Bill 88 rocks the QESBA

While sweeping changes to laws regarding education are to be enacted as of this July under provincial legislation called Bill 88, the Ministry of Education is preparing for discussions with Lester B. Pearson School Board and remaining anglophone boards in Quebec in order to mitigate some provisions the latter consider unfair. "The Ministry will sit down with the school boards to talk about some of the provisions that won't come into effect this July yet," said Ministry spokesperson Jean-Pascal Bernier.

Particularly at issue for the Quebec English School Boards Association is a revision to school board electoral laws, which would have board chairs elected by the general population as opposed to the council of commissioners, as is currently the case. "I'm not sure you'd be getting a lot of candidates (for board chairperson) under these circumstances," Pearson chair Marcus Tabachnick told The Chronicle. "It becomes very expensive to campaign," he said, adding that commissioner candidates frequently have to fork cash out of their own pockets during an election campaign, are only reimbursed afterward, and never fully so.

After the last board elections, he said, several of the candidates only got reimbursed around 60 per cent of their costs.

Estimating that a territory the size of Lester B. Pearson would at least require $30,000-$50,000 for a chairperson's election budget, Tabachnick said that could mean expenses of up to $10,000 by chairperson hopefuls.

The ministry conceded that, with their generally lower budgets in comparison to French school boards, the anglophone school boards may have a harder time with budgets.

However, it has never been the case that any school board election hopeful is fully reimbursed, Bernier said. "The law already foresees that there are no such things as 100 per cent reimbursements," Bernier said, adding the reimbursement formula is usually based on a 75 per cent refund for the first $500, and a 50 per cent refund for the rest until a plateau of $2700 plus 42 cents per registered voter is reached.

He did not deny the ministry could foresee the creation of some sort of budget in order to help the English school boards during elections. "I can't really talk about that right now," he said. "But it will be a part of the overall negotiations."

However, in an internal QESBA report summarizing a January 30 meeting with the Ministry of Education obtained by The Chronicle, the school boards association seems markedly optimistic about financing. "There will likely be new financing available to help put this new regime in place. Mme. Courchesne is open to helping QESBA create a communications and information campaign to promote future school board elections," the report reads.

Not everyone is pessimistic about the electoral reform. Retired Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School teacher Chris Eustace said the election of chairpersons by the general populace is a boon to democracy, and called budgetary concerns a "red herring." "I wouldn't ask for any money if I was running," he said, adding that having many candidates running for chairperson could potentially increase voter interest, which has been very low during recent school board elections.