Premier refuses to ask school trustee who used racial slur to resign

CTVnews.ca
Feb. 15, 2017
By Rachael D’Amore

The premier is refusing to outright call for the resignation of a school board trustee who publicly referred to a parent as a N-----, saying there is a larger issue of systemic racism at the York Region District School Board.

Nancy Elgie, a long-time YRDSB school trustee, admitted to using the racial slur when referring to the black parent during a board meeting in November of 2016.

Elgie, who has since apologized for her comments, has faced relentless calls for her resignation ever since.

When asked directly by reporters at an unrelated news conference Wednesday whether she agrees with calls by Opposition Leader Patrick Brown and Ontario’s Education Minister Mitzie Hunter for Elgie to resign, Premier Kathleen Wynne pointed to the investigation into the board as a whole.

“As I said, I’m not going to comment on one individual,” she said. “I think this is about a much bigger question. It’s about a question of the culture at the board. I think it’s important that we recognize that, from what we are hearing, there may be some concerns about systemic racism at the board. That is a huge concern.”

A reporter asked Wynne if she would ask one of her MPPs to resign if they had said something similar.

“It’s unacceptable behavior to me. Yes, it’s unacceptable,” she said but nonetheless, Wynne said Elgie should decide her fate at the board for herself.

“Systemic racism is not about one individual and I’m not exonerating an individual, I’m not apologizing for an individual, I’m not excusing a particular behaviour but what I am saying is, ‘Let’s look at the broad picture.’ Let’s be honest with ourselves. If there’s a culture of racist behaviour that’s going on in a particular board or beyond a board, then let’s tackle that, let’s deal with that,” she said.

“There’s a lot of pressure on this individual. She’s going to have to search her conscience and make a decision for herself.”

Education Minister Mitzie Hunter called for Elgie to “do the right thing” and step down while speaking to reporters at Queen’s Park on Tuesday.

“Someone who uses a racial slur of that nature should not be representing the students of a diverse region,” she said.

“The use of a racial slur of that kind is completely unacceptable and is not tolerated at all.”

That same night, parents voiced their frustrations at a tense YRDSB trustee meeting. YRDSB’s board chair Loralea Carruthers told the disgruntled parents that she too feels Elgie should resign.

“Trustee Elgie really cares about this board, I know that she does. I called on her to make sure she does the right thing. I have said that since day one, that she needs to do the right thing,” Carruthers said at the meeting Tuesday night.

“Right now, you’ve heard from the trustees around the table. That ‘right thing’ is a resignation.”

Charline Grant, who was the target of Elgie’s racial slur, says her children have also been targeted because of their race at the school.

She said the board needs to work harder to engage parents and the children affected.

“My son is doing a lot better,” she told CP24 at Tuesday night’s meeting. “As parents we stand before him to hide him and shield him as much as we can from all of this, but at the end of the day, it’s now become about a community and other students or the children who don’t have the voice to fight… not just my son.”

Last month, Hunter stepped into the ring and appointed two outside reviewers to investigate the board in order to “regain public confidence in the school board.”

She said she felt an “urgent review” was necessary to tackle allegations of systemic racism among other inner-board issues such as accountability for spending on trustees’ international travel.

Patrick Case, a lawyer and chair of the board of Ontario's Human Rights Legal Support Centre, and Suzette Herbert, a long-time retired public servant who worked as a deputy minister in the Ontario government from 1997 to 2008, have been appointed as the two reviewers.

Hunter said they will be tasked with reviewing whether board members and the director of education are “fulfilling their legislated duties” as well as making recommendations on improvements to equity, accountability and transparency.

The YRDSB has been remained under a cloud of allegations of racism and Islamophobia over the past year.

Hunter’s call for an investigation also follows complaints by the board’s head of equity, Cecil Roach, who wrote in an open letter last year that he had been sidelined when trying to deal with inclusivity complaints. He referred specifically to an instance where a Markham principal was accused of posting Islamophobia images on her Facebook account.