Previously At St. Maria Goretti Catholic School
Principal – Denise Canning
Toronto Catholic District School Board
T.1 6.1 What Happened
“Describe each event where you allegedly experienced discrimination under the Code. Be specific. Tell your story using numbered paragraphs. Start from the beginning and end on the date of the last event of discrimination. For each event, explain:
• How the event affected you (e.g., financial, social, emotional, mental health, or other effect).”
T.2 The applicant and his family cannot discuss or describe in any real detail this matter because doing so puts them at risk of maybe the DSBN calling the Children’s Aid Society in retaliation and fabricating allegations that the applicant has experienced serious emotional harm, in addition to optional mental health issues based on the family’s claims in this material.
T.3 These are legitimate and founded concerns because in 2018, Denise Canning, a Caucasian principal at the Toronto Catholic District School Board’s – St. Maria Goretti Catholic Elementary School called the Catholic Children’s Aid Society in reprisal for exposing the applicant’s Caucasian teacher’s deliberate mistreatment of their son.
T.4 The parents and senior school leadership convened a questioning session during which the Caucasian teacher was eventually forced to acknowledge her wrong behavior. After that Denise Canning then filed a fraudulent Catholic Children’s Aid Society claim against the parents out of relation that their son and his sister’s safety and wellbeing where at risk of harm.
T.5 The Catholic Children’s Aid Society made contact with the parents and after speaking with the parents and the applicant and his sister separately at their home. The male case worker concluded that there was absolutely no reason for the call to have been made.
T.6 In fact at that time, the male case worker complimented the parents on their “great job raising your children.” He was astounded by the children’s courtesy, extroversion, willingness to talk about their everyday lives and his concerns in the absence of their parents.
T.7 When the parents questioned who made the call following the interviews. The male case worker said that because of identity protection policies, he was unable to give the caller’s name. However, he did advise the parents to, “send an email requesting a copy of the case notes and when you get it, all the names will be redacted, but your know who made the call.” Of which the applicant’s parents did so.
T.8 The male case worker acknowledged that the contact seemed to be made in bad faith and that the claims were based on extremely general concerns and details. But he was compelled to follow up because the Catholic Children’s Aid Society is mandated to investigate all reported issues.
T.9 Similar to the DSBN and their co-defendants. TCDSB and Denise Canning were prepared to completely upend the lives of the children and sacrifice their happiness, reputations and emotional health in order to satisfy their own self-serving desires.
T.10 Thus, the applicant and his family are not willing to go into details about how these incidents have impacted their family’s mental, emotional or social health among other things. They are not willing to chance that now a DSBN employee would call the Children’s Aid Society in the future and make accusations based extremely general concerns and details, purposefully misconstrued them as a Risk of Harm to the applicant and his sister again!
T.11 And one may come to the conclusion that the Children’s Aid Society is an honorable and trustworthy organization—much like many other government-funded institutions. But they mainly rely on government money and throughout the years the number of cases they handle seems to conveniently increase annually over decades.
T.12 The same Children’s Aid Society that in the past have targeted Indigenous families and wrongfully kidnapped their children to also targeting racialized groups for cultural differences.
Read article – Childrens Aid Society – An Apology To The Indigenous Community
T.13 “Black children are more likely to be in foster care or enrolled in lower academic streams.”
Read article: Ontario’s Anti-Black Racism Strategy
T.14 “A disproportionate number of Toronto-area children in foster and group-home care are black. Advocates are blaming poverty, cultural misunderstanding and racism.”
Read article: Why Are So Many Black Children In Foster And Group Homes
T.15 “A new report looking at child welfare investigations in Ontario found that Black families are more than twice as likely to be investigated compared to white families. They are also more frequently referred to children’s aid by schools and police than other families.”
T.16 “On Friday, the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services launched a third-party review of the child welfare agency in response to what it called “troubling allegations of racism, bullying and harassment” within the organization.”
T.17 “The gross inequities at the organization are exacerbated by a lack of diversity in leadership, a failure to create an anti-racism policy, an unwillingness to acknowledge the need to connect the agency’s Black clients with Black workers and an overall refusal to call racism a problem, the report said.”
