Firing Victoria’s School Board Was an Abuse of Power

Not only did B.C.’s Education Ministry conspire with Victoria police to oust a democratically elected school board, it also concealed evidence from the B.C. Supreme Court, where the trustees had challenged Education Minister Lisa Beare’s January 2025 order to fire them.

The abuse — revealed only days before a recent hearing and months after the court had ordered the government to disclose all documents — was so outrageous it drew a sharp reprimand from Justice Lindsay LeBlanc.

It also led the government to abandon its case this week, reinstate the board with back pay and cover the board’s legal fees and other costs. The whole fiasco likely cost taxpayers more than $1 million.

More importantly, Victoria students and parents have had no elected school trustees for more than a year, with the district run by a government appointee.

The recently disclosed documents — including texts and emails between Jennifer McCrea, associate deputy education minister, Victoria Police Department Deputy Chief Mike Brown and special adviser Kevin Godden — revealed a shocking lack of professionalism.

How unprofessional? When McCrea messaged VicPD’s Brown about a small protest at the Education Ministry office over the push to restore police in schools, he responded: “Losers.”

McCrea said her office was trying to get a photo of board chair Nicole Duncan at the protest, and Brown replied, “She would be the one that looks like a narcissistic moron.” Brown also suggested police were watching the protesters and his “source on the ground” saw a number of trustees.

The board had decided to suspend the police program in 2023, after B.C. human rights commissioner Kasari Govender researched the programs in 2022 and wrote the BC School Trustees Association, suggesting the harms — especially for marginalized students with historically difficult experiences with police — may outweigh the benefits. Govender suggested pausing the programs until more research was completed.

When the board and Govender held a media conference to discuss the issues around police in schools, Brown messaged McCrea and again called the trustees “morons.” He also called Govender an “arrogant ideologue.” (Which is demonstrably false.)

Nowhere in the 100 pages of messages and other withheld documents do the participants stop and self-reflect, nor do they question whether the ministry and police should be working together to force officers back into Victoria schools.

McCrea doesn’t hit pause or recognize that insulting the trustees and the public is destructive and incompetent.

No one raises the question of why the ministry and one interest group — the police — set out to undermine and destroy a school board elected by the citizens of Greater Victoria.

The messages also make Beare look ridiculous.

At one point, McCrea suggests the minister is wavering on the attempt to crush the board. And she enthusiastically grasps at a message from Brown aimed at stiffening Beare’s resolve.

“George Jay elementary just seized a home made shank and a box of vapes from a Grade 5 student,” Brown wrote. “Principal told our cops it’s like working in a prison.”

George Jay has about 440 students from kindergarten to Grade 5. I have a family member who went there in recent years. To claim it resembles a penitentiary, with Grade 3 students stalking the playground with tattoos and weapons, is ridiculous and an insult to the students, teachers and staff.

A serious person would question the story, at least try to make sure it’s not a fabrication.

Instead McCrea enthusiastically told Brown she was taking it to Beare. “That’s what she needed to hear today.”

The exchanges between McCrea and Godden, the special adviser Beare appointed to “help” the board develop a safety plan, are also troubling.

Godden, a former Abbotsford School District superintendent, was in regular communication with McCrea to denigrate trustees and share information with the ministry.

Correspondence reveals the school board’s chair and other trustees repeatedly asked Godden to provide an example of a safety plan from another district that the minister considered acceptable.

Godden, being paid $3,000 a day, replied with bureaucratic evasions and never did provide an example.

This was all about power and the ability of the ministry and police to force their will on an elected school board that had decided that police in schools was not in students’ best interests.

How do I know?

While the school district officially halted the police-in-schools program in 2023, the Victoria Police Department had ended its participation five years earlier, in 2018, during a budget fight. At that time, the department said the school program was a low priority. (Other police forces in the district still participated.)

The Victoria Police Department never considered the program worth restoring — that is, until the trustees decided to end police in schools in 2023.

Then it became a police cause.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether police should have a role in schools, and what that role should be. The decision should be evidence-based.

But Beare’s decision to force police into Victoria schools was not informed by any actual evidence of the risks and benefits.

And her response to the ministry’s costly and destructive bungling of the issue has been hapless.

Confronted with the failure to disclose documents, which the court ordered in March, Beare told the legislature her staff had told her it was an “inadvertent” error.

The justice noted in court the directions around disclosure were clearly outlined. The lawyer for the trustees said even a simple search would have found the documents. And government lawyers made it clear the ministry had failed to provide the information.

The Education Ministry, under Beare, objected to a democratically elected school board’s decision to end a police program. It conspired with police to attack and undermine the board, and Beare ultimately made the decision to fire the trustees — again, who had been elected by voters.

And it withheld evidence from the courts in a shocking failure.

It might be Beare can stay in cabinet. It shouldn’t be as education minister.