(Campaign Life Coalition) — I want to share the latest development in a story about the outrageous antics of the Louis Riel School District in Manitoba. But first, I have a question: Who gets to choose the democratically elected trustees to represent you on your local school board?
Should it be the voters who live in the district? Or a handful of self-appointed overlords?
Common sense, and the long-standing democratic tradition here in Canada, would suggest it’s the people who get to choose their elected representatives for the next four years, by the casting of their ballots.
But apparently, that’s not the case in the LRSD, given what happened to trustee Francine Champagne. Eight of her board colleagues essentially “un-elected” her, thus bypassing the election process and cutting out the voters.
Here’s the back story….
Francine was one of nine democratically-elected trustees with LRSD since the 2022 Manitoba municipal election. “Was” is the key word.
Unbelievably, all eight of her trustee colleagues on the board ganged up on her in June 2023 because of social media posts expressing her opposition to extreme transgender ideology.
As you know, transgender ideology has taken over the education system and infiltrated classrooms. “Woke” teachers now work zealously to convince little girls that they might have been “born in the wrong” body, and the same with little boys.
These brainwashed children then come to believe that they need puberty blockers and scalpels to “fix” their “wrong body.”
One of the Facebook memes that Francine shared, which the other trustees claimed to represent a code of conduct violation, read:
Make men masculine again. Make women feminine again. Make children innocent again.
Below are two more of the Facebook memes shared by Francine that the board alleged to be tantamount to code of conduct violations.
Do you see anything wrong in what she posted? I certainly don’t.
However, her trustee colleagues, who have all fallen down to worship the idol of transgenderism, decided that they had the power to disenfranchise the voters who elected Francine.
They stripped away Francine’s Charter right to free speech – and the electorate’s right to have their trustee representative speak on the issues they care about – by suspending her multiple times, and depriving her of three-month’s salary!
Never mind the fact that she was voicing the concerns of the voters who elected her, including Christians, Muslims and those of other faiths!
These anti-democracy trustees also took the unprecedented step of submitting an application to the Court of King’s Bench, asking a judge to “un-elect” Francine.
In other words, they asked the court to remove her from her seat, which is tantamount to robbing voters in her ward of their democratic right to hire or fire their trustee representatives every four years.
It is the voters of Ward 1 who have this right! Not a handful of trustees!
As a result of these humiliating sanctions and attacks in the media by her colleagues, she was hounded into quitting, as explained in her public statement.
The gang of eight thuggish trustees effectively forced a duly-elected trustee out of her seat, and nullified the results of a democratic election. In doing so, they attacked the foundation of our democracy.
Trustees Sandy Nemeth, Chris Sigurdson, Cindy Turner, Chipalo Simunyola, Irene Nordheim, Ryan Palmquist, Pamela Kolochuk, and Darlene Gerrior voted to effectively overturn the results of the 2021 election, weaponizing LRSD’s “Code of Conduct” to punish Francine for exercising her Constitutional rights as a Canadian citizen and a duly-elected official!
Anti-democracy trustees must resign
These individuals have shown contempt for the democratic process and for those with differing views.
And they will continue to do so – unless somebody holds them to account for their abuse of Francine Champagne, and the voters she represented.
By their biased and authoritarian behavior, they’ve clearly demonstrated that they are unfit to occupy elected office in a democratic jurisdiction.
They must resign.
Demand the anti-democracy trustees resign
Here’s a list of the Louis Riel School Division trustees with their phone numbers and emails, so you can ask them to step down. Please contact them now:
Sandy Nemeth, Chairperson
Ward 3
204-230-6475
[email protected]
Chris Sigurdson, Vice-Chairperson
Ward 2
204-230-4601
[email protected]
Cindy Turner
Ward 1
204-294-3047
[email protected]
Irene Nordheim
Ward 2
204-290-3739
[email protected]
Darlene Gerrior
Ward 3
204-293-3621
[email protected]
Ryan Palmquist
Ward 3
204-290-9976
[email protected]
Pamela Kolochuk
Ward 4
204-297-5339
[email protected]
Chipalo Simunyola
Ward 4
204-688-7479
[email protected]
Please be respectful in your communications.
Then, sign our petition calling on these eight anti-democracy trustees to resign. Click here to sign the petition, and then share it with everyone you know in the jurisdiction of the Louis Riel School Division.
In closing, we must all pray for the conversion of these “woke” board members. Jesus demands this. But we must also take action against their abuse of power.
Please keep Francine in your prayers, too, because, as you can imagine, this has been a stressful ordeal for her.
Reprinted with permission from Campaign Life Coalition.