In my last video, I announced the conclusion of my defamation lawsuit against the Waterloo Region District School Board and former Chair Scott Piatkowski. My lawsuit against WRDSB resulted in two court victories, at both the Superior Court and the Ontario Court of Appeal, before being resolved through a mediated settlement. The decisions of these judges included important statements about the free expression rights of Canadians and the responsibilities of government actors to tell the truth.

Today, I reveal the financial story behind my legal battle.

When I was defamed four years ago and found myself in need of justice, my lawyer estimated that the cost of a lawsuit against the school board would be at least $100,000 and more if the Board attempted an anti-SLAPP manoeuvre. I asked how long this would take, and he told me to prepare for a two-year battle. I was shocked by the time and money required.

It’s a very good thing that I didn’t know that both the money and the years required would actually double! Yet, miraculously, you, my supporters, always provided enough money for each stage of legal action.

And now, here are the numbers:

The total cost of my legal fees was $248,814.38.
(My lawyer’s account statement is posted below.)

Of that, the Court ordered WRDSB to pay $37,500.

This reduced my net legal fees to $211,314.38.

On the funding side, GoFundMe contributions, after fees, totalled $141,139.80.

Donations received outside of GoFundMe came to $77,457.61

For a grand total of $218,597.41 raised.

After all my legal fees were paid, the surplus is $7,283.03.

I promised that, if there was a surplus, it would be donated to a charity that supports the Charter rights of Canadians. It was an easy choice. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is the recipient of the legal fund surplus, and I am adding a personal donation to bring the total up to $10,000.00. The confirmation of the donation to JCCF is posted below.

Why did I choose The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms? Because JCCF funds lawyers for cases where Canadians’ constitutional rights have been violated. This incredible organization understands the financial burden that ordinary Canadians face when seeking justice, and they have a practical plan to help if this happens to you. To learn more about the work they do, I encourage you to visit their website and view the stories of ordinary Canadians seeking justice.

It’s hard to believe that my legal journey has finally come to an end. With all my heart, thank you for your financial support and messages of encouragement throughout my four-year marathon. I simply could not have fought back without you.

I know what motivated you. You want teachers and parents to be heard because you love your children and grandchildren, and you want them to be properly educated. You want them to graduate into adulthood with a healthy body and a resilient, educated mind. Let’s all continue our fight for an educational system characterized by the pursuit of truth, respect for families and the well-being of Canada’s children.

My name is Carolyn Burjoski, and I am a veteran elementary school teacher.  Four years ago today, at a school board meeting, I raised concerns about a library book that downplays serious medical interventions on children who identify as transgender. I was kicked out of the meeting, removed from my classroom, threatened with disciplinary action, and accused of transphobia. I launched a defamation lawsuit against the Board. 

I am deeply grateful to the hundreds of supporters who stood with me through this difficult legal battle. Together, we achieved two court victories at the Divisional Court and the Ontario Court of Appeal. Our Anti-SLAPP victory now stands as a legal precedent. The lawsuit has now been settled. This chapter is finally closed.

Today, I want to finish what I began four years ago and sound the alarm about what children are being taught in Ontario schools. I believe we may be living through one of the most serious medical scandals in modern history, and our public schools are complicit. I will lay out the facts and let you draw your own conclusions. 

My concerns began nearly ten years ago, when a new picture book in our elementary school library introduced very young children to the idea that they can be born in the wrong body. As a teacher with extensive experience working with young children, I found this troubling. Children think literally. They do not yet understand how their bodies work. When trusted adults suggest that a child’s body can be wrong, some children will inevitably wonder: Is my body wrong too?

That book was written by the star of the television series I Am Jazz, which documents the social transition of a preschool-aged child. Social transition is a powerful psychosocial intervention in which adults use opposite-sex names and language to reinforce a child’s belief that their body is wrong. For many children, this belief becomes fixed and leads the child down a pathway toward irreversible medical interventions (( newsweek.com/how-can-we-explain-rising-gender-dysphoria-among-girls-opinion-1738260 )). In Jazz Jennings’ case, that pathway included penile inversion surgery at seventeen, followed by corrective procedures and struggles with an eating disorder.

