The province is not planning to further investigate alleged discriminatory comments made by Newmarket Catholic trustee Theresa McNicol has made.
The York Catholic District School Board trustees formally have asked the province for an inquiry into the comments last month, but multiple trustees have confirmed that will not happen as the province has indicated it will not get more involved. Five Italian trustees accused McNicol of anti-Italian racism, though she maintains no wrongdoing.
Although McNichol also voted in favour of the investigation, she said she is fine with the outcome.
“I want to move forward,” she said. “You have to understand. They created a situation."
The dispute stems from McNicol sending a message to the board asking for more security at a meeting, and then responding that she feared for her safety. She also advertised for a board meeting regarding a new report on an ongoing dispute with other trustees. In both instances, trustees said she included the Italian language, and the group of five Italian trustees said it fell into discrimination.
The board said it has received a response from the ministry, and a report on that will be discussed at the Dec. 20 meeting. This comes with four of the five trustees who have accused McNicol of no longer being on the board, having not run in the last election.
Maria Marchese is one of those trustees who has now left the board. She said she was disappointed in the government’s decision.
“Obviously complaints regarding discriminatory comments, the government certainly does not have zero tolerance for it because if they had, they would have been responding to our request back in July for a public inquiry,” she said. “There should certainly be immediate action in dealing with them.”
McNicol and the other group of trustees, which also includes current board vice-chair Maria Iafrate and former trustees Dominic Mazzotta, Rose Cantisano and Dino Giuliani, have butted heads with McNicol over the past term. Both sides described a contentious relationship stemming from when McNicol put a resolution forward asking for the Indigenous blessing to occur before prayers at board meetings November 2021. That was defeated but led to a series of disagreements around conduct. McNicol was eventually sanctioned the day after her re-election and had to write a letter of apology for misconduct after raising a misconduct accusation improperly.
The Newmarket, Georgina and East Gwillimbury trustee said she had a legitimate fear for her safety and got a death threat during the election over the racism accusation. She said the whole matter was “cooked up” by the group of five trustees and was aimed at losing her in the October election.
“I really went through the wringer in the last election. Embarrassed, and I had to keep my head up high,” she said. “I feel very disillusioned,”
Marchese said the matter came up in July, well before the election, and before she had even decided not to run.
Even though four of the trustees who made the accusations are no longer on the board, she said the complaint does not go away and needs resolution.
“Trustee McNichol knows what she needs to do, and that is to publicly apologize to the five of us and more broadly, for the comments,” she said. “She needs to do that in a public forum.”
There are still options for those members no longer on the board, such as filing a human rights complaint, Marchese said.
McNicol maintains there was nothing wrong in the comments drawing the ire of the five trustees.
“There were no discriminating comments, and I think they need to individually apologize for what they put me through in the last two years,” she said. “Two years of harassment.”
