Who were the big winners in the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) election? It depends on who you ask.
Progressives certainly had a lot to cheer about. Not only was board chair Scott Piatkowski solidly re-elected, so were fellow progressive trustees Joanne Weston and Kathleen Woodcock. In addition, several newly elected trustees also had platforms that placed them on the progressive end of the spectrum.
However, more conservative candidates also had cause for celebration. Mike Ramsay, the trustee suspended by his colleagues for challenging their woke ideology, was handily re-elected in his ward. So was Ramsay’s frequent ally, Cindy Watson. Not only that but incumbent trustee Laurie Tremble, who had filed the complaint that led to Ramsay’s suspension, and incumbent Jayne Herring who supported that suspension, were both defeated.
In the end, things aren’t likely to change much in the WRDSB. Progressives still hold a majority on the board and will be able to set the agenda. Meanwhile, Ramsay and Watson will likely continue leading the opposition against their colleagues. Neither side won the clear victory they were hoping for.
Further complicating matters is the fact that Ramsay and Weston, both running in the same ward, received a nearly identical number of votes. Since the top four candidates got elected, they were both successful. Clearly, many people cast votes for both Ramsay and Weston, even though their voting records and platforms were diametrically opposed.
To understand how this could happen, it’s important to remember that local elections are different from provincial or federal elections. In most provinces, candidates in local elections run as individuals, not as party candidates. This means that voters base their decisions on the candidates themselves rather than on their party affiliations.
As a result, candidates with significant name recognition and a solid record of achievement have a significant edge over those who do not. This is why incumbents have such a strong advantage. Add to this the fact that it’s often possible for people to vote for more than one candidate at a time and we end up with decidedly mixed results when all the ballots are counted.
One thing we clearly saw in school board elections across Ontario is that single-issue candidates (or those perceived as being focused on a single issue) generally fared poorly. For example, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board candidates Chanel Pfahl and Shannon Boschy, who run on a widely publicized “anti-woke” platform, didn’t even come close to winning their respective zones.
By making their entire campaigns about stopping the woke agenda, Pfahl and Boschy came across as single-issue candidates. This made it easy for their opponents, and the mainstream media, to typecast them.
In addition, Peter Wallace, the author of the anti-woke Blueprint for Canada platform, went down to defeat in his quest to become a trustee in the City of Kawartha Lakes. So did anti-woke candidates Catherine Kronas, Larry Pattison, and Larry Masters in their respective wards in the City of Hamilton.
The lesson to take from these results is that voters do not look favourably on single-issue candidates. Being a school trustee is about far more than supporting or opposing a particular political ideology. Rather, trustees must make decisions about a wide range of issues and many of these issues do not fit easily on any political spectrum.
For example, whether a candidate is woke or anti-woke is unlikely to have much bearing on the decisions they make about school catchment areas, bus transportation routes, or French immersion programming. Nor does political ideology matter much when it comes to following provincial workplace health and safety protocols.
In other words, people want to vote for candidates who will roll up their sleeves and get to work on behalf of students. Most people don’t want to see school boards become political battlegrounds. Anyone who is passionate about partisan politics is much better suited for provincial or federal office than for a trustee seat.
Nevertheless, political progressives should not be too smug about Ontario’s school board election results. Just because most candidates running on an explicit anti-woke platform were unsuccessful doesn’t mean that voters have wholeheartedly embraced woke ideology. Otherwise, Mike Ramsay and Cindy Watson wouldn’t have handily won re-election in the WRDSB.
Being a trustee is a serious responsibility. All newly elected trustees have their work cut out for them in the years ahead.
