Toronto School Board Trustee Could Face Disciplinary Action for Gender, Abortion Comments

Toronto Catholic District School Board Trustee Mike Del Grande could face disciplinary action as a result of hearings by the Ontario College of Teachers, the first of which was on Nov. 30, 2022. Courtesy of Mike Del Grande

Ontario’s College of Teachers has accused a school board trustee of professional misconduct for comments he made on gender identity and abortion, and is holding disciplinary hearings to investigate the allegation.

Trustee Mike Del Grande of the Toronto Catholic School Board could be disciplined for two incidents. In one, he spoke to a student trustee after she criticized an anti-abortion film. On the other occasion, Del Grande commented on a “slippery slope” the board might go down if it included protections for “gender identity” and “gender expression” in its Code of Conduct.

At a hearing on Nov. 30, college attorney Danielle Miller said it’s not about Del Grande expressing his views on these subjects as an elected official or a Catholic, it’s about “the way in which he voiced his opposition.”

She argued his words were “offensive and demeaning” toward all LGBTQ students. Former Student Trustee Taylor Dallin testified that she “was really emotional and really hurt” by his words.

Del Grande’s lawyer Charles Lugosi argued that the college took his client’s words out of context in its investigation. He also argued that debate on controversial topics is bound to create offence and Del Grande was within his right to freedom of expression.

‘Slippery Slope’

On Nov. 7, 2019, when the board’s Student Achievement Committee debated including “gender identity” and similar terms in the Code of Conduct, Del Grande said the board would be going down a “slippery slope.” They might also add “bestiality, pedophilia, gerontophilia,” and some 25 other philias to the list, he said.

Miller said in her opening remarks: “The college will establish that it was disgraceful, dishonourable, and unprofessional, and unbecoming for a member who was an educational leader, to publicly express hostile attitudes towards LGBTQ-plus community members by suggesting that they were no more entitled to protection from discrimination than rapists, cannibals, pedophiles, and vampires.”

Lugosi argued that Del Grande was employing a literary technique of hyperbolic rhetoric in listing off every philia he could find.

“Anybody who can employ logic and look at the words themselves and the context of his literary use of language will easily see he was never equating the groups,” Lugosi said. “He was doing a Howard Moscoe thing.”

Howard Moscoe was a long-serving Toronto city councillor known for “his theatrical ways of communicating, where he would use gross exaggeration that would be offensive to people to get away with making the point he wants to make,” Lugosi said.

The college also accused Del Grande of making inappropriate comments to the media defending his “slippery slope” comment.

“The slippery slope is exactly that. It’s the slippery slope,” he said during a Global News podcast interview. "People send their kids to a Catholic school because they expect Catholic morality, Catholic teaching, Catholic values … I don’t understand for the life of me why various provincial governments have to sexualize everything in the classroom.”

In an article published on LifeSiteNews.com, Del Grande quoted Fr. Dwight Longenecker: “First we overlook evil. Then we permit evil. Then we legalize evil. Then we promote evil. Then we celebrate evil. Then we persecute those who still call it evil.”

Miller claims he essentially called LGBTQ students “evil.”

‘Unplanned’

On Sept. 25, 2019, a meeting of the board’s Catholic Values Subcommittee discussed a proposal to play a film titled “Unplanned” in some classrooms. The film is based on the memoirs of anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson who was once a clinic director at Planned Parenthood. Johnson’s story details negative experiences at the clinic, particularly watching via ultrasound a fetus as it was being aborted.

Lugosi said Del Grande felt it was his duty to uphold Catholic values and bring this film to the classroom.

Student Trustee Dallin expressed concerns about the movie and its stance against abortion. The college included on its list of Del Grande’s alleged offences his body language while Dallin was speaking. He was “rolling his eyes, sighing, frowning, snickering, using a hostile and/or sarcastic tone and using aggressive body language,” the notice of hearing said.

After the meeting, Del Grande spoke to Dallin in the trustee’s lounge. The college alleges in the notice of hearing that he told her she “was brainwashed by the Liberals.”

Dallin began her testimony at the hearing, but Lugosi did not have a chance to question her before the hearing ended, to be reconvened in the new year. Del Grande and his witnesses have also not yet had a chance to recount events from their perspectives.

In his opening remarks, Lugosi said that Dallin knew, “or ought to have known, [discussion of the film] was going to stimulate controversy.” She initiated commentary on the film so “she can’t later complain, I would suggest, that she’s offended by someone else who disagrees with her.”

Free Speech

Lugosi said the hearings, as they continue, will explore Del Grande’s right to free speech. He cited a recent Supreme Court case that ruled in favour of Quebec comedian Mike Ward, who made a joke about a disabled singer. That decision said that to rule in favour of the offended singer would result in “a shift toward protecting a right not to be offended, which has no place in a democratic society.”

Miller, the college’s attorney, said, “There are limits to anyone’s freedom of expression, particularly so for a member of the teaching profession speaking about students in front of students in the context of a student’s achievement and well-being committee meeting.”

Lugosi, however, questioned to what extent Del Grande can be tried as a “member of the teaching profession.” Though he has a teaching licence, he was acting as a trustee, not a teacher, Lugosi noted.

Del Grande has already faced inquiry on these matters for years. A crowdfunding campaign to cover his legal costs has raised just over $126,000.

In August 2020, school board trustees voted that Del Grande did not breach the trustee code of conduct with his statements. In November 2020, the board reopened and reversed its August decision. Del Grande took the board to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for doing so, and was finally heard in the court in October of this year. A decision has not yet been made by the court.

Now, the College of Teachers is holding hearings on his case.

The college’s charges against Del Grande include that he (1) abused a student or students verbally; (2) abused a student or students psychologically or emotionally; (3) committed acts that “would reasonably be regarded by members as disgraceful, dishonourable, or unprofessional; and (4) engaged in conduct unbecoming a member.