Halton Catholic school board sanctity of life charity decision put on hold

BURLINGTON — Halton Catholic school board trustees have decided to further deliberate on a controversial policy that bans donations to charities that don’t align with Catholic values.

On Tuesday, trustees passed a motion to send the issue to the board’s policy committee for review this summer to come up with recommendations that will return to trustees in September.

Trustees from the Halton Catholic District School Board are going through feedback from hundreds of community members about whether the board should prohibit “any financial donations to any charities or non-profits that publicly support — either directly or indirectly — abortion, contraception, sterilization, euthanasia or embryonic stem cell research.”

The controversy has brewed for months following the board’s approval of the ban in February.

In April, then-education minister Indira Naidoo-Harris wrote trustees at the board asking that they suspend the ban and that she had received numerous complaints from parents and students about the lack of consultation around the policy.

The board then put the motion on hold until “the completion of community consultations.” That has since been done, and the board was inundated with nearly 1,000 responses — 74 per cent of which were opposed to the motion.