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for many people the idea of a school board operating without a code of
ethics seemed inconceivable.
After all, isn’t a code of ethics the very thing that has in the past
protected us from former prime ministers like Brian Mulroney meeting with
the likes of lobbyists such as Karlheinz Schreiber and protected us from
cabinet ministers in Jean Chrétien’s government from pitch-forking over
taxpayers’ money to party supporters in a sponsorship scandal? One might
even argue that a code of ethics is the reason why current prime minister
Stephen Harper decided to change the former government’s mind and tear
up the Atlantic Accord and replace it with an illusion that no trust has been
broken. So clearly, seeing how much we the public have benefited from
them, governing bodies should have a code of ethics.
Then why would Brenda Gillis bring forward a motion for the Strait
Regional School Board to abandon its code of ethics? Politically and
personally, Brenda Gillis is no anarchist, although many in the public
seemed to believe that if the board abandoned its code of ethics anarchy
would prevail.
In defeating Gillis’s motion by a narrow margin of 6-4, board chair
Henry Van Berkel told fellow board members that the Strait board’s code of
ethics was a minimum and that every member on the board had a higher
personal standard than the code demanded.
Van Berkel’s assessment of board members is right, but what was lost
in this debate over the code of ethics was Gillis’s point that if the minister
of education could order changes to that code, including the threat to
suspend or disband the board if it did not comply with her wishes, then it is
no longer the board’s code of ethics, but a set of behaviours hoisted upon
it by a higher power.
From the beginning, Education Minister Karen Casey has handled this
issue badly.
The minister’s letter ordered changes in the board’s code of ethics
that one might expect a primary class teacher to impose upon his or her
students. The board was ordered to, among other things, 1) respect each
other; 2) work with fellow members and staff in a spirit of cooperation
regardless of personal differences of opinion; 3) and not to pursue any
procedure calculated to embarrass other board members or staff.
Over the past year and longer, a few members of the Strait Regional
School Board have attracted provincial headlines over varied issues that
one could classify as “family values.” Brenda Gillis was not among those
members vocalizing against youth health centres, opposing the delivery
of programs by the Antigonish Women’s Resource Centre, nor did she
oppose the distribution of the department of health’s booklet on healthy
sexuality.
The education minister’s September letter came with no prior contact
with the Strait board concerning any of those issues that may have been
embarrassing to the minister or her department. The letter itself does not
make reference to a single issue or item leading to her heavy-handed
handling of the Strait board. Karen Casey merely states, “Based on reports
from Regional Education Services, School board members, through
words and actions, are not behaving in a manner in keeping with the best
interests of students in the Strait Regional School Board.”
The education minister had never made an effort to address those
members whom she accused of “not behaving in a manner in keeping with
the best interests of the students...” She simply dropped an unexplained
bombshell into the middle of the Strait Regional School Board, forcing
changes to its ethics code, expecting that board members would now
change their behaviour, and
they may well do so, but it
will have nothing to do with a
cabinet minister’s directives
and everything to do with firm
leadership within the board itself.
Had Brenda Gillis’s motion to abandon the board’s code of ethics
found favour with one or two more members, the abandoning of that code
would have been an absolute rejection of a minister who chose to use her
absolute power by ordering, under threat of dissolution, ethical changes.
Brenda Gillis’s game of brinkmanship brought the board very close to
abandoning its code of ethics. The impact of that decision on the board
would have been minimal since the board has many policies in place to
foil conflict of interest or any other illegal or immoral role that might tempt
a board member. Van Berkel rightly pointed out that each board member
holds himself or herself to a higher standard than the board’s code of
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