“The Ministry of Education’s relationship with WE is ending. I am encouraging school boards across the province to halt all contracts and investigate existing contracts,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce told me exclusively.
Lecce isn’t able to order local school boards to cease dealing with WE, but he can encourage them to reconsider their relationship and some boards are already doing that. Toronto District School Board, the biggest school board in the country, is reconsidering its relationship with WE.
“There will be a review and evaluation of the partnership before our current partnership agreement ends in February, 2021 and before any decision to continue with the partnership is made,” TDSB spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz told this paper in an email last week.
WE has been involved with more than 7,000 schools across Canada — 3,200 in Ontario alone — over the past several years, but that is now declining as the international aid and youth empowerment group comes under fire amid a political scandal.