In April 2026 the Calgary Board of Education settled a class action over the sexual abuse of students at John Ware School for almost $16 million. An investigative reporter described a culture of apathy, or at worst complicity. In Pembina Hills, a superintendent faced five criminal charges after trustees investigating an unrelated complaint stumbled onto the alleged fraud. Alberta's Auditor General has said for years that school authorities lack effective performance reporting.
Alberta recently took teacher discipline away from the Alberta Teachers' Association. That built a court. The province still has no police: no body that stands inside the school system, with access to every record, reporting to the Minister, that cannot be stonewalled and cannot be threatened.
The one place this works is Chicago. Its Office of Inspector General investigates waste and fraud every year and houses a Sexual Allegations Unit that substantiates abuse at double the Canadian rate while clearing teachers who were wrongly accused. Scaled to Alberta's 800,000 students, the office would employ about 100 people and cost about $20 million a year. One lawsuit at one Calgary school nearly matched that.
The ask
- An Office of Inspector General for Education, reporting directly to the Minister, with access to all school authority records.
- A Sexual Allegations Unit embedded in that office, so that an investigation does not announce itself when it enters a school.
- Public annual reporting the school authorities cannot suppress.
Status: Proposal published in the Western Standard, June 2026.