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Trustee, Toronto Catholic District School Board

Oliver Carroll

Posted June. 2008

There has been a great deal of media coverage about the spending habits of Toronto Catholic School Board (TCDSB) trustees. (More is to come, I fear) This coverage was fully justified in exposing what was an abuse of allowances, credit cards and cell phones. When public money is at stake the proper use of it is critical to the continued public support for the institution in question.

Norbert Hartman, an Advisor to the Honourable Kathleen Wynne, Minister of Education, has provided her and the Board with a report on certain trustee expenditures at the TCDSB and recommendations to deal with issues he found. His report dealt with appropriate policy guidance for trustees’ expenditures, the proper arm’s length relationship between trustees and staff who make payments and the transparency of payments made to or on behalf of Trustees.

There is little doubt that some people took advantage of a system that counted on a large degree of integrity that was found to be lacking.

Trustees have allowances to assist them in providing support to constituents, schools and students. This money is generally used to help schools run events, advertise, keep the community informed and recognize student achievement.

Trustees at the TCDSB were issued credit cards to ensure that they weren’t out of pocket when incurring expenses. Because the credit cards were corporate they had to be paid by the Board when the bills came in; the same as all of us do. Receipts should have been submitted as the expense was incurred. For the majority of people who had corporate credit cards this happened.

In some cases receipts didn’t come in for months and by then it was difficult to recover what were obviously personal expenses either because they didn’t have the money by then or they assumed for some reason they would not have to pay the money back. All the credit cards have been cancelled.

In regard to the use of cell phones for long distance calling, again, one would normally expect people to appreciate that they are using public property. Why someone felt an entitlement to have personal expenses in the thousands of dollars paid for by the public is something I do not understand.

A further issue occurred because individual Trustees, in essence, approved their own expenditures and submitted them directly for payment. There was no oversight and staff was not in a position to refuse the payment of accounts. When I was Chair I had to file Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to see expenses. 

Some trustees felt that these expenditures should be kept out of the public realm as people may not understand what the expenses were for. That alone should have raised alarms for when the public is denied access, other than through the cumbersome process of filing FOI requests; we should known that something was wrong.  Some trustees went as far as to say that no one should have any say over what they considered appropriate expenditures. That was between them and their constituents at election time. Their attitude has now changed thanks to public scrutiny.

Until last year the Board did not require that Trustees to post their expenses. Prior to this only Trustee John Del Grande and I had our detailed expenditures posted on the Board’s website. This is now being done by all Trustees, for the period December 1, 2006 to November 30, 2007 (go to:

http://www.tcdsb.org/trustees/default.htm & click on the Trustee whose expenses you want to see).

Expenses for the period from December 1, 2003 to November 30, 2006 will be posted, in the near future, for all remaining Trustees.

More questionable expenditures may be revealed.

There are Trustees who are now claiming to want to clean up the system despite the fact that when they had the opportunity to post their expenses they refused to do so. It is too late for them when the Minister has to send in someone to see what should have been transparent in the first place.

All trustees including those who adhered to the appropriate policy guidelines have to bear a degree of responsibility for what occurred. Those of us who have what we believe are “clean” accounts, knew or had a sense of the abuses that were taking place. We kept quiet. We felt an obligation to our fellow trustees that replaced our obligation to the public. To paraphrase Edmund Burke – “All it takes for the triumph of greed is for a few good men and women to do nothing”. We should have stood up and brought these issues forward earlier. The public had a right to expect that of us when they voted us into office and placed their trust in us.

Hartman’s report is hard hitting but appropriate. It suggests that there are issues that may be close to fraudulent. Numbered corporations, backdoor payments, questionable relationships and contract letting should be referred to the police to satisfy the public’s right to know that all issues are in the open and have been dealt with.

I am sorry that it required public exposure for this matter to be cleaned up. Appropriate policy guidance, staff independence, the cancellation of credit cards and the public scrutiny that will come from the posting of expenditures should ensure that we have no recurrences of this type of behaviour.

On behalf of the majority of my colleagues and myself I apologize for the loss of confidence members of the public may have felt in our stewardship. We will work to ensure that your continued support is deserved.

Oliver Carroll

Trustee, Toronto Catholic District School Board – e-mail: olivercarroll@rogers.com