TDSB lecturers must be fired

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It’s firing time.

However what’s unclear is whether or not it’s not solely lecturers who must be fired however all the administration of the Toronto District College Board (TDSB), too.

The TDSB has confronted controversy earlier than for seemingly tolerating intolerance towards the Jewish group. In Might 2021, for instance, materials was circulated to lecturers that an investigator later decided included content material that was antisemitic. The board had even censured a Jewish trustee who raised considerations about these supplies. Earlier this 12 months, Jewish mother and father alleged they had been denied the suitable to talk at a debate over the adoption of an anti-Palestinian racism coverage.

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However final week’s area journey fiasco introduced issues to a brand new plateau.

As extensively reported, lecturers from a number of TDSB colleges obtained consent for kids as younger as eight years outdated to look at a march in assist of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, which suffers from mercury air pollution. Mother and father had been reassured within the consent type that the scholars wouldn’t be collaborating. They had been instructed to put on blue shirts.

These blue shirts, most mother and father apparently solely later found, recognized the kids as “colonizers” and “settlers.” And video clips from the rally reveals that they did greater than observe — in addition they marched, with some collaborating in anti-Israel chants corresponding to “From Turtle Island (Canada) to Palestine, occupation is against the law.”  A few of the youngsters reportedly returned dwelling with stickers saying “Zionism kills.”

After the inevitable uproar when mother and father realized what occurred on this supposedly innocuous area journey, the TDSB defended this system however mildly acknowledged “the hurt that some college students might have skilled” and supplied to research.

Investigations, as readers know, particularly by our bodies corresponding to TDSB, are supposed to punt the issue to a pleasant chosen investigator, who will write the report the TDSB desires, and situation it so many months down the street that the problem will hopefully be forgotten. That, pricey readers, is the Canadian investigation trade.

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On this case, no such “investigation” is required. It’s well-known what occurred and who did what. The offenders must be requested what they did and why and, in the event that they lie, that’s yet one more floor of dismissal for trigger.

The TDSB’s tepid response was not ok for Ontario Premier Doug Ford. “I feel it’s disgraceful — you’re making an attempt to indoctrinate our children,” the premier complained. “Youngsters shouldn’t be at protests and will as an alternative be at school studying math, spelling, geography and historical past.”

Or for Schooling Minister Jill Dunlop, who instructed her ministry to launch an expedited investigation of the TDSB’s failure to take swift and decisive motion.

“These accountable must be held accountable,” she warned.

That’s the place I are available in.

What’s a instructor’s function? To be a task mannequin for college students and to coach them in moral conduct, to not indoctrinate them in radical politics.

They’re additionally in loco parentis, the trusted substitute in the course of the faculty day for the mother and father themselves. Essentially, they should be trusted. However that’s not the function that too lots of our public faculty educators are enjoying, one purpose why mother and father are prepared to shoulder the huge prices of sending kids to non-public colleges to keep away from the TDSB’s woke schooling.

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To the purpose of this column, If a instructor so essentially violates their duties, endangers college students, ideologically and even bodily, by having them march in an indignant rally, that instructor must be discharged for trigger. And it doesn’t matter a whit that they’re unionized and that their unions will defend them (legally they needn’t accomplish that). The arbitration case regulation uniformly helps firing those that betray the belief of essentially the most susceptible amongst us, i.e. kids. In brief, the board would possible win its case.

However this board won’t do that.

The province ought to conclude its investigation, put the TDSB beneath trusteeship and fireplace the lecturers.

I might be happy to signify any of those employers professional bono — even the TDSB, if it does the firing — if these lecturers grieve. It’s time to begin holding the miscreants in schooling liable for their actions.

Howard Levitt is senior associate of Levitt LLP, employment and labour attorneys with places of work in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practices employment regulation in eight provinces and is the writer of six books, together with the Regulation of Dismissal in Canada.

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