To me, this wasn’t the simple happy ending that Jazz and so many other children are promised when they are socially transitioned. Jazz’s painful experience should have prompted serious reflection within medical and educational institutions. Instead, professionals who urged caution were often smeared as transphobic and dismissed(( globalnews.ca/news/4530753/former-camh-psychologist-defends-himself-criticism-youth-gender-identity-clinic/ )), and meaningful questions went unheard. Even Jennings’ own surgeon later acknowledged(( bariweiss.substack.com/p/top-trans-doctors-blow-the-whistle )) the need for greater caution, noting that these interventions can result in lifelong sexual dysfunction and sterility.

That same call for caution was echoed by Dr. Hilary Cass, who led a four-year independent review of pediatric gender medicine in the United Kingdom. Her final report concluded that the evidence base, particularly for puberty blockers, is weak, inconsistent, and lacks long-term follow-up data. Following this review, the UK restricted the use of puberty blockers, and several European countries shifted toward a more cautious approach(( www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/06/06/increasing-number-of-european-nations-adopt-a-more-cautious-approach-to-gender-affirming-care-among-minors/ )).

Around the same time, a video of a private meeting of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) was leaked to the public. This international group publishes guidelines that set the policies of major medical groups, lawmakers, judges and insurance providers around the world.

The leaked video(( environmentalprogress.org/big-news/wpath-files )) from WPATH showed gender clinicians acknowledging that children cannot fully comprehend or consent to the long-term consequences(( www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/09/disturbing-leaks-from-us-gender-group-wpath-ring-alarm-bells-in-nhs )) of these medical interventions. These admissions caused many professionals to question the ethics(( can-sg.org/2024/03/08/wpath-files )) of current practice. Shortly afterward, fourteen Canadian physicians publicly stated(( genderreport.ca/the-myth-of-expert-consensus-is-finally-being-challenged-in-canada/ )), “The science is not ‘settled’ by any means. So-called ‘gender-affirming care’ has proven risks and harms, but unproven benefits. It is not ‘life-saving,’ it is permanently life-altering.” 

What do these Canadian physicians mean by the term “permanently life-altering” and in what ways might the school system be complicit in creating these conditions? Let me tell you what I was seeing in schools, which caused me enough concern to speak out at the school board in 2022.

In an effort to be supportive, schools adopted policies intended to make gender-questioning children feel “safe,” including strict language directives for teachers. We were shown charts instructing us to avoid basic words, such as boys, girls, men, women, male and female. One colleague confided in me that she struggled to teach the puberty unit without using the word girl. She considered saying, “people with uteruses will get a period,” before realizing that she could not explain who has a uterus without using words like girl, female or woman.

At the same time, schools and libraries increasingly promoted materials that present gender change as self-declared and straightforward. I felt that this confusing learning environment could lead girls to believe that all they have to do is say, “I’m a boy,” and – like magic – it’s done!” When a girl says she is a boy, teachers immediately celebrate the child’s bravery, affirm the new identity, change names and pronouns and grant access to bathrooms and change rooms accordingly. In most school boards, teachers are also instructed not to inform parents of a child’s social transition without the child’s consent. In practice, this meant that the teacher would use the child’s chosen name and pronoun at school, unless the parents were there for interviews, in which case the teacher would switch back to the birth name and pronoun that the parents would expect to hear. Several colleagues told me privately that they were uncomfortable with this secrecy but felt coerced into compliance. I worried that I would soon find myself caught in this ethical dilemma. I also wondered how it would affect a student’s psyche to be treated as a girl at home and a boy with a different name at school.

By placing teachers in the role of affirming unexamined gender identity claims and by compelling staff to obscure biological facts, schools may be causing gender confusion in some children, which could lead to poorly considered outcomes. This is problematic because once a child declares a new identity, no adult is permitted to explain that this decision often places them on a path toward lifelong medicalization and probable sterilization. Yet any honest adult knows that children do not always understand the consequences of their choices. 

