Calandra tables bill that would fire school board trustee involved in Italy art trip
Written by The Canadian Press on October 20, 2025
TORONTO — Education Minister Paul Calandra tabled a bill Monday 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.
“We said, ‘pay it back or we fire you’ and today is the culmination of that promise,” Calandra said after introducing the legislation.
“We’re going to fire him and make an example out of him.”
Calandra said that trustees’ Italy expenses amounted to about $50,000 in travel costs, which he called “both excessive and unjustifiable,” and the preamble of the bill indicates the trustee in question has not paid his share of $12,370.
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.
Calandra’s targeted bill comes at a time when he is considering a broader shakeup of board governance. He has placed five boards under government supervision due to what he called “mismanagement” and more may be on the way.
He has said he can’t see ever handing the boards currently under supervision back to trustees and he is also looking closely at eliminating the position of trustee entirely. He will make his decision by the end of the year.
“I’ve been all over the province this summer, all over the province, talking with parents and teachers, and ultimately they say the same thing…’the results that we’re getting out of the school board aren’t what we expect. You can fix it. You can do better, and we expect better,'” Calandra said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 20, 2025.
Allison Jones, The Canadian Press