The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that public school boards in Ontario are an arm of government and they cannot "disavow their constitutional obligations" under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, regardless of the terms in a collective agreement.The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that Ontario public school boards are an arm of government and 'state actors cannot disavow their constitutional obligations, no matter the terms of the collective agreement.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that "public education is inherently a governmental function" and "has a unique constitutional quality" because the Charter applies when government is involved. One of the teachers, referred to in the ruling only as Ms. Shen, approached her union with the information and was told to keep notes. Shen started a log using her personal email account and then gave a second teacher, referred to only as Ms. Rai, access to the log.
The ruling says Pettigrew read the document and used his mobile phone to take pictures of the almost 100 entries it contained. He then brought the images to the board superintendent, who told Pettigrew to confiscate the laptops. The laptops were then searched but because the document only lived in the cloud, nothing was found on either hard drive.
The union took the decision to court in Ontario, which sided with the arbiter, saying the principal's search did not violate the Charter because Shen and Rai had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a work setting.