Stand with pro-life trustee Mike Del Grande: LifeFunder
(LifeSiteNews) — LifeSite co-founder Steve Jalsevac recently sat down with Michael Del Grande, a Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) trustee, to discuss his struggles serving as a trustee faithful to the Church, his targeting by the radical left, his background, and more.
Jalsevac opened the conversation by asking Del Grande about his upbringing in Toronto as an Italian immigrant. Del Grande described how his family lived in poverty until he started kindergarten, and he didn’t even speak English until he began attending school. Before kindergarten, his family grew up in poverty. “I slept at the foot of my parents’ bed. That’s where we were at. And, to me, education was a great equalizer. I just loved education. I guess that’s why I became a school trustee,” Del Grande said.
Correction note: In a postscript segment at the end of the interview, Jalsevac misspoke when listing the three organizations against whom Del Grande is defending himself. The correct list of entities is: the Toronto Catholic District School Board, the Ontario Teachers’ Federation and the Human Rights Commission.
How his Catholic education formed him
A bit later in the interview, Del Grande gave Jalsevac more details about his education and underscored how fortunate he was to have received a Catholic education. “I was very fortunate to have nuns teaching [in] the schools and the occasional priest as well. So I was blessed with that richness of having people who were dedicated to their clerical life,” he said.
One priest who taught and greatly influenced him was Fr. Carl Matthews, S.J., who had served on the Metropolitan Separate School Board (MSSB), now known as the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB), and fought for full government funding for Catholic schools.
Cleaning up Toronto schools
Jalsevac turned to Del Grande’s first time in elected office when he served as a trustee on the then Metropolitan Separate School Board (MSSB). He ran for a seat on the board against incumbent Lynda Sacco to shake and clean up the district, where liberal Catholicism ran rampant and funding that should have gone towards the students went to the staff instead. Jalsevac reminded viewers that in Canada, unlike the U.S., where parishes typically run Catholic schools, the districts are funded mainly by the Canadian government, making it much easier for the Church to lose control of the schools.
“We’re here for the students. But it’s like the glass of water; everybody gets to drink from it: the staff, the teachers, the unions, and everything else. And then what’s left over falls to the students. Instead of saying, you know, the students get the first drink out of the cup, and then everything else falls from it,” Del Grande said, adding that no matter how much money there was or how many strikes took place, it was the staff who always collected the funding.
Jalsevac asked if the union was as strong as it is now, to which Del Grande said it had the same strength and was extremely liberal. Another issue he had to deal with in particular was the Coalition of Concerned Catholics. “They wanted to change [the] Church, and they wanted to change this, and they wanted to change that.”
To combat these reformers, Del Grande and others began to teach their kids catechism, and they even got together on Saturdays for religious instruction. Del Grande would only serve three years on the board this time. “My own sense of value was you want to stay there forever, you go, and you do your best,” Del Grande said.
Balancing the budget of the Toronto City Council
Del Grande then ran for Toronto City Council, defeating another incumbent, Sherene Shaw. The former councilor highlighted his two years as the budget chief, where he worked rigorously to bring the city’s $13 billion budget in line, with no staff to help him. “It was a one-man show. I met with every director of the city, the various zoos and art, and everything that the city would spend a penny on.”
He added that he met with city officials overnights and weekends, often arriving before the sun came up and leaving after it went down. “You were very conscientious,” Jalsevac interjected, to which Del Grande replied, “You know, Steve, this is the issue I find with politics. There are a lot of politicians, okay? But what we’re void of is leadership. And so my position, and no matter what I’ve done, whether it be at the school board or at the city or my own house, I treated it as if it was my own money; it was coming out of my pocket. And the question I asked myself: ‘Would I do this if I was paying for this personally?’ And if the answer was no, not doing it.”
