By Joseph Marshall
In a move that should concern anyone who cares about governance at the English Montreal School Board, the Board of Commissioners voted to invalidate a 14 month ethics investigation that had found Commissioner Julien Feldman guilty of an ethics violation.
The original ruling, issued after more than a year of investigation by the EMSB Ethics Commission, concluded that Feldman breached ethical standards during last year’s school board elections. The commissioner ordered him to be suspended for two weeks, issue a public apology and pay a $250 fine to UNICEF.
For Feldman, this was not unfamiliar territory. Since 2010, he has been found guilty of multiple ethics violations.
But on February 10, the Board of Commissioners voted to effectively erase that ruling.
The resolution, forwarded by the Board of Governance and Ethics, recommended that council declare the ethics violation invalid. Feldman himself serves as Vice Chair of that very committee.
The board, composed entirely of members affiliated with Chairman Joe Ortona’s political slate, voted in favour of the resolution. The impact was sweeping. The ethics commissioner’s 14 month investigation and formal decision were declared invalid, and Feldman was absolved. No elected commissioner voted against the measure.
Only one voice dissented.
Jessica Houde Woytiuk, a non elected parent commissioner, raised procedural concerns before the vote. After reviewing the documentation, she stated:
“Mr. Chair, I just want to say that having received these minutes prior to this conversation, I have read through both documents. The item on the agenda is for a deposit, not a vote. So I personally, in good faith, cannot take action outside of my purview as a Commissioner, thank you.”
Despite her objection, the resolution passed and was formally deposited into the school board record.
Before the vote, Katherine Korakakis, Chair of the English Parent Committee Association and a former challenger to Ortona in the last school board election, pressed the board during public question period.
Korakakis asked whether the board would be required to reimburse Feldman for his legal defense costs.
Ortona responded that the matter was not yet public.
“You’re asking for an opinion on something that hasn’t been made public yet, as it has not been deposited at council, it hasn’t been discussed, so I wouldn’t be able to comment what the board will do.”
Korakakis also questioned why Feldman continues to sit on the ethics committee given his history of ethics findings.
Ortona defended the appointment.
“Mr. Feldman sits on the ethics committee because he applied to sit on the ethics committee and the council chose him to sit on the ethics committee. And you can ask Mr. Lala (a former multi term Ortona commissioner who ran on Korakakis’ slate in the last election) why he supported Mr. Feldman to be the chair of governance and ethics in 2020. Maybe he’d give you the same reason that I gave you now.”
The vote underscores ongoing tensions at the EMSB, where critics argue that governance decisions are increasingly shaped by internal political alliances rather than independent oversight.
By overturning the ethics commissioner’s ruling, the board nullified the findings of its own oversight mechanism after a lengthy investigation. For a public institution entrusted with managing schools, staff, and students, the optics are difficult to ignore: an ethics violation is investigated under established rules, formally upheld by the ethics commissioner, and then set aside by the very political majority that oversees the process, on a resolution advanced by a committee whose vice chair was the subject of the ruling.
Whether this episode fades quietly or prompts further scrutiny remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that the ethics process at the EMSB, which should operate independently of the Board of Commissioners, now appears subject to it.
