🧭 The Old Guardian | TDSB Investigation Series Part 9
The Province-Wide Pattern
It started in Toronto.
Two boards placed under supervision, trustees dismissed, transparency throttled. The justification was financial, but the facts never supported it.
Two independent audits — one by Deloitte LLP for the Catholic board, one by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the public board — found no evidence of mismanagement. Both confirmed the boards were well-governed. Yet the province intervened anyway, appointing supervisors who answer not to parents, trustees, or the public, but directly to the Ministry.
The Financial Accountability Office later warned that without increased provincial spending, service cuts to education were inevitable. It wasn’t a question of board overspending. It was underfunding by design.
The Expanding Circle of Control
Now the same supervision model is spreading across Ontario.
Last week, the Near North District School Board was ordered to resolve dysfunction by the Minister of Education. In practice, this means more provincial oversight, fewer local decisions, and another community cut off from its elected voice.
The term “dysfunction” has become political shorthand — a convenient label that allows Queen’s Park to take control of any board, at any time, without public consultation. Where Toronto was the pilot, the north is now the proving ground.
The Student Front
Even university students are seeing the pattern.
In an op-ed titled “Bill 33 is an Attack on Student Life”, The Varsity warned that the proposed legislation gives the Ministry unprecedented power over education, eroding student representation and transparency. When the youngest voters in Ontario recognize the warning signs of democratic decline, it’s no longer an isolated issue. It’s generational.
From K-12 to postsecondary, the message is consistent. Voices closest to the classroom are being written out of the system.
The Messaging Network
Across multiple boards — Toronto, Peel, Thames Valley — ideological “guides” are being circulated internally, often authored or co-authored by outside advocacy groups. Normally, such material would undergo trustee review. Under supervision, it simply appears, adopted without vote and distributed without oversight.
This isn’t a partisan question. It’s a governance one. When elected boards lose the ability to review what enters classrooms, accountability disappears.
Even the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association (OPSBA) has broken its usual neutrality to sound the alarm: “Democracy is not outdated.” OPSBA has warned that Bills 33, 56, and 60 collectively undermine local governance. When the province’s own oversight body starts using language like that, the issue is no longer political. It’s structural.
The Parallel Fronts
In Hamilton, parents are protesting Bill 56, which would eliminate speed cameras in school zones. Trustees across Ontario are pleading with the province not to defund proven safety tools.
At the same time, Bill 33 expands ministerial powers to impose police presence in schools and silence parent councils under the guise of efficiency.
Together, these policies signal a single direction: less local control, more centralized authority.
The Pattern Revealed
What looks like reform in isolation — a budget fix here, a “dysfunction” order there — is, in aggregate, a consolidation of power.
The province defines the problem, dictates the solution, and controls the narrative.
The rhetoric is always the same: efficiency, accountability, safety. The reality is the opposite: silence, opacity, and control.
The boards are no longer laboratories of education. They have become laboratories of compliance.
The Human Cost
Teachers and principals, already managing overcrowded classes and rising violence, are now watching programs vanish mid-year. Parents are watching their children shuffled across classrooms to satisfy “funding alignment.” Trustees are watching from outside the buildings they were elected to oversee.
In the space of a single year, Toronto parents stopped getting answers, teachers stopped getting support, and trustees stopped being trusted.
That isn’t reform. That’s replacement.
Signal vs. Seizure
Every amplified scandal serves someone’s interest.
The louder the talk of “trustee dysfunction,” the quieter the conversation about development and privatization.
Toronto Lands Corporation properties — some of the most valuable urban real estate in Canada — remain under opaque review.
The real dividend of dysfunction isn’t educational. It’s economic.
The Throughline of Control
In 2018, Premier Ford cut Toronto City Council in half, arguing it would make government more efficient.
In 2025, he cut Toronto’s school boards off entirely.
The method hasn’t changed, only the jurisdiction.
Efficiency was never the goal.
Control was.
Closing Reflection
Ontario once led Canada in educational autonomy, with local trustees, open meetings, and direct parent representation.
Today, its schools are run from behind closed doors by appointees with no electoral accountability.
When a government can dismiss democracy in the name of efficiency, the next generation won’t learn what democracy is.
They’ll only learn who gets to decide.
From one boardroom to an entire province, this is how local governance was rewritten.
The Old Guardian will continue following every legislative change tied to education and public oversight in Ontario.