Toronto’s Catholic trustee strikes back after court ruling and order to pay board $140,000 in costs

A trustee is in trouble over $140,000 in court costs incurred by the Toronto Catholic school board after a judicial review found the board acted lawfully when it censured him for trying to include fetish behavior, along with gender identity, in its code of conduct.

But the case is not over, and no money will be paid out anytime soon, because trustee Michael Del Grande filed an appeal of the court’s decision on censure.

The question of costs arose when the Divisional Court of the Superior Court of Justice initially ruled that the Toronto Catholic District School Board had acted lawfully by censuring and sanctioning Del Grande for controversial comments made during a November 2019 public meeting.

In its Jan. 13 decision, the three-judge panel noted that, as the prevailing party, the TCDSB would normally have been entitled to pay costs, but they had not received the necessary information about legal fees, so no order was given. nothing.

Then, on January 27, the judges released an addendum to their ruling saying the board is entitled to $140,000 in costs. They noted that lawyers for both sides had reached an agreement on costs and had notified the court by email, but the panel had not received the details.

When contacted by the Star on Monday, Del Grande, who represents District 7 (Scarborough-Agincourt), said he could not comment on the matter. But his lawyer, Charles Lugosi, said the documents needed to request permission to appeal the Divisional Court ruling had already been filed with the Ontario Court of Appeal.

“There are very serious legal issues of national importance that arise from this decision,” Lugosi said, referring to them as precedent.

Trustee Markus de Domenico of Ward 2 (Etobicoke), welcomed the Divisional Court’s ruling.

“The board was fully vindicated,” he told the Star, adding: “We followed the exact rules and we followed them correctly, but Mr. Del Grande didn’t like them and he went to Divisional Court to try to overturn it.”

District 5 (North York) trustee Maria Rizzo told the Star that community members have “waited a long time for this trial” and the prospect of an appeal means “justice will take even longer to arrive”.

“It has been since 2019 that we have been dealing with this and it has been a cross to bear, probably for Del Grande and for the school board, but most importantly for our children and our families who have really been hurt by this and have not I have been able to overcome it.

The controversy stems from a November 2019 board meeting when trustees debated a motion updating the board’s code of conduct to include the terms gender identity and expression as prohibited grounds of discrimination, as required by the province and the human rights law. Del Grande called it a “slippery slope” and proposed an amendment that seeks to add fetish behaviors, such as pedophilia, bestiality and vampirism.

After that meeting, the TCDSB received more than a dozen formal complaints and launched an independent review. An investigator found that Del Grande had violated the Trustees’ Code of Conduct by creating an “unwelcoming and harmful environment for certain members of the Catholic School Board community” and had “crossed a line” by using “inflammatory language.”

In August 2020, the trustees voted on whether Del Grande had breached the code of conduct, but fell one vote short of the required two-thirds majority, sparking public outcry. In November 2020, the trustees held another meeting and reconsidered their first decision. That time, they voted to find Del Grande in violation of the code and voted to impose sanctions, including making a public apology to him and receiving fairness training.

Del Grande attempted to appeal the merits of those decisions, along with the penalties, to the TCDSB, but was unsuccessful. That led Del Grande to ask the Divisional Court for judicial review of four decisions made by the board.

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