While Newmarket Catholic trustee Theresa McNicol had been cleared by the court over one alleged code of conduct violation, she is again facing censure that bars her from York Catholic District School Board committee meetings until April 30, 2025.
“It’s been difficult for me,” McNicol told NewmarketToday. “It’s never going to end with this group. For some reason, they just hate me and I pray every day for them, that they stop this, because it’s taking a toll on me and my health.”
She added that she had put her retirement on the line — to the tune of $105,000 — to defend herself from her school board.
McNicol said she was pleased by the decision.
“I was afraid that I would lose everything that I have financially. I would be totally broke,” she said. “I had to stand up for myself and the voters that voted me in. I was standing up for democracy.”
She also questioned how much the board would have had to spend on legal fees, estimating the board likely spent hundreds of thousands.
“The taxpayers should be upset. We need to spend money in the proper places, not on stupidity,” McNicol said.
NewmarketToday did not receive a reply to a request for comment on the legal costs from York Catholic District School Board before the publication deadline.
After being censured and barred from committees and in-camera sessions of YCDSB over an alleged code of conduct violation last year based on comments she made regarding Italian trustees, McNicol pushed for a judicial review.
The ruling delivered last May from the Ontario Court of Justice went in McNicol’s favour, with the court finding the board had failed to follow its own procedure in punishing McNicol, and had “breached procedural fairness.”
But just one week after the court heard the case, McNicol was censured again for another year over another code of conduct violation — this time for allegedly laughing at another trustee during the inaugural meeting last November and refusing to apologize.
“It’s pathetic,” she told NewmarketToday. “I don’t know what I’ve ever done for them to continue this harassment against me.”
The board initially punished McNicol in September 2023 after a third-party investigation. The censure came over a dispute between McNicol and a group of trustees, to whom she referred as “Italian trustees” and expressed concern for her safety. Trustees voted initially to bar McNicol from meetings for the remainder of her term after an investigation, but that was later downgraded after advice from legal counsel to only block her from one meeting.
Although the board decided to bar McNicol from committee meetings, it also decided she could not be on in-camera sessions or committee of the whole meetings.
The Ontario Court of Justice also awarded McNicol with the cost to apply for judicial review of $7,500 inclusive.
“Ms. McNicol had a legitimate expectation that these procedures would be followed,” Justice Harriet Sachs wrote. “The board also ignored one of the statutory requirements for imposing a sanction — namely, the need to make a finding that there had been a breach of the code of conduct.”
McNicol and board members had clashed for several months after a some trustees felt that McNicol had made discriminatory remarks in 2022 by referring to them as Italian trustees, expressing fear for her safety, and using Italian language in emails and social media and indicating it was the way her colleagues would understand. That dispute has roots in a prior debate where McNicol brought forward a defeated motion on Indigenous land acknowledgement.
McNicol has previously said the comments were not meant to discriminate, but a JMJ Workplace investigation found she engaged in discriminatory and harassing conduct toward colleagues based on ancestry.
Regardless, when trustees moved to bar McNicol from meetings at the report's release by a narrow 5-4 vote, the justices said they were not following proper procedure.
The court ruling pointed out that the initial concern by trustees occurred in 2022, at which point the trustees did not want to make a code of conduct complaint. That only came to the table 14 months later, after the investigator’s report.
That board report contained an opinion McNicol breached the code of conduct. However, the code explicitly states that such a report is not supposed to contain an opinion or a recommendation, only findings of fact, and it is the board that decides if the code was breached. The board did not do this when it initially imposed a sanction on McNicol, simply accepting it as fact based on the report that she had breached the code.
That raises issues with whether or not the board had jurisdiction to punish McNicol in the matter it did, the ruling said.
“While the allegations underlying Ms. McNicol’s conduct were serious, the rights at stake were also serious, both to Ms. McNicol and to her electorate. Limiting her ability to participate in the board’s deliberations directly affected her ability to effectively represent her constituents,” Sachs wrote.
The finding also notes that McNicol had been punished with the sanctions for seven months, in line with similar cases where trustees made discriminatory or harassing remarks.
McNicol punished again
But on April 30 — a week after the case was heard but before the ruling released May 22 — the board again voted to censure McNicol.
The board found McNicol violated the code of conduct once more. This time, it was over McNicol, alongside colleagues Elizabeth Crowe and Jennifer Wigston, allegedly laughing at a comment made by vice-chair Maria Iafrate Nov. 28.
While Crowe and Wigston apologized, McNicol did not. Iafrate said the laughter came about over commenting that the lawyer should be advised on the number of votes. McNicol has refuted this and said her attention was on the gallery, on someone taking her picture.
The integrity commissioner report said McNicol’s account does not seem to align with video evidence. Regardless of McNicol’s intent, that report said it was interpreted by Iafrate as derision, and “at least worth an apology.”
The board voted 7-2 April 30 that McNicol violated the code of conduct and barred her from another year of committee meetings until April 30, 2025.
McNicol said she does not intend to oppose this sanction but does not believe if she apologized, that board members would have accepted it.
