A trustee with the Greater Essex County District School Board is calling for a Ministry of Education investigation over a letter issued by the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board.
Alan Halberstadt is questioning the legality of the letter.
Trustee candidate Eric Renaud is alleging election interference after the Catholic board released the letter urging churchgoers to not support any candidate who suggests merging the public and Catholic school boards. The letter was released Sunday, the day before the municipal election.
During the election campaign, Halberstadt and Renaud held a news conference calling for a merger.
Halberstadt thinks the letter merits an investigation.
"I think it's meddling. I think they paid money for lawyers if you look at how the letter is phrased," he says. "Who paid for that? Was it the Bishop of London? Was it the school board taxpayers?"
Halberstadt says, while Renaud wasn't specifically named in the letter, he was the only Catholic board trustee candidate calling for a board merger.
"He's the one that they targeted. There's no doubt about that. Especially coming from the Bishop, it's my sense that that's highly inappropriate and perhaps illegal to be making these kind of statements on the Sunday before the election.They put a target on Eric's back," says Halberstadt.
Renaud finished second in the election race, 430 votes behind incumbent Bernie Mastromattei to represent Wards 3 and 4 in the City of Windsor.
Halberstadt also says there's no question the letter crossed the line.
"It demonstrates that they're fearful that some kind of a merger might happen," he says. "So they would attack one candidate to try to get him defeated. Whether that was the difference or not, it's hard to say, but it's kind of a powerful tool they were using to try to get their constituency to vote against Eric."
Renaud is planning legal action against the Catholic school board.
— with files from AM800's Peter Langille