T.18 You see even after nine years, the Children’s Aid Societies, like the DSBN tries “changing the blinds, but they’re not changing the furniture inside” to mask their intentions and behavior.
T.19 Racism in Ontario, regrettably, is a money-making machine that sustains the funding and employment of numerous organizations and individuals. They employ racist strategies to scare the public, single out those who are racialized, and use it as a weapon to push their own ideologies against others.
T.20 These articles should help you understand on the smallest of levels what it is like to see your own people suffer while being promised hope and reform. Kind of back in the days when a slave master promised their slaves freedom, tomorrow after a day’s work and it never comes.
T.21 “A significant share of Black Americans also say that when something happens to Black people in their local communities, across the nation or around the globe, it affects what happens in their own lives, highlighting a sense of connectedness… Those who say that being Black is a very or extremely important part of their personal identity…”
T.22 “A new briefing released today, “A Constant Battle,” finds that racism has far-reaching impacts on parents, their children, and the relationships between them. Based on IoPPN research with both parents and teenagers from U.K. racialized communities, the briefing finds that both past and present experiences of racism can affect mental health across generations of a family.”
T.23 “Research shows how racism complicates Black parenting in ways that are not imagined by non-Black parents.”
Read article: How Racism Complicates Black Parenting
T.24 “Raising a Black child or children is a country that 2 out of every 3 Canadian individuals think racism doesn’t exist or isn’t a problem in Canada. Is very frustrating, worrying, complicated, scary and tiresome. And escalate that by a thousand when your children are bi-racial with another race.”
Read article: Raising Biracial And Bi-Ethnic Young Children
T.25 “Being biracial can be difficult in a society that oftentimes just sees black and white, but being a parent to multi-ethnic children also has its challenges. Many parents of biracial children say strangers have questioned them about if their children are actually theirs.”
T.26 Now that you have a simplified understand how Blacks interrupted and deal with the challenges and obstacles of living the Black Experience in Canada. You still can’t truly comprehend the extent of the harm—among other things, rage, distress, and frustration that the applicant and his family have endured at the hands of the DSBN and their co-defendants.
T.27 The applicant and his family have been affected by these racist activities of the DBSN and their co-defendants in ways that none of these Caucasian defendants can ever comprehend, relate to or even experience.
T.28 The parents and siblings have undoubtedly been directly and permanently impacted by the racist actions of the DSBN and its white privileged co-defendants. This effect has been particularly noticeable given the one parent and sibling are also Black.
T.29 The DSBN and its co-defendants have purposefully attempted to discredit, humiliate, shame and embarrass the applicant in front of his parent and sibling. Without giving a damn about his reputation, dreams, spirit, or beliefs has been heartbreaking. Because this would never have happened if the applicant had been solely Caucasian!
T.30 The DSBN very much understands that their actions have far-reaching effects on not only the victim/applicant, but also his defenseless parents and sibling, who must attempt to make sense of the situation and persuade the victim that the issue is not with him, but rather the color of his Black skin.
T.31 If that were not the case the DSBN and its co-defendants would not be behaving in this manner as the solely Caucasian applicant would now become and exceptional student who values academic success, respects others, feels that all people are created equal and as Kevin Maddalena said prior to attempting to protect his boss, Jacqueline Ravazzolo, from accountability. “We enjoy your son’s contributions in the classroom and he has made a great addition this year.”
T.32 Even if the physiologic harm to the applicant’s parents and sibling may not be as severe as the physical and physiologic suffering inflicted upon the victim/applicant by the DSBN and their co-defendants. They continue to always be positive, giving him comfort and the assurance that “Everything will be OK” despite feeling differently.
T.33 Being Black and or a parent and having to deal with the DSBN and their co-defendants racist behavior over two years has created at times, moments of depression, stress, emotional distress, anxiety and maybe some form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a lighter degree.
T.34 And with that said, the family cannot discuss or describe in any real detail this matter because doing so puts them at risk of maybe the DSBN calling the Children’s Aid Society in retaliation and fabricating allegations that the applicant has experienced serious emotional harm, in addition to optional mental health issues based on the family’s claims in this material.