The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has once again sided with1 a veteran school trustee, quashing a second set of misconduct findings made against her by the Grand Erie District School Board. In a scathing decision released August 8, 2025, the court found the Board’s process was procedurally unfair and its conclusions were unreasonable, echoing a previous ruling that described the trustee as being “unfairly dealt with and unfairly targeted.”
The case involved Carol Ann Sloat, a trustee with the Board since 2003, who found herself sanctioned by her colleagues following two separate complaints. The court’s decision effectively nullifies the Board’s findings of misconduct, bringing an end to the latest chapter in what the court described as “acrimonious litigation” between the two parties. In his reasons, Justice R. D. Heeney, writing for the three-judge panel, explicitly stated that the prior court’s description of Sloat being unfairly targeted “accurately describes the actions of the Board in the matters now before this court.”
This dispute is a direct sequel to an earlier court battle. In November 2024, the same court quashed four previous misconduct decisions the Board had made against Sloat. The Board’s attempt to appeal that earlier decision was refused in April 2025. The events leading to the current case began while the first one was still in progress.
The first incident, dubbed the “Disclosure Complaint,” occurred in July 2023. While on a trip to Thunder Bay, Trustee Sloat met with a friend, J.N., who is a trustee on another school board. Sloat mentioned that she had initiated a judicial review application against the Grand Erie board, a fact that was already a matter of public record. Months later, in September 2023, J.N. encountered a Grand Erie trustee, T.B., and asked about the situation with Sloat. This led T.B. to file a formal complaint on September 24, 2023, alleging that Sloat had breached the Board’s Code of Conduct by sharing confidential, in-camera information related to the ongoing litigation.
The second incident, known as the “Call the Police” Complaint, took place on February 12, 2024. Sloat was attending her first board meeting after serving sanctions from a prior, unrelated matter. At the end of an in-camera session, the Board Chair asked Sloat to return what the Board alleged were confidential documents. Sloat refused, stating they were her own personal notes intended for her lawyer, something she claimed was her standard practice. She then left the meeting with her notes, saying “call the police” as she departed. The following day, another trustee, T.D., filed a complaint alleging Sloat had breached six different provisions of the Code.
On June 10, 2024, the Board of Trustees convened and, without providing any written reasons, found Sloat had breached the Code in relation to both complaints. The Board concluded she had failed to maintain confidentiality, failed to fulfill her duties under the Education Act, did not work with other trustees in a spirit of respect, and failed to accept the authority of the Board. As a penalty, the Board barred Sloat from attending six board meetings, banned her from sitting on all committees for over a year, and ordered a public censure. An internal appeal by Sloat was dismissed on June 24, 2024, again without reasons. Two days later, she filed the judicial review application that led to this decision.
In a subsequent meeting on May 5, 2025, after the court had already overturned the previous four misconduct findings, the Board reconsidered the sanctions and reduced them to “time served,” meaning no further punishments remained. The Board argued in court that this action, combined with recent changes to the Education Act that remove code of conduct investigations from school boards, made Sloat’s entire application moot.
The court firmly rejected this argument. Justice Heeney wrote that while the issue of sanctions was moot, the underlying findings of misconduct were not. He explained that a finding of misconduct remains on the “record” of a democratically elected official, which could adversely impact her ability to be re-elected. He drew an analogy to a criminal conviction, which remains a live issue for an appellant even after a sentence has been fully served. The court determined that reviewing the misconduct finding would have a “real and practical effect on the rights of the applicant.”
The court then turned to the core of Sloat’s application, finding that the Board had breached its duty of procedural fairness in two significant ways. First, the investigation into the Disclosure Complaint was started too late. The Board’s own Code of Conduct mandates that an inquiry into an alleged breach must be “undertaken” no later than six months after the incident occurred. The alleged disclosure happened in July 2023, meaning the inquiry had to begin by the end of January 2024. However, the investigator did not interview the complainant until February 6, 2024, clearly outside the mandatory timeline. The court found this failure to follow its own rules was a breach of procedural fairness.
Second, and more significantly, the court condemned the Board’s practice of withholding the full investigator’s report from the decision makers. The Board’s Code explicitly requires that the full report be delivered to the trustees. Instead, the trustees were given only a PowerPoint presentation summarizing the report’s findings. This was the same flawed procedure the court had criticized in the Sloat #1 decision. Justice Heeney quoted the previous decision, which stated the practice “effectively turns the Board into a rubber stamp of whoever prepares the PowerPoint presentation.” The court noted that Sloat herself was never provided the full report, despite repeated requests, making it impossible for her to know if the summary was accurate or if potentially exonerating information had been excluded. The Board’s continued refusal to produce the report led the court to draw an “adverse inference” against it. On this basis alone, the court found the decision was procedurally unfair and had to be quashed.
Beyond the procedural failings, the court found the Board’s conclusion on the Disclosure Complaint was “blatantly unreasonable.” The investigator’s own findings, even as presented in the PowerPoint, stated they were “unable to conclude” whether Sloat had discussed any particulars beyond the publicly known fact of her judicial review application. In other words, there was no evidence in the report to support the allegation that she had disclosed confidential information. Since the Board’s own rules forbid trustees from conducting their own investigation and restrict them to considering only the findings in the report, there was no rational path to a guilty verdict. Justice Heeney wrote, “it is impossible to understand how the Board could rationally arrive at the conclusion it did, given the factual and legal restraints bearing on its decision.”
For these reasons, the court quashed the Board’s decision of June 10, 2024. Because recent amendments to the Education Act have transferred jurisdiction over conduct complaints to independent integrity commissioners appointed by the Minister, the matter could not be sent back to the Board for a new hearing. The litigation is now over. In a concluding note, the court expressed its frustration with the ongoing conflict, urging the parties to finally reach an agreement on legal costs and “get back to doing what they should be doing, which is working for the betterment of our school system and the students and families who are served by it.”
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