Toronto Free Press, Toronto Politics
`Progressives’ losing their grip on Toronto School Board
By Judi McLeod
Thursday, November 16, 2006
You’ll never hear it from the New Democratic Party (NDP), but the sound defeat of two “progressive” incumbents on the Toronto District School Board is an indicator that an increasing number of parents want education not politics from their school board.
The defeated include veteran Elizabeth Hill, a trustee for nearly two decades, who lost out to newcomer Chris Tonks, son of Liberal MP and former Metro Toronto chair Alan Tonks.
In what must be a stinging humiliation to “progressives”, incumbent Stan Nemiroff lost to ex-Tory MPP John Hastings.
Newcomers to the often fractious board now include the “kids-first” outspoken parent activist Cathy Dandy.
“Progressive” is the latter-day description under which New Democratic and even Communist politicians sometimes hide behind at the apathy-plagued municipal level of government.
The 2000 turnout, which elected Nemiroff in a March 18 by-election, was about 10 percent of some 51,000 eligible voters.
The by-election, held to replace former trustee Sam Basra, convicted of Immigration Act charges and forced under the Education Act to resign his seat, cost the board and its taxpayers a whopping $160,000.
Nemiroff was sponsored by the stridently communist People’s Voice.
Hill, who went down to defeat on Monday, was also Communist Party-endorsed.
Paula Fletcher, a past board trustee, who rode to City Hall as a councillor on the coattails of former Coun. Jack Layton, and a former leader of the Canadian Communist Party, was however re-elected.
In his 2000 election, Nemiroff’s campaign chair was Fletcher’s husband John Cartwright, then new President of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council.
Mercifully small in number, communist candidates gain public office through the convenient backdoor provided by largely ignored municipal elections and by-elections. Not so long ago each of the nine trustees on the Vancouver Board of Education was a Communist Party member, courtesy of the once Jack Layton-backed Committee of Progressive Electors (COPE).
With some 300,000 students the Toronto District School Board is Canada’s largest school board.
Things are destined to heat up at the already fractious board, which even after this election is still almost evenly split between those willing to make school cuts to balance the books and union-backed trustees who refuse.
Board chair Sheila Ward, who was returned to her board seat, said the split means trustees “will continue to walk a tightrope. I’ve always thought that minority governments come up with the best policies because both sides have to co-operate and work together. Sometimes when one side or the other has a clear majority, there’s no negotiation.”
Ward said the party politics has made it a “very tough campaign, but we have to get out of campaign mode now and come together. It’s going to be very hard—a huge challenge—but we have to overcome that challenge.”
Toronto City Hall is still under the influence of a Socialist mayor and NDP councillors who run the city like their personal fiefdom and have four interrupted years to set their policy.
But Monday’s elections proved that progressives are losing their one-time superior base.
Layton, now NDP leader in Ottawa, is losing his sway over what some call “Toronto’s crazy public school board.
|
