After second Code of Conduct complaint, Red Deer Catholic removes trustee

The school division is not yet saying which sanctions she violated, though are promising a detailed report to be tabled on or before Nov. 24.

However, her legal counsel James Kitchen divulged to rdnewsNOW that a second Code of Conduct complaint was made against LaGrange for doing a media interview. In the lengthy list of sanctions from Sept. 26, it says that LaGrange:

b) shall not represent the board/school division in any official capacity including board/school division functions, events, award ceremonies, conferences, assemblies, school masses, graduation events, school council meetings and speaking with news/media outlets;

Kitchen says the second complaint came after an interview LaGrange did Oct. 19 on a show called Talk Truth. The episode was hosted by Allan Hunsperger, president of the House Ministries of Tofield, and a former Wildrose Party candidate under Danielle Smith who once wrote a piece telling the 2SLGBTQ+ community they would spend, “eternity in the lake of fire.”

It’s unclear what role it played, but LaGrange is also featured in an interview with Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, which published on YouTube Oct. 2. Tyler Thompson was a 2019 federal PPC candidate under Maxime Bernier in Red Deer-Lacombe.

Other Sept. 26 sanctions included:

being censured from being part of all and any board committees, and from attending and participating in board committee meetings; that includes all ASBA and ACSTA meetings and conferences;
within 90 days taking sensitivity training on Holocaust, 2SLGBTQ+, use of social media, and human rights;
at end of 90 days, issue sincere letter of apology; and
not post any content of similar nature to original meme.

Kitchen told rdnewsNOW in the aftermath of the original sanctions that LaGrange would likely not follow through on most or all of them, particularly the apology because it would, “violate her conscience.”

It came out Oct. 17 when the division publicized its reasoning for the sanctions that LaGrange invoked the Holy Spirit when explaining to the board why she posted the meme.

“Do it, go for it,” the Holy Spirit told LaGrange, according to the report.

“As the Chair of the RDCRS board of trustees, I affirm our unwavering dedication to fostering a safe, secure, caring, respectful and inclusive learning environment for our students, staff and community members,” Board Chair Murray Holman said on Nov. 14. “Regrettably, as a result of Trustee LaGrange’s violation of the sanctions placed on her on September 26, 2023, as well as her additional violations of Board Policy and the Education Act, the board made the challenging decision to disqualify Trustee LaGrange.”

The motion approved by the board reads as follows:

BE IT RESOLVED that further to the November 13 and 14, 2023, in camera discussions, and after having carefully considered all the points raised therein, and in accordance with Board Policy and the Education Act, Trustee LaGrange has violated sanctions issued on September 26, 2023, and had further violated Board Policy and the Education Act. As a result, Trustee LaGrange is hereby disqualified under section 87(1)(c) of the Education Act and Board Policy from remaining as a school board trustee. The Board will issue detailed reasons in support of this Board motion on or before November 24, 2023.

Interestingly, RDCRS notes in its release that LaGrange resigned.

This is due to a technicality in the Act, which says under Section 90-Resignation on disqualification: “If a person is disqualified under section 87 or 88 from remaining as a trustee of the board, the person shall immediately resign.”

Kitchen calls the mandatory resignation clause bizarre.

“What happened here is the board said we’re going to disqualify you; will you resign? We said we will comply, however, let it be known that we reserve our right to publicly contest any suggestion made by the board that this resignation came willingly. It was not,” Kitchen tells rdnewsNOW.

“If the public believes it was done willingly, then everyone will say she finally recognized she did something wrong, and because of the shame of it all, she’s resigning. No, she fought it to the end and is only resigning because legislation says she has to.”

Kitchen says further that the decision is ridiculous.

“From our perspective, it’s an absurd overreaction, an abuse of power, and censorship. The board hasn’t liked her from day one when she was against vaccine mandates, and because she has a different political worldview. She’s conservative and they’re all liberal,” he says. “It’s more cancel culture.”

Kitchen confirms they will be taking the matter to a judicial review, though a date has not been set. They were waiting for the first one to occur, he says, when the second Code of Conduct complaint was filed.

He adds that LaGrange still had not decided whether to do the sensitivity training, though it remained unlikely.

As noted in our original coverage of this story, Monique LaGrange is a distant relative to former Red Deer Catholic trustee and current provincial Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, as confirmed by the now Health Minister’s press secretary. Monique LaGrange was first elected to the Red Deer Catholic school board in 2021 with 2,436 votes.

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by Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

After second Code of Conduct complaint, Red Deer Catholic removes trustee

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