Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope of a school board’s disciplinary jurisdiction under s. 218.3 of the Education Act, including use of pre-January 1, 2025 powers during a statutory transition to integrity commissioners
• Adequacy of procedural fairness in an internal Code of Conduct process, touching on disclosure delays, trustee participation in deliberations, and limits on the respondent trustee’s ability to speak or vote
• Proper interpretation of the trustee sanctions power, particularly whether “a meeting” permits multi-meeting or 90-day bans from board and committee meetings
• Interaction between trustees’ confidentiality obligations in a Code of Conduct and claimed Charter protections for political expression under s. 2(b)
• Failure of the evidence to establish a reasonable apprehension of bias or bad faith, despite complainant-trustees participating in deliberations and votes
• Reasonableness of sanctions where the board appears to have modelled 90-day penalties on a new integrity-commissioner regime that did not yet govern the impugned conduct

Background and factual context

Rachael Prinzen was an elected trustee of the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board. The Board had adopted a Trustees’ Code of Conduct (the Code), which, among other things, imposed confidentiality obligations on trustees in relation to board information, personnel matters, and committee work. Under the Education Act as it then read, boards could investigate alleged Code breaches and impose specified sanctions. Two separate Code complaints were made against Ms. Prinzen, each leading to an investigative report, board deliberations, and sanctions. Both decisions were later challenged by her in the Divisional Court by way of judicial review. The Divisional Court’s reasons address both decisions in a single set of reasons.

The first Code complaint and decision

The first complaint arose from a May 9, 2024 email Ms. Prinzen sent to various third parties, including the then Minister of Education, parliamentary assistants and members of Provincial Parliament. In that correspondence, she raised concerns about the conduct of the Board and some of its members, and attached 45 documents the Board characterized as containing “substantial confidential Board information.” An independent investigator was retained. The investigator interviewed Ms. Prinzen and three other witnesses and produced an 82-page report (the First Report). The First Report concluded that Ms. Prinzen had breached five sections of the Code by disclosing confidential information. On November 6, 2024, all ten trustees, including Ms. Prinzen, met in camera to consider the First Report. Pre-written resolutions were placed before the Board, but these included options for findings of breach and no breach. After deliberation, the Board passed seven motions by majority vote, concluding that five sections of the Code had been breached. A request for reconsideration was later dismissed on November 26, 2024. As a sanction, the Board barred Ms. Prinzen from attending all or part of any meeting of the Board or its committees for 90 days.

The second Code complaint and decision

The second complaint related to three emails Ms. Prinzen sent on October 18, October 27, and November 2, 2024. The Board alleged that these emails disclosed personal information about the current and former Directors of Education and confidential information concerning the audit committee, and that this information was sent to individuals who otherwise would not have received it. A trustee filed a complaint on November 1, 2024 about the first two October emails and amended it on November 5, 2024 to include the November 2 email. On November 9, 2024, the complaint was further amended to identify the specific Code provisions said to have been breached. A second external investigator was retained on December 6, 2024. Ms. Prinzen provided a written response on February 11, 2025 and was interviewed, along with four other witnesses. The investigator issued a 75-page Second Report on May 14, 2025, concluding that she had breached the Code by disclosing highly confidential board information and by threatening to disclose further confidential information. All ten trustees, including the applicant, met in camera at the May 26, 2025 board meeting to consider the Second Report. The Board adopted the report’s findings and issued the Second Decision, passing three motions by majority vote. Again, the Board imposed a 90-day bar on her attendance at all or part of any Board or committee meeting, effective August 25, 2025. After receiving reconsideration submissions, the Board confirmed this second sanction on June 24, 2025.

