Ontario bill could lead to firing of school board trustee over Italy art trip

Education Minister Paul Calandra has tabled a bill with the sole purpose of firing one school board trustee.

It is related to a $45,000 trip that four trustees from the Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board took last year to Italy, where they bought $100,000 worth of art for the board.

Calandra has said for months that three of the four trustees paid back their expenses, but the fourth was refusing and if he continued to do so, he would be fired.

The minister says that trustee’s Italy expenses amounted to about $50,000 in travel costs, which Calandra calls “both excessive and unjustifiable.”

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The bill would remove Mark Watson from office and bar him from running for a trustee position in any school board in the 2026 municipal elections, and he would be ineligible to be a trustee at any Ontario school board until 2030.

Watson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.