LBPSB commissioners support proposed settlement over fees

Lawsuit argues dozens of school boards contravened Quebec Education Act

The Lester B. Pearson School Board council of commissioners called a special meeting last week to vote on a proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit concerning school fees. The West Island school board is one of 68 boards provincewide that were named in the lawsuit and which signed resolutions last week.

LBPSB council of commissioners chair Noel Burke said the board was compelled to keep the financial details confidential until the resolutions had been signed and the agreement given final approval by Quebec Superior Court.

Following an in-camera discussion, the council of commissioners in attendance voted unanimously in favour of signing the resolution. The resolution reads, in part, “... the transaction and all documents that may be required to give full effect to the present transaction are confidential and cannot be made public until the transaction has been approved by the court.”

Approved or not, terms of the proposed agreement were leaked to La Presse and published May 10. It was reported that a proposed $153-million settlement would be paid out to 925,000 students. Each student would receive about $165.

Burke couldn’t say how the probable payout would affect the bottom line at the Lester B. Pearson School Board. “We will have to see what the financial ramifications are, down the road, but our understanding is the boards will have to bear the cost,” he said.

Burke said there has been little government guidance when it comes to public school fees. Two sets of guidelines were published by the government in the ’90s but Burke said they were not concise, leaving certain fee options open for discussion. “In Ontario, the guidelines are precise about what fees can and cannot be charged,” he said. “It is the government’s responsibility to give us clear guidelines. Without some real clarity we could end up in the same situation all over again.”

The lawsuit was filed in 2013 by Daisye Marcil, a mother of two from the Saguenay. She was perturbed that she had to pay fees to her children’s public school for materials ranging from a grammar book to a protractor. She argued that the fees contravened the Quebec Education Act.

Article 7 of Chapter 1/Division 1 of the Quebec Education Act states, in part, “Students other than those enrolled in adult education have a right to the free use of textbooks and other instructional material required for the teaching of programs of studies until the last day of the school calendar of the school year.”

In December 2016, Marcil was given the green light to launch a class-action lawsuit, which implicated 68 of the province’s 72 school boards. The school boards filed an appeal but it was rejected by the Quebec Court of Appeal in April 2017. The lawsuit covers fees paid by parents from 2009 to 2016.

The last two years were not included in the lawsuit because during that period the Quebec government began paying parents $100 a year, per student, to help defray school costs.

Burke said there could be a ruling by the end of the summer. And with a provincial election looming, Burke said he hoped the Education Ministry would produce a set of precise fee guidelines before people head to the polls.