TORONTO – The cancel culture mob has taken over the Halton Catholic District School Board. View the video of the two-part special board meeting of May 24 (you can watch the video clicking here) and judge for yourself. You may come to the same conclusion: they are self-righteous haters by any definition and their target is anything Catholic. 

In part one, the Board of eight trustees, minus one who we later learn is on medical leave, gave free rein to what have become standard presenters to board meetings: anyone who has an anti-Catholic bias. One who seems to love attention comes across as a particularly self-indulgent zealot. In the experience of Corriere Canadese staff monitoring the HCDSB, she is a “frequent-flyer”, if not the co-ordinator of a group determined to eliminate the Catholic from the Catholic school system in Ontario.

She and her ilk have it taken unto themselves to question anything and everything about the Catholic faith and the Catholic ethic – values trustees were elected to preserve and promote – in favour of a new religion of wokism. It is not her school system, nor does she have credentials to question the belief system of parents who send their children to the system.

The local bishop (Crosby), who should provide that leadership, sits idly by in Hamilton or, worse, aids and abets, while she and others tear down a system in education that has arguably served the Ontario community well since Confederation in 1867. So well, in fact, that it is enshrined in the Constitution Act, protected in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as the Education Act and the Human Rights Code.

In other words, it belongs to all Catholic parents in the province (32% of the population), not to the wokists, nor to the do-nothing idler ensconced in the diocese of Hamilton. The school boards are custodians of their rights under the Canadian Constitution. Watching their trustees operate in part two of the HCSDB meeting, the trustees (five of them at least) are not up to the job: Agnew, Duarte, Guzzo, Murphy, O’Hearn-Czarnota.

This group orchestrated a meeting to savage the reputation of one of their colleagues using a trustee code of conduct complaint. What follows is a very brief summary of what is available to anyone who reviews the video of the meeting, because “neither” the complaint nor the resulting “investigation” has been made public, yet. It will probably be leaked for maximum damage.

Trustee Chair Duarte, in collusion with the exiting Director Daly, structured a code of conduct complaint against trustee Iantomasi. They then handed the complaint to an “investigator” – of their choosing – to find him “guilty”. The normal practice requires discussion in Board for trustees to make a collective decision on whom to hire and to provide the parameters of the “research”. Only some trustees were notified.

In Iantomasi’s absence, they called a special meeting of the Board to confirm the finding and to apply sanctions. Trustees De Rosa, O’Brien and Karabela were clearly surprised by this “strategic attack” on their colleague. To this observer, the ensuing discussion indicated a “time to get even” a “settling of scores” initiative planned by Duarte and Daly. Having “followed” the questionable practices of this board over the last two years, the motivation would have only been motivated by questions of their own incompetence and worse.

Trustees had all been given a copy of the investigator’s report but there was no preceding in camera, private, discussion of its details, just a public hanging. We are left to imagine the worst. Almost in vain the protestations of the absence of due process on the part of the three voces of reason, De Rosa, O’Brien and Karabela.

Agnew, who chaired the meeting, was offensive and derisive, Duarte pompous and dismissive. Ironically, Guzzo, who is still facing twelve charges of fraud – something that should arguably have disqualified her from holding office – pushed hard to condemn. She did not recuse herself. Nor did Murphy, who was Chair last year when these criminal charges were brought to his attention. He did not even think those charges, filed by LiUNA, her former employer, were worthy even of a code of conduct violation complaint.

In the end, the HDCSB confirmed the investigator’s report over the objections of De Rosa, Karabela and O’Brien, but deferred until July 29 the imposition of sanctions.

In five months, Catholic parents, like their counterparts in the public boards will have an opportunity to have their say. If they live in Burlington, Halton Hills, Milton or Oakville, they should boot Agnew, Duarte, Guzzo, Murphy and O’Hearn- Czarnota from office before they do further damage to the Catholic School System.