GEDSB Legal Threat

A year ago, when I made this post on my mother's litigation against the Grand Erie District School Board, I included the following line. 

I look forward to finding out what the alleged misconduct will be next time - are they going to say that my kindly 67 year old mother is so scary that their hearts might explode if they have to be in the same room? (Is this blog post itself going to feature?) Only time will tell! 

At the time I thought it was hyperbole - biting sarcasm about how badly they were acting, not a serious prediction. And yet, a year later, both halves of that have come to pass. 

Last year, the Board decided to pass a bunch of safety plans against my mother, allegedly because of the "unsafe and toxic working environment" that she had somehow created, despite being unable to even say a word at any meetings. And about a week ago, I got a letter from one of the Board's lawyers, threatening me over the contents of that blog post. You can see the full thing below, along with my responses. The public response has now been sent to a number of local and provincial politicians, and reporters, and I'm copying it here for the general public to read as well. 

Thank you for sticking with my mother and I through this long and stupid tale. 

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My Public Response

Hello. I have recently received a letter from the Grand Erie District School Board which may be of interest to you. 

As background, my mother is a long-time GEDSB trustee, and the Board has almost completely prevented her from participating in Board meetings since May 2023. As a result, she has been before the Ontario Superior Court twice in the past year, and won both cases. In those decisions, the Board's actions were held by the court to be, among other things, "unintelligible and unreasonable", "excessive and punitive", "about punishing [her]", and "so blatantly unreasonable that it cries out for some comment". 

A year ago, I made a lengthy public post on the situation. Recently, the GEDSB found my post, and decided to argue that I had somehow defamed them. Their letter is attached, along with my response to the Board's lawyer. But in brief, no reasonable person could think that my comments were defamatory. This is a blatant attempt to stifle criticism with legal threats. They keep losing court cases against my mother, so they've decided to come after her son. 

Their behaviour in sending this letter was also quite shocking. They came to my workplace and badgered the mail room into accepting a letter, when it had nothing whatsoever to do with my job or my employer. They had to find my office (which is not public, so far as I know) and visit no less than three times until they found someone willing to accept their letter. 

It's depressing that they think this is a good use of tax money. My blog has extremely low readership - in just under a year of this post being active, it has a whopping 433 views. How much did they spend on digging up a year-old blog post, scouring it for allegedly defamatory material, drafting a three-page letter, and harassing my employer into giving it to me? I'd be surprised if they spent less than $2-3k on this, and it could easily be more. (Normally I'd FOI the exact cost, but they'll just deny my FOI on threadbare grounds, like they have with so many others.)

Lastly, I'd like to say some things specifically to each of the groups reading. 

GEDSB Trustees: You can make this stop any time you want. You didn’t need to take this to court, and the court told you as much in their last decision. Please follow the advice of the justices and negotiate in good faith, before you lose a third (or fourth, or fifth) case. The students and staff deserve better. 

Premier Ford, Minister Calandra, and Ministry staff: I would prefer that the province not need to intervene here, but at this rate, I'm expecting that you'll take over the GEDSB pretty soon. If and when you do, make sure to tally up their legal spending on these cases. They've fought the FOI requests extremely hard, against obvious controlling precedents (e.g., Ontario (Attorney General) v. Ontario (Information and Privacy Commissioner), 2007), which means they're probably desperate to avoid disclosing what they've spent here. From a public-relations point of view, I expect it to be explosive. 

In particular, the $250,000 number that they gave you seems implausibly low and suspiciously round - I'd look into exactly what that figure did and did not include. It might also be very interesting to find out what this letter cost them, and how many similar letters they’ve sent. 

MPPs Bouma, Brady, Pasma, and Fraser: If it comes to a provincial takeover, please do what you can to ensure that the government does it right. Support them if they do well, and hold them to account if they do poorly. 

[list of reporters]: If you want to get any more information on the underlying situation, my original blog post (linked above) covers a large part of the story here, and Mses. Percy-Beauregard and Gamble have done excellent work covering it for the Hamilton Spectator and Brantford Expositor. I'm available for interviews/discussions if you'd like - email me here to set it up. (That offer is also open to anyone else reading this, as well.)

Alex Sloat

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My Legal Response

Hello. I recently received your letter on behalf of the Grand Erie District School Board, dated October 29th. 

I must say, I'm surprised that you're alleging defamation here. My comments were not defamatory, and no reasonable person could believe that they were defamatory. My post was a lengthy discussion of your client's practices of secrecy and retaliation, and the paragraph you quoted was simply one more example of those practices. I did not claim any knowledge of criminal behaviour, because I have no such knowledge, and no reasonable reader would think that I did. If I had evidence of crimes taking place, I'd report that evidence to the police, not to readers of an obscure blog. 

Your attempt to portray my comments as defamation is clearly intended to silence the voice of a critic, and it fits into a broader pattern of your client attempting to threaten and silence anyone who criticizes the Board's actions. If the Board does decide to litigate this, I will vigorously defend myself against your claims. My comments were a fair comment about a matter of public interest, they were not damaging to your client, and they were literally true. All of those are strong defences in Ontario law. Given the lack of legal merit in your claim, I'll also be making use of the Protection of Public Participation Act to seek an early dismissal of your suit, and a cost award on a full indemnity basis. Please govern yourselves accordingly. 

That said, I'd rather not encourage your client's habit of wasting money on hopeless litigation. So for that reason, I will state the following. 

1) It is my intention to add an explanatory note to my blog post as follows. 

Update: For added clarity, I have no knowledge of any criminal activities by the Board or its staff. This entire post is about how extreme the secrecy and defensiveness has been, and this anecdote was merely one more example of how bad those behaviours have gotten. (This was already pretty clear, but the Board decided to send their lawyers at me, so let's make it clear enough that they can't even pretend to misunderstand it.)

2) So far as I am aware, I have never made any communications of any sort alleging criminal conduct by the Board or its management. I have no intention of making any such communications in future, until and unless I receive evidence sufficient to justify any such claims. Similarly, I have never made any communications of any sort that I believe to be defamatory, and I have no intention of doing so in future. 

3) I will preserve any documentation that may be relevant, as requested. 

4) If you need to communicate with me in future, please use this email address to do so. (Hopefully that should save your staff from needing to harass my employer into delivering your letters.) 

I trust that this will satisfy your client. 

As a final note, your "Strictly Private and Confidential" letter is nothing of the sort. You know perfectly well that I owe you no duty of confidentiality whatsoever – I am not your client's employee or contractor, and I am not subject to any court order or professional/legal obligation that would prevent me from publishing it. Your demand that it be kept confidential anyway is yet another effort to silence critics, and I will be having none of it. If you want to silence me, get a judge to order it. Until then, you can expect that I will publish any communications with you to any and all parties that I expect to be interested. 

Alex Sloat

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The Board's Letter