Procedural fairness and the internal discipline process

On judicial review, Ms. Prinzen alleged that the disciplinary processes carried severe consequences—removal from meetings for extended periods, reputational harm, and impacts on her constituents’ representation—and that the Board failed to meet minimum standards of procedural fairness. She argued that the use of pre-written resolutions, delays in disclosing the fully amended Second Complaint, restrictions on her participation in deliberations, participation by complainant-trustees in decision-making, and the refusal to fund her legal counsel all cumulatively rendered the process unfair. The Court applied the Baker v. Canada procedural fairness factors, recognizing that elected office and Code sanctions are serious matters, but found no breach. The investigators were clearly described as advisory only, and both reports explicitly recognized that trustees themselves, under s. 218.3(2) of the Education Act, had to decide whether there was a breach and what sanction to impose. The pre-written motions simply set out possible outcomes, including findings of no breach, and were treated as options, not predetermined results. The Court held that any delay in providing the fully amended Second Complaint had not caused prejudice, given that the three impugned emails were already substantially known to the applicant. It also found that the Code itself barred the subject trustee from participating in deliberations or voting on breach or sanction, and allowed the complainant-trustee to vote. Within that framework, she had multiple opportunities to be heard, including written submissions and interviews before the investigators, and written reconsideration materials. Her late-stage request that the Board fund her legal fees was found not to be an “accommodation” issue; she remained free to retain counsel at her own expense. Overall, the Court concluded there was no denial of procedural fairness.

Alleged bias and bad faith

Ms. Prinzen further argued that complainant-trustees who had initiated or advanced the Code complaints should have recused themselves and that their participation in deliberations and sanctions created at least a reasonable apprehension of bias, if not bad faith. Applying the usual “informed person” test for reasonable apprehension of bias, the Court rejected this claim. It held that the complaints themselves were directed at alleged Code breaches by a trustee, not at personal animus, and that the evidence did not meet the high threshold required to establish that a well-informed observer would see the process as unfairly tilted. Accordingly, neither bias nor bad faith was established.

Charter challenges and freedom of expression

The applicant argued that the Board’s decisions and sanctions infringed her freedom of expression under s. 2(b) of the Charter, characterizing her emails as core political speech in the performance of her elected duties under s. 218.1 of the Education Act. She also alleged that the sanctions engaged ss. 7 and 15, particularly because of how she was treated as a disabled litigant seeking health-related accommodations. The Court held that s. 2(b) was not engaged on these facts. Ms. Prinzen had voluntarily agreed to be bound by the Code, including its confidentiality provisions, and she could have brought a direct constitutional challenge to the Code itself but chose not to do so. The Court emphasized that she remained free to express concerns and opinions about Board conduct, but as an elected trustee she had a distinct duty of confidentiality and could not justify breaches of that duty by invoking a general right to free expression. With respect to ss. 7 and 15, the Court found the record did not show how those guarantees were engaged or violated, noting in particular that she had not, in fact, requested specific health-related accommodations during the process.

Jurisdiction, transition provisions, and reasonableness of the decisions

Ms. Prinzen further argued that the Second Decision was unreasonable because, after January 1, 2025, jurisdiction over trustee Code of Conduct matters had shifted from boards to integrity commissioners under amendments introduced by Bill 98. She relied on the new transition clause, s. 218.3(16) of the Education Act, which specifies how pre-existing complaints are to be handled. The Court carefully analyzed the sequence of complaint letters and amendments and held that both complaints had been brought to the Board’s attention before January 1, 2025. It accepted that the November 9, 2024 amendment to the Second Complaint, which specified Code sections, was not substantive; it merely adjusted the numbering to match an updated Code. Under the transition provision, the Board retained jurisdiction over complaints brought before the new regime’s commencement date, even if they had not yet been decided. The first complaint had in fact been decided before January 1, 2025; the second had not, but it was still governed by the pre-amendment s. 218.3 regime. On the broader question of reasonableness, the Court contrasted this case with earlier decisions in Sloat v. Grand Erie District School Board. It stressed that, here, both Ms. Prinzen and the trustees were given the full, lengthy investigative reports in advance, and that the motions and decision letters demonstrated that the Board’s decisions rested on those detailed factual and analytical findings. The Supreme Court’s guidance that elected bodies acting through democratic processes are not always required to give formal reasons also weighed against finding unreasonableness solely because the Board did not issue extensive original reasons. The applicant did not seriously contest that she had disclosed confidential information; her attacks on justification, transparency, and intelligibility were characterized as bald allegations that were not borne out by the record.