In fact, the majority of gender-distressed children come to accept their bodies after going through natural puberty(( pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8039393/  )), unless they are socially or medically transitioned beforehand.

Think about that.

These thoughts were weighing heavily on me in late 2021. I had found a children’s book in my school library that makes light of a permanent, life-altering process: the halting of a child’s puberty with powerful drugs, then starting her on cross-sex hormones. I decided to read a passage from that book at a school board meeting. I was stopped before I could finish my presentation. This is what I had wanted to say: Children cannot consent to these medical interventions. They harm reproductive health. And children are too young to understand how that harm will affect their future. Even WPATH admits(( youtu.be/_SedlJMba3E?si=7tX511Zbc2lwQ2zF&t=124 )) it. That is the point I was trying to make when I was silenced.

What happened to me four years ago was not an isolated incident. Across Canada, parents and educators who raise concerns about these practices face the same response: not engagement, but accusation. Not dialogue, but dismissal. The goal is not to answer the question but to ensure no one else dares to ask it. 

Over the past four years, I have watched many well-intentioned parents try to reform this system from within. I know one parent who contacted the school board, child protection services, the Ontario College of Teachers, and even showed up at the police station one day regarding sexually inappropriate school library books for children. Each institution told him to contact another arm of the government. No one took responsibility. 

This is not a single failure, but a system-wide collapse(( macdonaldlaurier.ca/how-gender-activists-stole-the-media-distorted-medicine-and-hurt-canadian-kids-mia-hughes-for-inside-policy )) of child-protection safeguards across multiple government institutions. 

While parents have had some effect, they have not been able to fix the root problem: an ideology that intentionally obscures the truth, dignity, and promise inherent in each human being’s physical body.

A system like this cannot be repaired from within. That is why I have come to believe that the meaningful change will require parents to reclaim their rightful role as their child’s primary educator, whether by removing their children from public schools, demanding transparency, or building alternative institutions. From that foundation – family, home, community, and the pursuit of truth – the next generation can grow up into adulthood with a healthy body, a healthy mind, healthy friendships and an open future.

In closing, this message reflects my personal experiences and opinions. I encourage you to explore the footnotes in the article on my website linked below as part of your own research on this important topic.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for standing with me to protect Canada’s children.

After more than three years of secrecy, the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) has been forced to release the Integrity Commissioner’s report on Trustee Mike Ramsay’s 2022 “Code of Conduct” censure. This document provides fresh evidence of the WRDSB’s pattern of silencing dissent – the same pattern at the heart of my defamation lawsuit against the Board.

The public naturally wondered what Mike must have done to warrant being barred from school board meetings for three months. Mike waived his right to privacy and asked the school board to make the allegations public. They refused.

One wonders why. Could it be that the school board wasn’t interested in protecting Mike’s privacy? Perhaps secrecy was their real goal.

What Mike Ramsay Actually Did

The answer, now revealed, is remarkable: Mike Ramsay was censured for publicly disagreeing with Chair Scott Piatkowski’s decision to silence ME at the January 17, 2022 meeting!

Let that sink in. An elected trustee was punished for defending a constituent’s right to speak.

The same Board that censured Mike is now fighting against my defamation claim. The pattern seems clear: the WRDSB uses institutional process to punish dissent rather than address legitimate concerns.

What the Report Reveals

The Integrity Commissioner’s report contains several striking findings. The Commissioner noted that trustees fell into two ideological camps. The majority held progressive, left-leaning views, while the minority – including Mike – felt marginalized in their opposition to the majority’s agenda.

This confirms what many have long suspected: the actions taken against Mike Ramsay were ideologically motivated, not procedurally justified.

Notably, the Integrity Commissioner found that Mike had not leaked any confidential information, despite this being one of the allegations against him.

