NDP takes another step on the pro-police road by firing Victoria school trustees

PV Vancouver Bureau 

The January 30 decision by BC’s NDP government to fire the Greater Victoria School Board (District 61) was loudly cheered by the Conservative opposition but has sent a shiver of fear through Indigenous and Black families, as well as the queer community.

The government claims that the board “endangered the safety of students” by cancelling the school police liaison officer (SLO) program and allowing cops in public schools only in cases of emergencies.

The school board’s 2022 decision to end the program was taken on the basis of a report by the BC Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, called “The state of school liaison programs in Canada.”

While acknowledged the need for more studies to assess the impact of SLOs on students in Canada, Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender cited studies in the United States which have found that “SLOs contribute to a sense of criminalization and surveillance in schools, especially disadvantaging marginalized students.”

Govender went on to “strongly recommend that all school districts end the use of SLOs until the impact of these programs can be established empirically.”

The board’s seven trustees were elected in October 2022 with strong support of voters and the labour movement. Their election defeated a well-organized push by far-right movements trying to whip up bigotry against BC’s provincial policy on sex and gender identity education, called SOGI-123.

The District 61 board was one of the most progressive school boards in BC, and the trustees had been supported by many NDP members. The firing was a shock to the government’s political base and has sent a shiver of fear through Indigenous and Black families, and the queer community, which is also targeted by far-right groups.

“Giving the finger to the voters”

The Communist Party of BC says that this decision is the latest conscious retreat by NDP Premier David Eby and his cabinet in the face of fearmongering around policing and public health issues.

“We warned against this dangerous shift before and during the October 2024 provincial election,” said CPBC leader Kimball Cariou. “The Communist Party condemns the firing as an appalling attack on democratic rights – it’s a shameful surrender to the mob mentality promoted by racist and fascist forces in British Columbia.”

Cariou described Education Minister Lisa Beare’s appointment of a lone trustee to oversee the district as “giving the finger to the voters.”

This is not the first time a BC government has removed democratically elected school board trustees. In 1985, Bill Bennett’s Social Credit government removed the popular Vancouver COPE school board which was overwhelmingly re-elected in a byelection. In 2016, Liberal Premier Christy Clark fired another progressive Vancouver school board, claiming it had failed to adopt a balanced budget. Clark’s action occurred just a few hours before trustees were to vote on the budget, and the premier cited false claims about the conduct of board meetings to justify her undemocratic move.

“In those and other cases over recent decades, the firings were imposed by right-wing governments against school trustees who criticized provincial underfunding of public education,” said Cariou. “The difference this time is that an NDP government has thrown progressive trustees overboard, to appease the manufactured outrage of reactionary forces.”

The provincial government argues that the Victoria trustees should have conducted more consultations with First Nations and Indigenous peoples around the SLO issue. But this reasoning is hypocritical, given that the government set completely unrealistic deadlines for such consultations to take place.

In fact, the board’s original decision to cancel the SLO program was taken after direct consultations with Indigenous and racialized students and their families, which are the people most affected by the presence of police in schools.

Following mass protests against the US police murder of George Floyd in 2020, and in the face of deep anger over 160-plus years of racist police brutality against Indigenous peoples in BC, the NDP government was compelled to make promises about police reform. It struck a special committee to consult and make recommendations on improving policing, with Attorney-General Mike Farnworth stating, “Everyone deserves to be treated fairly by the police, and our government acknowledges that for many Black, Indigenous and other people of colour, that hasn’t always been the case.”

Two years later, the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act released eleven recommendations. These included replacing the RCMP with a provincial force, developing a new approach to mental health calls, and giving First Nations self-determination over policing in their communities. The stated goal was to align the Police Act with BC’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

NDP makes concession to right-wing “hot button issues” 

But Farnworth, a staunchly pro-cop politician, quietly sidelined this effort. Cariou says that the Attorney-General’s actions were in line with a longstanding NDP tactic – combining some anti-racism moves while rejecting fundamental measures to confront the reality that in a capitalist society, the police are an armed apparatus of the state to protect the interests of the ruling class.

“This has been true since colonial times, such as the hanging of six Tŝilhqot’in chiefs in 1864 and 1865 for the ‘crime’ of armed resistance against violent encroachment by colonists on Indigenous territories and peoples.

“In 1995, NDP Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh called for the RCMP to evict Sun Dance participants from a ranch near Kamloops. This culminated in the largest paramilitary action in Canadian history, as 400 police fired tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition.

“Under the current NDP government, special RCMP squads have been deployed against Indigenous land defenders and environmental activists.”

In an effort to scoop votes from the right wing before the 2024 campaign, the BC NDP reversed its tentative moves to decriminalize drug possession by users, choosing instead to take a “tough on crime” posture. The government has hit pause on consultations with Indigenous groups over policing reforms, and the Premier’s mandate letters to his new cabinet ministers have dropped reference to these reforms.

“The message is clear and ominous, especially in light of other developments like Eby’s move to give corporate energy projects in northern BC a pass on environmental assessments,” charges Cariou. “Having narrowly won last fall’s election, this government is making big concessions to the far right on “hot button” issues.”

This is the kind of shameful retreat that will only embolden the Conservatives, who will use every opportunity to bring down an NDP government which only has a one-seat majority. The Communist Party of BC is urging the labour movement, Indigenous peoples, environmentalists, the 2SLGBTIQ+ community, and all others who resist racism and fascism, to condemn the firing of the Victoria School Board.


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