Nearly two years of disciplinary hearings for a Toronto Catholic school board trustee have wrapped up, with final comments focused on free speech and its limitations.
The Ontario College of Teachers brought Mike Del Grande before a tribunal in hearings starting November 2022 for comments he made about gender identity and abortion in 2019. Del Grande has a teaching licence but has never worked as a teacher.
His attorney Charles Lugosi argued that the college has no jurisdiction over his speech because he was speaking as a trustee and not as a teacher. Lugosi also argued the “political” speech of an elected official should be protected from discipline by a professional regulator….