December 07, 2009 (Catholic Education, Catholic Schools)

by John Borst

Conflict of Interest isn’t always an easy call. In many ways it is much like trying to adjudicate a claim of sexual harassment by one employee towards another, say for a superintendent of schools, or of bullying by a principal between two students.

In all three cases, the claim is judged differently in the eyes of the accused and the eyes of the accuser. Interestingly, when the charge becomes known to a wider audience, people tend to take one of the two sides in what seems about equal proportion, especially when the facts of the case are very unclear. When that happens, we often say the edge is in the eyes of the beholder.

If a person feels they have been harassed sexually, or bullied, or been perceived to be in a conflict, there is a tendency to favour that perception. Where a situation can’t be resolved, we turn to an adjudicator in the form of either a tribunal or a judge in a court of law.

I have had my own case of what appeared to be a “conflict of interest” over the past month. It involved this website and my role as a director of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association (OCSTA).   This wasn’t a conflict in the monetary sense, as it is found in the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act (MCIA); rather it was a conflict over style and purpose. Associations such as OCSTA over time develop a certain way of doing business. Their goal is to influence the government of the day on its legislative and financial agenda. This requires them to develop a certain relationship with the people in the Ministries it wishes to most influence.

Thus when a person who blogs, whether on purpose or inadvertently, writes comments or stories which upset that standard, a conflict of purpose and style may ensue. That is what happened in my case.

Two approaches could have been taken to resolving the perceived conflict. One is to have the issue discussed by the board of OCSTA and the confused messaging involved clarified, and perhaps new procedures established by both parties. The other option was to resign so as to remove or at least decrease the opportunity in my own case for conflict.   It is this latter strategy which I chose to do.

Certainly, I had no wish to even appear to undermine in some people’s eyes the role and influence of OCSTA. I also wanted to maintain my own reputation as a person of honour in the eyes of all trustees, and not open up a debate about either the rightness or wrongness of the organization’s way of doing business or of what I should or should not write about education.

I’m not sure if it is fortuitous or ironic that this event has influenced and clarified my own view of what is still, and has been for some time now, transpiring at the Toronto Catholic District School Board.

Since writing the editorial Time to Remove the Cloud and Renew the Spirit – Electing TCDSB’s 2010 Board Chair I have received correspondence of two types. One is symbolized by the position taken by Michael Baillargeon in his piece Alleged conflict of interest results in call to step aside for two TCDSB Trustees; the other by a position that somehow certain trustees and others are attempting to discredit Catholic education by airing its problems in public. I invited a representative of this position to write an article but so far the offer has not received a response.

The idea that an organization’s dirty laundry should not be aired in public is an extremely common position taken not only in politics but, as we have recently seen in business and finance, at non-profits and unfortunately with equally disastrous results, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

Problems of questionable propriety arise in every organization. We are, after all, imperfect beings. We do not expect, however, that every impropriety be aired in public. Good leadership requires that some differences be handled judiciously without publicity and on the whole good management does an admirable of accomplishing just that. However, from time to time a situation festers and grows until such a time as events beyond the organization’s control either cause it to be revealed or a leader comes along and against often much opposition decides to right the ship of state even if it means the pain of publicly exposing the problem.

The collapse of much of the World’s banking system, the Bernie Madoff investment fraud and the too numerous to mention cover-ups of pedophilia among priests by Bishops in the Catholic Church are examples of the first response.

However, the Toronto Catholic District School Board improprieties have every appearance of being of the latter type. It began with the election of Catherine LeBlanc Miller to the chair of the TCDSB and her attempts to correct the abuse of trustee expenses and balance the budget. In doing so she even discovered she too had double-billed the board, and she took swift action to make amends by immediately paying it back.  It is also well known that she worked with the Ministry of Education on the budget matter; however, as the magnitude of the problem became known, political expediency required the Ministry appoint a supervisor and the rest as they say is history. I doubt LeBlanc Miller quite had that in mind when she decided on her course of action.

As you might expect, many question of the wisdom of LeBlanc Miller’s approach and blame her and her supporters for besmirching the good reputation of Catholic education in this province. In my opinion nothing could be farther from the truth. She is the hero in this piece. Be under no delusion, it took considerable bravery to speak out against the practices which had crept into the trustees’ expense claims. It took bravery to ask the Ministry for help. It always does, because you risk being isolated and shunned by people who supported you or even called you a friend. However, it can also be the mark of a true leader and in this case has proven to be so.

As a result, in the tradition of newspapers of repute, Tomorrow’s Trust is recommending that on December 9^th trustees on the Toronto Catholic District School Board elect Catherine LeBlanc Miller as their chair for 2010.

Interestingly, Ontario-based blogger, Hugo Rodrigues at The Education Reporter blogspot, on November 24^th wrote:

Mike Baillargeon is a man on a mission — unseat every last neutered trustee elected in 2006 to the Toronto Catholic District School Board.

There is no evidence that this is Baillargeon’s goal. In fact it is likely just the opposite. As editor, it is my interpretation that by sending his piece to Tomorrow’s Trust for publication, he was attempting to increase the odds that Catherine LeBlanc Miller would be elected chair by recommending trustees Angela Kennedy and Barbara Poplawski resign. This would no doubt have increased her chance of achieving a majority vote.

However, as hinted at by Toronto Sun columnist Moira McDonald (November 23, 2009) Baillargeon has been attempting to bring about those resignations from as far back as May of this year. Thus it is very unlikely we will see either Kennedy or Poplawski bow out of this election.

They do, however hold the key to LeBlanc Miller’s election as chair.

This editorial is therefore calling upon both Kennedy and Poplawski to demonstrate that Catholic education in Ontario and the need for the board to return to its full elected authority take precedence over their own personal desires or those of others who remain under the cloud of the Carroll era, by supporting LeBlanc Miller in her run for chair.

As the Board’s most senior trustees, they have with distinction served the cause of Catholic education in Toronto and earned the accolades of the ratepayers by being repeatedly elected to the board. Both have served over the years in positions of influence and have earned the respect of their peers by representing them on the board of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association.

However, no matter how much experience we bring to the table there are times when under the pressure of the moment, as I did with this website and OCSTA, we all make decisions, we sometimes wish we could take back. Irrespective of Baillargeon’s claims of conflict of interest, I believe the experience and wisdom that both Angela Kennedy and Barbara Poplawski bring to the board table is proof they too want to get TCDSB out from under the thumb of the supervisor and under the full authority of the Board of Trustees.

Since there is considerable evidence to suggest that the best chance for this to occur is with LeBlanc Miller as chair, there is a strong likelihood that if Kennedy and Poplawski were to  throw their support behind LeBlanc Miller, they can convince others to do so as well and thus begin the process of achieving this larger goal.

Clearly this is the most pivotal election of a chair to be held at the Toronto Catholic Board in decades.

In closing, I was struck by this comment by the renowned Jesuit liturgist, Robert Taft in the course of an interview published in U.S.Catholic. Although the context was different, he offered this comment:

In John 3, when John the Baptist is asked whether Jesus is the Messiah, John says quite clearly that Jesus is the important one: “He must increase, I must decrease.”

He must increase, I must decrease. Everybody needs to hear that. It’s not about me, it’s not about you. It’s about something infinitely more important than us.

Irrespective of our role or station in life those are pretty tough words to hear. But equally important is the second half of that message for if our mission as Catholic trustees is to pass on the message that “Jesus is the important one,” then in governance language it follows that Catholic education too is “…not about me, (and) not about you; it’s about something infinitely more important than us.”

Bookmark It

Hide Sites