May 25, 2026
Statement from the Board of Education Regarding the Board’s Reinstatement
Victoria BC, May 25, 2026.Today’s result represents complete vindication for the Greater Victoria School Board. The government never had a lawful basis to fire us.
The decision of whether to have a School Police Liaison Program, and if so, what it should look like, was ours to make. It was a decision of local policy that fell within the Board’s jurisdiction.
From day one, this Board was committed to making evidence-based decisions about whether a School Police Liaison Officer program was effective or necessary. We asked repeatedly for that empirical evidence from police and from government, but it was not produced.
We were never opposed to having police in schools in any number of different functions. That has always been the case in Victoria schools. But based on the evidence that had been provided to us, we did not feel a Police Liaison Program was appropriate. Reasonable people can disagree about these matters. We were elected by the community to make policy decisions like this. We did what we believed was in the best interests of students in our school district.
The Ministry knew this was something within the Board’s jurisdiction, but didn’t respect our decision.
For reasons that are not yet clear, the Ministry didn’t want to be seen to be ordering us to adopt a Police Liaison Program, and instead the Ministry put us through a convoluted and dishonest process of crafting safety plans with a special advisor’s assistance and forcing us to create a plan of which the police approved.
In view of the evidence produced in this case, including the very recent disclosures from this weekend, we are more convinced than ever that the whole process was just a set-up, and it was coordinated by senior Ministry staff who worked closely behind the scenes with police and other advocates for a School Police Liaison Officer Program to try to force us to do as they wished. Under duress, the Board did approve the safety plan the Minister’s special advisor recommended, but we also approved other options which we preferred. In response, the government fired us.
It has taken an enormous amount of work by our lawyers to get to this point, where the government has now entirely abandoned its defence to our claims.
The government fought our application for documents and tried to strike our claims – even claiming there was no evidence for them, when people in the Ministry of Education and Childcare had to have known that to be false. When Justice LeBlanc of the BC Supreme Court agreed with us, the government appealed. The Court of Appeal heard that appeal in January and upheld the decision of Justice LeBlanc. Over this last weekend, before the commencement of this ten day petition hearing, the communications that we consider unequivocally prove our case were finally produced – senior members of the Ministry of Education and Child Care had them all along.
Throughout this litigation, the Ministry has not told the truth about what documents it had. The Ministry has not told the truth about what communications it was having with the police and the special advisor, and the Ministry has not told the truth about what its true objectives were. The Minister’s claim today that these were inadvertent errors simply cannot be sustained in the face of what has transpired in these proceedings. It is not believable. One would think the Minister would look more carefully into these matters before making such statements.
What was done to us was hurtful, embarrassing, damaging, and totally unacceptable. We are parents and community members. We were elected by our community, worked well together as a Board, and made our decisions in good faith and with what we considered to be the best interests of our learning communities in mind. If some people disagreed with our efforts, so be it – that is democracy. Attempting to force us to do something we didn’t believe was in the best interests of students was wrong. Firing us was wrong. We deserve and demand explanations and answers as to how all of this happened and why. We are absolutely determined to get to the bottom of this, and you will hear from us on that in the coming days and weeks.
In the meantime, this Board was elected to serve the School District as its trustees and we look forward to fulfilling that mandate in what remains of our term.
Board of Education
School District No.61 (Greater Victoria)
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