Trustee’s motion on caboto flawed

Re: Trustee questions using Caboto Club for board events, by Julie Kotsis, Feb. 22, 2018.

In setting policy one should create general rules with ad hoc exceptions rather than ad hoc rules with general exceptions.

The Ontario Human Rights Code lists grounds upon which discrimination is forbidden as: race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status or disability. Trustee Jessica Sartori’s motion before the Greater Essex County District School Board specifically targets the Caboto Club’s sex discrimination in membership and governance.

Sartori said: “It’s about really showing girls that they really can be anything they want to be. It’s part of our board’s values that boys and girls have an equal opportunity.”

Caboto has at least two membership restrictions currently: Italian and male. The school board’s proposed bylaw is meant to encourage Caboto to allow Francesca, whose grandmother is from Italy, the same right as her brother, Marco. Or, put another way, not make Francesca feel of lower self-worth because she is attending at a facility that her father is permitted to join, but not her mother. Here is the problem. What about Adnan or Amena from Syria? They still cannot be members. Applying Sartori’s quote above: Is it not the board’s values that Italians and Syrians have an equal opportunity?

If the city or school board wish to address the Caboto issue, they can amend their purchasing bylaw to not purchase from any entity whose membership or governance is segregated on any of the Human Rights Code listed grounds. Consider ad hoc exemptions from there, by waiving your purchasing bylaw as individual cases may warrant. When you pick and choose which segregation issues to prioritize you are actually saying that the others are either less or not important. That is the problem with ad hoc rather than general rules.

Daniel Ableser, Windsor