INNISFAIL - Persons seeking election as Chinook’s Edge School Division (CESD) trustees in next year’s board elections will not need to submit a criminal record check to run, say officials.
At the recent board meeting, trustees chose to defer enacting a bylaw requiring the checks until at least following the October 2025 election.
Under newly-instituted provincial rules under the updated Local Authorities Election Act (LAEA), school boards can choose to pass a bylaw requiring the checks.
“Chinook’s Edge trustees chose to defer the board’s response until after the next election, when they can observe how changes impact boards who chose to develop a bylaw,” the division said in a release.
In a follow-up Albertan interview, Shawn Russell, CESD associate superintendent of corporate service, said the decision to defer consideration of a bylaw had to do with timing.
“When you pass a bylaw there has to be three readings,” said Russell. “And in this case it stated in the revision (of the LAEA) that had to be done by December 31 of the year preceding the election, which meant it had to be done by December 31 this year.
“So it would have been a very quick turnaround. The board thought that with that quick turnaround, they would wait and re-examine it next fall and then look at whether they wanted to make any bylaw for the following election, in 2029.”
The division is not aware of any other school boards that have enacted bylaws, he said.
“I do know that the Edmonton city council decided not to go ahead with it,” he said.
There are a number of outstanding questions regarding the bylaw, including whether the public would be made aware of the contents of any criminal record checks submitted by nominees and how that notification would take place, he said.
“There are a lot of details that are unclear,” he said. “At this point they (trustees) thought that with that un-clarity, give it some time to play out and see if there is more clarity next fall when they look at it.”
Section 22(1) of the LAEA does outline some conditions where a person would be ineligible to run as a trustee, including if the person has, within the previous 10 years, been convicted of an offence under the act, the Election Act, the Election Finances and Contributions Disclosure Act or the Canada Election Act.
The section does not mention convictions under the Criminal Code of Canada.
The Innisfail-headquartered CESD includes schools across the region.
Kathleen Finnigan, superintendent of the 10,400-student Red Deer Catholic Regional School (RDCRS) division did not respond to a request for comment. The division includes schools in Olds and Innisfail.
