that the union’s “attitude and behaviour” have contributed to the abuses at École Bedford that brought it and other schools to the attention of the National Assembly last fall providing justification, as far as the Coalition Avenir Québec government is concerned, for strengthening the secularism bill.

The incident at Bedford sparked an investigation, last December, into it and sixteen other schools for contravening the secularism law. At École Bedford, eleven teachers were suspended for creating a toxic climate. There were allegations of psychological and physical abuse, that religious education and “Islamic concepts” were being imposed on the students, with teachers disregarding science, separating genders, banning girls from sports, etc.

Drainville specifically called out FAE President Melanie Hubert, saying that the union ignored complaints by teachers at École Bedford regarding the situation that was then unfolding.

Hubert says Drainville is out of line.

She says that it is not the union’s place to deal with supervising staff, which is the responsibility of management, adding that the union does not have direct interaction with school service centres.

At the time of the scandal, Liberal MNA Marwah Rizqy called for CSSDM Director-General Isabelle Gélinas to step down.

Last August the Alliance and the FAE joined the English Montreal School Board’s challenge of Quebec’s secularism law, Bill 21. The FAE said, at the time, that it was against the government’s pre-emptive use of the Notwithstanding Clause, that the law infringes on rights and freedoms guaranteed in the charter.

Drainville took umbrage to the union joining the challenge, saying Hubert did not have member support to do so. Hubert disagrees, saying her mandate from members to challenge Bill 21 goes back to 2013. The FAE maintains that the law has led to discriminatory practices when hiring, and is an attack on the teaching profession. n