Sanctions and the statutory scope of trustee discipline

The most complex legal issue concerned the lawfulness and reasonableness of the sanctions themselves. Under the pre-January 1, 2025 version of s. 218.3(3) of the Education Act, if a board found a breach of its Code, it could: (1) censure the member; (2) bar the member from attending “all or part of a meeting” of the board or one of its committees; and (3) bar the member from sitting on one or more committees for a specified period. The Board had interpreted the phrase “a meeting” in paragraph 2 as permitting a 90-day blanket prohibition on attending all Board and committee meetings. It relied partly on earlier Divisional Court comments in Sloat suggesting that sanctions should not depend on whether complaints were joined or heard separately. The Court reviewed Sloat and other authorities, including McNicol v. York Catholic District School Board and Del Grande v. Toronto Catholic District School Board. In McNicol, a legal opinion had led the board to scale back a broader ban to a single-meeting bar, illustrating a narrower view of s. 218.3(3). In Del Grande, by contrast, the sanctions involved removal from committees and representative roles, not a ban on attending Board meetings, and were upheld on that narrower basis. The Divisional Court in Prinzen did not definitively resolve whether “a meeting” could support a prolonged meeting ban under the old regime. However, it focused on how the 90-day sanctions were actually chosen. The sanction options presented to the Board merely reproduced s. 218.3(3) and cautioned that no sanction more onerous than the statutory list could be imposed. There was nothing in the record explaining why a 90-day period was selected in each decision. This absence of reasoning might not, on its own, have been fatal, but the Board then defended the sanctions by expressly invoking the new post-January 1, 2025 regime in s. 218.3.1, which gives integrity commissioners power to bar trustees from meetings for up to 90 days. The Board argued that its sanctions were “consistent” with that new framework and pointed to the new 90-day maximum. The Court held that this argument, and the correspondence between the 90-day maximum in s. 218.3.1 and the sanctions imposed, supported the inference that the Board had effectively imported the new integrity-commissioner powers into a period when they did not yet apply to the applicant’s conduct. Because the complaints were governed by the pre-amendment regime, reliance on the new 90-day ceiling rendered the sanctions unreasonable.

Remedy, time served, and sealing order

Ordinarily, unreasonable sanctions of this kind would be set aside and remitted to the decision-maker for reconsideration with the benefit of the Court’s reasons. However, by the time of judgment, jurisdiction over Code matters had already shifted to the integrity commissioner, and the Board no longer had authority to revisit sanctions. In addition, both 90-day sanctions had been stayed by single judges of the Superior Court such that, in practice, Ms. Prinzen had only “served” a total of 38 days of suspension from meetings before the stays took effect. The panel concluded that any lawful and proportionate suspension would not exceed those 38 days. It therefore varied both sanctions to “time served,” fixing the effective sanction at 38 days and bringing the matter to a practical close. Separately, the Board brought a preliminary motion to have the hearing held in camera and to permanently seal redacted investigative materials, citing their confidential nature. Ms. Prinzen opposed this and asked that the reports and related records be made public. The Court heard the matter in open court but maintained existing redactions. In its final order, it dismissed her request to make the reports public and granted a permanent sealing order maintaining confidentiality over redacted court records.

Costs and overall outcome

In the result, the Court dismissed Ms. Prinzen’s applications to set aside the Board’s decisions, upheld the findings that she had breached confidentiality obligations in the Code, and rejected all arguments based on procedural unfairness, bias, Charter violations, and lack of jurisdiction. It found the sanctioning decisions unreasonable only to the extent that the Board appeared to have anchored its 90-day bans in a new statutory regime that did not govern the incidents at issue, and it cured this by varying the sanctions to the 38 days already served rather than remitting the matter back. As the more successful party on the judicial review, the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board was awarded costs on an all-inclusive basis of $7,500, payable by Ms. Prinzen, and no other monetary relief or damages were ordered in her favour.