A time to lead: Choosing evidence over rhetoric

The decision came down with no warning just before Christmas in 1999 and it hit our neighbourhood in Minnow Lake like a hammer blow: Our local elementary school, École St-Pierre, had been earmarked for a closure review by our school board, the Conseil scolaire catholique du Nouvel-Ontario, or CSCNO.

The news was the talk of the neighbourhood, and at first, we as parents felt quite helpless. We knew that once a school was designated for closure review, it was a done deal — board trustees, meeting behind closed doors, had already decided to close the school in question. But what could we do? Merry Christmas, indeed.

A group of us began to talk, informally at first, about the board’s decision. It made no sense. We determined there were 165 students in our school, which serviced junior kindergarten to Grade 8, and all but one classroom was filled to capacity.

There were 38 kids in JK alone, so it wasn’t as if our school — or our neighbourhood, for that matter — was dying. But closing St-Pierre meant our daughters, who had always been able to walk to school, would have to be bussed to another school, much further away.

And then there was the matter of our Minnow Lake neighbourhood. A prominent local developer had just been given permission to build a major new housing subdivision in our area, so the promise of new growth, along with new families to further bolster enrolment at St.-Pierre going forward, was an absolute certainty. The more we talked among ourselves the more convinced we became that the board’s decision was a mistake.

But how to persuade the trustees of the CSCNO to reconsider? We knew that getting a school removed from the closure review roster was a rarity — such a thing almost never happened. Still, we decided to try.

We founded a formal organization — SOS St-Pierre — and I was elected chair and chief spokesperson. Then we called an open neighbourhood meeting to discuss the school closure.

The turnout was most encouraging and we decided to make a formal presentation to the board to ask them to reconsider its decision.

It’s always an emotional hot button when a community loses its school, but we resolved to keep emotions out of the picture, to approach the trustees with respect and to base our argument on fact, rather than emotion.

And we listened in respectful silence as the board presented its case: St-Pierre was a 50-year-old school, maintenance costs were high, etc.

All true, we countered, but a big part of the problem was that the school building had been neglected by the board for so long — why, there were classrooms where the same drapes had been hanging for 50 years!

Then we presented our case for the school — that it was nearly full, that the neighbourhood itself was poised to grow, unlike most city residential neighbourhoods at the time.

We didn’t beg, we didn’t plead and we didn’t posture. We didn’t break down in tears, we didn’t confront the trustees in front of the television news cameras. Instead, we presented real, fact-based evidence that the closure of École St-Pierre was a flat-out mistake.

The trustees agreed to consider our case. It certainly didn’t hurt that the province, in the meantime, was granting the CSCNO an additional $2 million in one-time funding to help it balance its books.

In the end, finally, the CSCNO accepted our arguments and reversed its decision. For me, this was a great personal victory and that was when I was bitten by the leadership bug. I had always wanted to make a difference.

Within months, I had been selected to fill a vacancy on the CSCNO board of trustees, a position I held for six years, my first public office.

École St-Pierre remains open, near the corner of Wilfred Street and Bancroft Drive, to this day. All three of my daughters received their French-language elementary education there and I am now more convinced than ever of the importance of evidence-based policy making in public life, and that’s why I’m eager to help Team Trudeau bring real change to Ottawa.

Whether it’s balancing the budget or acknowledging the reality of human-created global climate change, I’m convinced we can make policy based on evidence instead of the type of knee-jerk ideological reaction we’ve seen so often these 10 past years when government scientists have been muzzled because their findings might be something the government doesn’t want to hear.

After all, if evidence and clear thinking can prevail in Minnow Lake, it can work anywhere. There’s a time to listen and a time to learn.

And a time to lead.

This is one of those times.

Marc G. Serré is the Liberal candidate for the federal riding of Nickel Belt.