By Josh Hall | @Vancan19

"cloak for political disagreement"

Day 4 of LaGrange v. Red Deer Catholic: Case should be dismissed, says division lawyer

Jun 18, 2024 | 5:49 PM

After a five-week break, the double judicial review of Monique LaGrange v. Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools resumed in the Court of King’s Bench on Tuesday.

The case, being heard in Red Deer under Justice Cheryl Arcand-Kootenay, should conclude Wednesday, though when a decision will be handed down is to be determined.

LaGrange initiated the judicial review in late 2023 following her dismissal from the board of trustees, which disqualified her for two Code of Conduct violations.

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It all started at the very end of August when LaGrange posted a meme to her Facebook page which likened the Pride movement to Nazism.

Through the two judicial reviews, one for each violation, LaGrange hopes for reinstatement to the position for which she was elected in 2021, plus costs.

Day four began with LaGrange’s counsel, James Kitchen, speaking to the second review, which revolves around his client conducting multiple media interviews — one with Talk Truth and another with Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson. She did so despite the first violation’s sanctions forbidding her from speaking with the media, nor representing the board in any official capacity, except attending board meetings.

Kitchen argued that no reasonable or intelligent person would think that LaGrange, in those interviews, was speaking on the board’s behalf, or that taking part was itself a, “board-related matter.”

She spoke of her conflict with the board, he said, but not for the board.

“This is absurd,” he asserted, calling the board’s punishment of LaGrange contrived, reverse-engineered, and a, “cloak for political disagreement.”

We live in a society, said Kitchen, where challenging LGBT (sic) ideas isn’t allowed.

“It was a lot different in 1824,” he said, going on to say that the board, in laying down their sanctions, has confused hate with simple criticism of ideas.

He also noted it’s societal norm to criticize Christianity, yet those folks aren’t so swiftly labeled as haters.

Kitchen also referred to case law (Mason v. Canada; Canada v. Vavilov), in reference to what those cases say about failure to meaningfully grapple with what the applicant (LaGrange in this case) has argued to them.

Kitchen said the Red Deer Catholic board didn’t do this, outright ignoring LaGrange, and therefore the disqualification should be overturned.

He argued too that a board shouldn’t be able to disqualify someone just because the Education Act says it can; instead, he opined, if a board wants such power, it should explicitly state it has that power in the actual Code of Conduct.

LaGrange resigned under protest, Kitchen said – because of what the legislation says, and not because she agreed with the disqualification.

This is where the school division’s lawyers honed in on Tuesday, arguing the entire case should be dismissed.

Teresa Haykowsky pointed to Section 87 of the Education Act which addresses that a trustee can be disqualified for any number of reasons, including a breach of the Code of Conduct.

Haykowsky went on to explain the following:

If a trustee has been disqualified under Section 87, Section 90 states, the person, “shall immediately resign.”

Section 91 then notes that if a disqualified person refuses to resign (which LaGrange did not do), the board can pass a new resolution declaring that person disqualified.

Section 92(1), as Haykowsky dug deeper, says where a person is declared disqualified under Section 91 (the second declaration from the board), that person may apply to the courts for a decision.

That accurately describes what LaGrange has done, filing two judicial reviews; however, Haykowsky notes, she resigned under Section 90, not Section 91 — not challenging the initial decision by refusing to resign.

“The legislator has spoken,” Haykowsky proclaimed. “The trustee resigned. If there’s a resignation, there’s a resignation.”

Haykowsky continued, giving Justice Kootenay-Arcand reason to quash the reviews, in the case she doesn’t agree with their assessment of the case’s mootness.

“This is about the conduct of a school board trustee,” she said. “This is not a personal or ideological dispute.”

She also fought back against assertions that the board did not meaningfully grapple with the information provided by LaGrange, citing the lengthy list of reasons presented in the fall.

Haykowsky said any notion that the board acted in bad faith or ill-respect is unfounded.

rdnewsNOW will have more coverage of this story when it resumes on June 19.

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