Perhaps most telling, the Commissioner stated that the Code of Conduct and the Charter of Rights can “co-exist quite comfortably” and that there is nothing inherently inconsistent between them. Yet the board chose to interpret vague provisions – like the requirement that trustees “inspire public confidence” – to punish a trustee for exercising his democratic right to dissent.

The Man Who Uncovered the Truth

Enter our hero: Michael Teper, a private citizen from Toronto who doubted that Mike had done anything to warrant his removal from the school board. Teper filed a Freedom of Information request for the report.

It took three years of paperwork, fees, mediation, and legal hearings before the WRDSB was finally ordered to release the information. Teper’s persistence has given the public a rare glimpse into the inner workings of this school board and what it reveals is troubling.

Why the Secrecy?

It now seems clear that the board did not want the public to know why they were punishing Mike. Disclosure would not support their narrative. They could not publicly admit that Mike was censured for defending a teacher’s right to raise concerns about books in school libraries.

What Can We Learn From This?

Don’t believe everything you hear just because it comes from a person in authority. Do your own investigation before thinking ill of another person, and withhold judgment until they’ve had a chance to explain themselves. And remember, this could happen to you. Treat those who are being targeted the way you would want to be supported if you were in the crosshairs.

These lessons matter because we are watching institutional tools being turned against ordinary citizens:

• “Human Rights Codes” are being weaponized to intimidate us from sharing our honest concerns.

• “Privacy laws” are being weaponized to keep secrets from the public.

• “Codes of Conduct”, with their vague requirements, are being weaponized to remove independent thinkers from positions of authority.

A Good Man and a True Public Servant

I am deeply grateful for Mike Ramsay’s support nearly four years ago. I wish he did not have to suffer for it.

Mike Ramsay is a good man and a true public servant. He stood up for my right to speak when it would have been easier to stay silent. He paid a price for that courage, but history is proving him right.

Thank you, Trustee Ramsay.

Carolyn Burjoski

Integrity Commissioner’s Report:

www.wrdsb.ca/wp-content/uploads/Integrity-Commissioner-Report-May-31-2022.pdf 

Privacy Commission Adjudicator’s Report here:

https://decisions.ipc.on.ca/ipc-cipvp/orders/en/item/522150/index.do

CTV News Kitchener:

www.ctvnews.ca/kitchener/article/wrdsb-releases-integrity-commissioners-report-three-years-after-trustees-suspension/

Waterloo Region Record:

www.therecord.com/opinion/columnists/no-wonder-the-provincial-government-wants-to-get-rid-of-school-trustees/article_bb65e612-17ec-5d9e-a681-22d4e70bd6bb.html

Woolwich Observer:

https://www.observerxtra.com/school-board-finally-releases-report-of-trustees-suspension/

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I have some very important news to share with you today. After more than three and a half years of delays and legal maneuvers by the Waterloo Region District School Board, my defamation case has now been set down for trial.

What does that mean? Simply put, it means all the pre-trial procedures are finished – the motions, the appeals, the examinations for discovery, and the undertakings – and the case is finally moving forward toward trial. We are now scheduling a trial date, which will most likely take place late in 2026.

This is a huge milestone! With the lawfare and delays finally behind us, the matter is heading to a courtroom, where the truth can be heard publicly. I feel resolute and confident heading into trial – not only because the facts are on my side, but also because I’ve already won at both the Superior Court and the Court of Appeal. Those victories affirmed that my case has real merit and that I deserve the opportunity to clear my name.

The next step before trial is mediation, which is scheduled for December 10, 2025. This is an opportunity for both sides to sit down with a neutral third party and see if we can reach a fair settlement, avoiding the time and cost of a full trial. I am open to good-faith resolutions, but if mediation doesn’t succeed, I am fully prepared to proceed to trial. In that case, the next stages will be a pre-trial conference, trial preparation and then the trial itself.

I want to thank the hundreds of you who have contributed to my legal fund. You have carried me to this point because you care deeply about free expression. I could not have made it this far without your generosity and encouragement.

As we prepare for the next steps, there are significant costs – preparing the documents, travel and accommodations for the in-person session, and sharing the mediator’s fee – will add up to about $30,000. I am once again turning to you, my supporters, to help me shoulder this financial burden so I can see this case through to the end.

