BC Supreme Court petition fails to remove controversial Chilliwack school trustee

An effort to remove a controversial Chilliwack trustee through a BC Supreme court petition has failed.

Local resident and parent to a child who attends school in Chilliwack, Peter Lang, filed the petition against Barry Neufeld last year, saying he violated rules governing conflict-of-interest.

Neufeld wanted the court proceedings dropped, arguing the allegations were frivolous, under the Protection of Public Participation Act.

The resident alleges Neufeld disclosed information shared during an in-camera meeting in 2020.

That meeting was designed to discuss how to resolve a complaint launched by CUPE to the BC Human Rights Tribunal related to their assertion that Neufeld discriminated against school district employees through homophobic and transphobic statements.

During the in-camera meeting, the board decided, among other things,  to donate $5,000 to a non-profit that advocates for LGBTQ youth as a proposed settlement with CUPE. The meeting was conducted by video conference, and Neufeld had not been invited to participate. However,  Neufeld found out about the meeting and sat in on it, made comments, but did not vote on the matter.

Later, during a regular public board meeting, Neufeld mentioned the donation voted on during the in-camera meeting.

The judge ultimately found Neufeld didn’t benefit financially from sitting in on those discussions and dismissed the petition.

Neufeld is no stranger to controversy.

Related stories:

• Chilliwack school trustee Barry Neufeld being taken to court to remove him from office

• Asked to resign, Barry Neufeld lights smoke during Chilliwack school board meeting

• Chilliwack school board to be reviewed following several controversies

In April of 2018, Neufeld came under fire for social media posts about gender identity and sexual orientation, which the BC Teachers’ Federation and Chilliwack Teachers’ Association said were discriminatory and likely to expose transgender people to hatred.

Two years ago, he posted to social media, implying the World Health Organization (World Health Organization) cannot be trusted to relay accurate information about the coronavirus because it supports gender affirmative health care and access to abortion. He also suggested, citing Wikipedia as a source, that Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam is transgender and therefore less credible.

Neufeld later apologized for the comments about the WHO and Tam.

In the fall of 2020, Neufeld used an ableist slur in a Facebook post. He referred to journalists at the Chilliwack Progress by name, using a derogatory word that refers to people with developmental disabilities to denigrate them. The post was then changed to read “three radical lefties,” and later deleted entirely.

 

– With files from Denise Wong