Del Grande then gave an example of an organization that helped to employ people approaching him for city funding. They had a budget of more than $2 million but had only helped 40 people land jobs in one year. “Oh, so we’re spending $2 million+ dollars for 40 jobs, and this start-up organization has got, you know, $200,000 in funding. They’ve provided jobs for 100,000, so my position was I’m getting better value from these guys than from you guys just coming every year.”
The trustee added that when he’d make a budget decision like that, the organization that didn’t receive the funding would run to their favorite counselors and say, “Oh, we’re not getting our money. Del Grande is cutting this and cutting that.”
“I didn’t cut anything. I just took better value for those monies to achieve the same thing. And there were no checks, controls, or balances with these organizations,” he said.
Attacks during his second stint as a Catholic school board trustee
In 2014, after serving three terms in the Toronto City Council, Del Grande decided to step down and run again for the TCDSB, winning a seat for the second time. When Jalsevac asked him why he returned to the board instead of remaining in the civic service, he said he thought a decade was long enough. “I believe in term limits,” Del Grande said.
Turning to his second stint as a board trustee, Jalsevac noted how it has brought him into the news a lot and led to legal challenges. “You are being attacked, within the Catholic school system, for, essentially, just trying to uphold Catholic moral principles and have them being taught properly in the school system, which they are not.” He then asked Del Grande what had caused that furor and to tell viewers what legal challenges he currently faces.
“I’m fighting three fronts: the first front is with the school board itself, the second is with the Ontario College of Teachers, and the third is with the Human Rights Commission.”
Del Grande then detailed some of the volleys against him over the past few years. The first was during a board meeting in 2019, when an activist teacher, Paulo de Bono, accused him of saying something negative about LGBT people. “I was incensed; I was taken aback. I said, ‘What are you talking about? I don’t talk about, you know, LGBT people. I just get on with what I have to do.’” Del Grande turned to the director [of the board] on his left and said, “I want this guy censored; I want you to come back and report where I said what to whom, when.” After a full investigation, the director returned and said Del Grande had never made any comments.
The next volley thrown at Del Grande came in September 2019, when the Ontario Human Rights Commission wrote a letter to then-chair Maria Rizzo, saying that the board must add items to its human rights code from Policy/Program Memorandum (PPM) 128, which contradicted Catholic moral principles on LGBT ideology.
“So I got the human rights people and the [Ontario] Minister of Education saying [the board must accept the Memorandum], and I said, ‘Hold on a second, we don’t have to accept this.’”
Jalsevac chimed in, “The Catholic school system in Ontario is protected.”
“Yeah. Section 93 of the [Canadian] Constitution. Whatever we had in place in 1867 stays with us. So we have our own trustees, we have our own religion, if you will, so it’s hands off,” Del Grande replied.
The trustee added that, in his experience, it comes down to the money. If the board made the government angry, they wouldn’t get the funding. “I said, ‘You know what for the 30 pieces of silver, you’re going to give up your faith. Come on, let’s stand up and challenge these guys in the courts because we have to win. We’re going to win because you can’t mess around with our faith values. Yeah, end of story.’ But these guys didn’t want to do it.”
Supporting Del Grande
In a postscript segment after the interview, Jalsevac further explains Del Grande’s situation, and outlines why he believes it is of utmost importance concerned Canadians of all faiths support the embattled former trustee.
Describing the cases against Del Grande as “lawfare,” Jalsevac explains that the total costs incurred by Del Grande in defense of himself and Catholic social teaching is nearing $1 million, and as such, he needs “considerable financial assistance.” Jalsevac also explains that the outcome of the cases against Del Grande won’t just impact students and teachers in the TCDSB, but will set a precedent throughout the country.
“It has implications nationwide, for freedom of speech, freedom of action, for not just Catholic school trustees, but all trustees, and for many professionals,” Jalsevac warned, adding that the ability to do what is “right” and to be “honest” in a professional capacity, especially in education, hangs in the balance with the Del Grande cases.
Watch or listen to the full interview to hear more from TCDSB trustee Michael Del Grande.
Stand with pro-life trustee Mike Del Grande: LifeFunder