Many people are deeply concerned about the intimidation we all feel when trying to express our honest thoughts in this country. In fact, I have added a page to my website telling the shocking stories of five other cancelled educators, some of whom also need your support in their fight for justice. You can discover them at the new page for Cancelled Educators here: https://cancelledteacher.com/cancelled-educators/

Thank you, once again, for standing with me as I continue to recover from the trauma of being defamed. Your support is helping to secure a free-expression victory for all Canadians.

Thank You
Carolyn Burjoski

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I’m writing to update you on an important milestone in my defamation lawsuit against the Waterloo Region District School Board and Scott Piatkowski.

We’ve just completed the Examination for Discovery phase of the lawsuit.  In simple terms, this is when both sides question each other under oath before trial. Both sides get to question the opposing party, with all testimony recorded by a court reporter. It’s a crucial step where evidence is revealed, facts are established, and both sides get a clearer picture of each other’s case.
 
My lawyer examined defendant Scott Piatkowski via Zoom on February 13, 2025. A week later, on February 20, I was examined by the Board’s lawyers for about five hours, also via Zoom. During the examinations, both sides made “undertakings” – promises to provide additional information or documents – which will be fulfilled over the next several weeks.

Even though my lawyer prepared me thoroughly for what to expect, I was anxious in the weeks leading up to my examination. There’s something uniquely stressful about being questioned under oath about events that were so painful.

The examination itself was emotionally draining. Having to revisit in detail the suffering I experienced in 2022 was more difficult than I had anticipated. Wounds that had begun to heal were reopened as I had to recount those dark days.

Despite the emotional toll, I believe I answered the Board’s questions effectively and didn’t fall into any of the “traps” that can occur during cross-examination. Of course, after it was over, I found myself replaying certain moments in my mind, thinking I could have answered some questions better – I suspect that’s a normal reaction.

With Discovery complete, we move closer to the next phases of the lawsuit. My lawyer will update me on the next steps once all undertakings have been completed.

I cannot express enough how grateful I am for your continued support. This journey would be impossible without you standing with me. Your belief in the importance of this case gives me strength on days when the process feels overwhelming.

I’ll continue to update you as significant developments occur.

With sincere appreciation,
Carolyn

Hello Dear Supporters,

Today marks exactly three years since I spoke at the Waterloo Region District School Board meeting about age-inappropriate library materials. Within just 4 minutes, I was kicked out and subsequently defamed in a way that made international news. I’m reaching out to you today with exciting updates on our fight for justice.

As you may recall, the Board attempted to stop my defamation lawsuit using an expensive legal maneuver called an Anti-SLAPP motion. I won that battle in court in November 2023, but the Board appealed my victory. I won again at the Court of Appeal in November 2024.

Since then, I’ve had to wait 60 long days to see if the school board would appeal this latest victory to the Supreme Court of Canada. The clock ran out just two weeks ago, meaning the school board has chosen NOT to appeal. This is good news for all taxpayers!

 As a result of the lawfare waged by the Board, my legal costs have already piled up to $135,036.23, and defamation proceedings have barely begun. To be transparent, I’ve posted my total legal bill below.

For the past 3 years, the school board’s strategy has been to delay justice, drain my finances, and demoralize me. But you came to my rescue and have covered all my legal costs to date through my GoFundMe campaign. THANK YOU!

The defamation suit is now moving forward, with Examination for Discovery scheduled for February 2025 as the next step, where both parties ask each other questions under oath.

After Discovery, there are several more steps to complete, but we hope to get this case to trial in 2025. I expect to win this lawsuit since two courts have already decided that I was indeed defamed and that the Board has no reasonable defense. I look forward to completing this lawsuit, clearing my name, and scoring a victory for free speech.

Thank you for all of your emotional and financial support over the past three years. I simply could not have achieved these two victories without you! All the best in 2025. It’s going to be a great year!

Carolyn Burjoski