Errors that forced reinstatement of Victoria school board ‘inadvertent’: minister

One of the nine Victoria school board trustees fired by the B.C. government last year says she feels “vindicated” after a court case challenging the dismissal came to an unexpected end on Monday.

British Columbia Education Minister Lisa Beare said during question period in the legislature on Tuesday that legal errors that forced the government to reinstate the entire Victoria school board were significant but “inadvertent.”

Beare said that the government’s failure to produce documents in line with a court order compromised the “fair and timely adjudication” of a case by the elected school trustees, who challenged their firing in B.C. Supreme Court.

The trustees were dismissed in January 2025 after they sought to block police liaison programs in Victoria schools, passing a resolution disagreeing that the minister could “dictate that a board must adopt a safety plan upon the minister’s direction.”

Diane McNally, one of the fired trustees, said on Tuesday that the communications that came to light in court were “dreadful” and indicated “unprofessional conduct on the part of people involved.”

The communications about the school board trustees included text messages between government officials and Victoria police Deputy Chief Michael Brown.

Court filings in the case include screenshots of messages where school board chair Nicole Duncan is referred to as a “narcissistic moron,” and Brown replying “karma is a bitch” on the day of the board’s dismissal.

Another exchange refers to a livestream of B.C. Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender’s presentation to the board about police school liaison officers.

“They are morons,” Brown texted.

Govender’s office declined to comment about the case on Tuesday.

Victoria police Chief Fiona Wilson said in a statement on Tuesday that the “text exchange disclosed during the judicial review between the B.C. government and School District No. 61 trustees does not reflect the standards we expect of our members or our organization.”

“The Victoria Police Department recognizes that public trust is earned every day, and that trust can be affected when conduct falls short of the professionalism our community expects,” Wilson said in the statement.

She said she takes the situation very seriously and is referring the matter to Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner for review.

Brown retired from the police department on Monday, and Wilson said his “retirement has been long planned, and any suggestion that it is connected to recent events is inaccurate.”

Conservative opposition members pushed Beare during question period to release information about Monday’s reversal, with Misty Van Popta asking about costs to taxpayers and what led to the case being “botched.”

Beare said the ministry is still gathering information about costs, and denied being involved in withholding any court-ordered documents, calling the suggestion “absolute nonsense.”

She said when ministry staff alerted her to the error, the government acted to rectify it and her focus is now on understanding “what happened so it doesn’t happen again.”

McNally said she was “skeptical” about Beare’s claim that the disclosure problems were inadvertent, believing that the text messages were “secret discussions about how they could disempower us.”

She said she could only speak for herself, rather than the whole board, but the problem with the police liaison program was the lack of information about what it entailed beyond “random visits” by officers in schools.

“There was not an opportunity to discuss with the police how they could be accountable for their time in the school,” she said. “You know, there was no information. I don’t like that when any group comes into a school and we don’t know what they’re doing. Nobody else would get away with that. So, it’s not that I’m against having police in schools, but I want to know a whole lot more about what they were doing.”

McNally said she believes the reinstated trustees will meet as a board sometime in June.

“I expect to rejoin my colleagues, all of whom I really respect and work really well with,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 26, 2026.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press