TDSB Investigation - Part 5
The Great Silence
By The Old Guardian
Following the Beaches-East York editorial by Trustees Michelle Aarts and Kevin Morrison
Foreword
When Trustees Aarts and Morrison warned that provincial supervision would erode transparency and local voice, it sounded like a hypothetical. Two weeks later, the courts, the classrooms, and the parents themselves confirmed it: Ontario’s public-education crisis is not financial. It’s constitutional.
1. The Court Speaks — and So Does the Pattern
In October 2025, the Ontario Divisional Court ruled that the TDSB had no authority to disband the parent council at Rawlinson Community School. The superintendent’s decision was branded “unreasonable and without jurisdiction.”
It’s a legal victory for parents, but a moral indictment of the system itself. The board that claims to defend accountability had to be reminded, by a judge, of its own limits.
The timing isn’t coincidence. The ruling arrives as the Ministry of Education strips trustees of oversight, replaces debate with directives, and calls the result “modernization.” What the court defined as overreach, the province is now codifying as policy.
2. The Merit Myth
Days later, another blow landed quietly. The Ministry scrapped the TDSB’s lottery system for specialty schools, restoring merit-based entry under the banner of “fairness.”
Parents cheered. But merit without access is just privilege in uniform.
Trustee Aarts called it “disgraceful” — a regression disguised as reform. Her point isn’t ideology; it’s arithmetic. Almost half of TDSB students live in poverty, and 40,000 require special-education supports. Many will now never see the inside of the very programs meant to spark ambition.
This isn’t opportunity. It’s filtration.
The Minister says merit motivates excellence. History says it institutionalizes inequity. New York City and San Francisco both tried it, both reversed course after watching achievement gaps explode. Ontario is importing failure and calling it progress.
3. Bill 33 — Accountability by Erasure
Meanwhile, Bill 33 grinds through Queen’s Park. It empowers the province to remove trustees permanently, enforce supervision indefinitely, and even mandate police presence in schools — all in the name of “order.”
Teachers’ federations call it a direct threat to democracy. They’re not wrong. Under Bill 33, one Minister can silence forty trustees, override parental committees, and decide which programs live or die — without a single public meeting.
The Rawlinson case proved boards could overstep their jurisdiction. Bill 33 ensures citizens can’t fight back when they do.
4. The Distraction Machine
While classrooms merge three grades under one teacher and special-education assistants vanish from rosters, headlines fixate on symbolic outrage — an anthem sung in Arabic, a debate over “elitism,” a viral clip of a minister scolding a school.
This is the new information economy: noise instead of scrutiny, theatre instead of truth. Every week a new controversy flares up, drawing attention from the quiet centralization of an entire education system.
Outrage is profitable. Oversight is not.
5. The New Normal — Governance Without a Public
Today, most Toronto parents can’t name their trustee. Under supervision, they no longer need to. Decisions arrive by email; meetings are cancelled; committees suspended.
The province calls it efficiency. In practice, it’s governance without a public.
Even as courts reaffirm parental rights, Queen’s Park redefines them out of existence. Families are told to email generic inboxes. Questions go unanswered. The supervisor doesn’t speak to press. The Minister insists everything is “transparent.”
It’s not silence by accident. It’s silence by design.
6. Signal vs Seizure
The North Star Accord teaches that every amplified story serves someone’s interest. Here, the beneficiaries are clear: centralized control, compliant media, and a government that sells power as reform.
By turning parents against trustees, trustees against teachers, and teachers against each other, the system divides the very coalition capable of defending public education.
The result isn’t chaos. It’s control.
7. Closing Statement
A court ruled for parents. The province ruled against them.
Between those two rulings lies the state of democracy in Ontario.
If trustees can’t meet, parents can’t speak, and classrooms can’t function, what remains public about public education?
The great silence has begun.
The question is who will break it.
By autumn, what began in Toronto had spread across Ontario — the supervision model was becoming policy.
→ Read Part 6: The silence protocol
