The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announces that a legal warning letter has been sent to the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board after it suspended a parent from her role on the School Council for respectfully objecting to land acknowledgements.

Catherine Kronas, a concerned parent with a child enrolled at Ancaster High Secondary School, was re-elected to serve on School Council in October 2024.

During a Council meeting on April 9, 2025, Ms. Kronas asked that her respectful objection to land acknowledgements be noted in the minutes. No disruption occurred; her comments were limited to requesting that her dissenting viewpoint be recorded.

On May 22, 2025, however, the School Board informed Ms. Kronas that her involvement on the Council was being “paused” based on allegations that she had caused harm and had violated a Code of Conduct Policy. She has not been permitted to attend the next scheduled meeting.

Ms. Kronas was unsettled by the Board’s decision, saying, “I was taken aback by the Board’s decision to suspend me from the School Council after delivering a respectful objection, especially given assurances made at a previous council meeting and outlined in the Council bylaws that open dialogue and diverse perspectives are welcomed.”

“By barring me from the next meeting, the Council sends a troubling message to all parents: that even respectful disagreement may be met not with dialogue, but with disciplinary action. I am grateful to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms for assisting me in this matter,” she remarked.

Constitutional lawyer Hatim Kheir said Ms. Kronas’ comments “were a reasonable and measured expression of a viewpoint held by many Canadians.”

“The Board’s decision to suspend her from the Council, which she has a right to sit on as an elected parent member, is an act of censorship that offends the right to freedom of expression,” he explained.

Mr. Kheir is calling for Ms. Kronas to be immediately reinstated to the Council and to be allowed to fulfill her elected role without further retaliation for expressing her views.

To view a brief video summary of this matter, click here.

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From the Fraser Institute

By Milagros Palacios, Jake Fuss and Nathaniel Li

This Sunday, June 8, Canadians will celebrate Tax Freedom Day, the day in the year when they start working for themselves and not government, finds a new study published by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

“If Canadians paid all their taxes up front, they would work the first 158 days of this year before bringing any money home for themselves and their families,” said Jake Fuss, director of fiscal studies at the Fraser Institute.

Tax Freedom Day measures the total annual tax burden imposed on Canadian families by federal, provincial, and municipal governments.

In 2025, the average Canadian family (with two or more people) will pay $68,266 in total taxes. That’s 43.1 per cent of its annual income ($158,533) going to income taxes, payrolltaxes (including the Canada Pension Plan), health taxes, sales taxes (like the GST), property taxes, fuel taxes, “sin” taxes and more.

Represented as days on the calendar, the total tax burden comprises more than five months of income—from January 1 to June 7. On June 8th—Tax Freedom Day—Canadians finally start working for themselves, and not government.

But Canadians should also be worried about the nearly $90 billion in deficits the federal and provincial governments are forecasting this year, because they will have substantial tax implications in future years.

To better illustrate this point, the study also calculates a Balanced Budget Tax Freedom Day—the day of the year when the average Canadian finally would finally start working for themselves if governments paid for all of this year’s spending with taxes collected this year.

In 2025, the Balanced Budget Tax Freedom Day won’t arrive until June 21. “Tax Freedom Day helps put the total tax burden in perspective, and helps Canadians understand just how much of their money they pay in taxes every year,” Fuss said. “Canadians need to decide for themselves whether they are getting their money’s worth when it comes to how governments are spending their tax dollars.”

Tax Freedom Day for each province varies according to the extent of the provincially and  locally levied tax burden.

2025 Provincial Tax Freedom Days

Manitoba                                    May 17
Saskatchewan                            May 31
British Columbia                       May 31
Alberta                                         May 31
Prince Edward Island               June 2
New Brunswick                          June 4
Ontario                                        June 7
Nova Scotia                                June 10
Newfoundland & Labrador     June 19
Quebec                                        June 21

CANADA                                    June 8

Canadians Celebrate Tax Freedom Day on June 8, 2025

• In 2025, the average Canadian family will earn $158,533 in income and pay an estimated $68,266 in total taxes (43.1%).
• If the average Canadian family had to pay its taxes up front, it would have worked until June 7 to pay the total tax bill imposed on it by all three levels of government (federal, provincial, and local).
• This means that Tax Freedom Day, the day in the year when the average Canadian family has earned enough money to pay the taxes imposed on it, falls on June 8.
• Tax Freedom Day in 2025 comes one day earlier than in 2024, when it fell on June 9. This change is due to the expectation that the total tax revenues forecasted by Canadian governments will increase slower than the incomes of Canadians.
• Tax Freedom Day for each province varies according to the extent of the provincially levied tax burden. The earliest provincial Tax Freedom Day falls on May 17 in Manitoba, while the latest falls on June 21 in Quebec.
• Canadians are right to be thinking about the tax implications of the $89.4 billion in projected federal and provincial government deficits in 2025. For this reason, we calculated a Balanced Budget Tax Freedom Day, the day on which average Canadians would start working for themselves if governments were obliged to cover current expenditures with current taxation. In 2025, the Balanced Budget Tax Freedom Day arrives on June 21.

  

  Milagros Palacios

  Director, Addington Centre for Measurement, Fraser Institute

  

  Jake Fuss

  Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute

  

  Nathaniel Li

  Senior Economist, Fraser Institute