A coalition of concerned parents and grandparents in the Greater Toronto Area’s Durham Region has released a non-exhaustive list of 12 candidates for Durham school board trustee who they believe align with their pro-family and parental rights values.
In an exclusive interview with Juno News, Back2Basics Durham co-founder Rob Cornish explains why he believes voters in the Durham Region should support his organization’s list of trustee candidates in the coming municipal election.
Back2Basics Durham named six candidates for each of the Durham Catholic District School Board and the Durham District School Board. The municipal elections take place on Monday, October 26, 2026.
“We are intending to make a difference in the system by encouraging high-quality, high-calibre people to stand for trustee, so that we can provide an umbrella of common sense over the system to hopefully be able to make some changes,” Cornish told Juno News in an interview.
“We came up with a set of six core values, which for us was our sort of baseline, if you like. There’s probably lots of other things we’d like to add in there… but that just is enough, and they have to be in agreement with us on all six of those.”
He said the process of finding candidates was a “two-way street”, which involved looking for “good people” who “buy into our core values enthusiastically” and “who themselves are convicted to make the kind of changes we have in mind.”
The Back2Basics website outlines the six core values all of its preferred candidates must adhere to before receiving an endorsement.
“Basically, parental rights and input are number one. We just believe that parents should have primary responsibility for care of their children, and that their rights must be respected by the school system, which we don’t believe it is being respected at the moment,” Cornish said.
The second value, educational success, Cornish says, is about putting learning the keys for success back to the forefront of education rather than indoctrination into “adult ideologies.”
“Adult ideologies are stealing time from learning, and we don’t think that’s why parents are sending their kids to school,” Cornish said.
The group also thinks that merit-based achievement needs to be prioritized in schools.
“In the world of diversity, equity, and inclusion, ‘equity,’ really, what it amounts to is that there must be equal outcomes for everybody. Well, so resources are spent on bringing people up to a certain level,” he said. “But to find those resources that inevitably end up taking resources and opportunities away from high achievers to all achieve the same outcome, which we just don’t think is possible.”
He said that Back2Basics believes that kids who work and study hard should be recognized and rewarded for their efforts, given the opportunity to do so, and celebrated for it.
“We need academic heroes in Canada. These are going to be the people who’ll carry us on into the future,” Cornish added. “Of course, we care about those who are struggling, and we want to help them, too. But we don’t believe in equity as a concept. We don’t think it’s possible; it doesn’t really work in the real world.”
The fourth value Cornish and his organization looked for in candidates was a belief in “secure learning environments for everybody.
“What we mean by that is we almost need a safe place for everybody, no matter what your colour, creed, stripe, or sexuality. So clearly, you know, gay and trans kids must feel safe, and they must be respected and looked after,” he said. “But in the same token, white boys must be respected, and they mustn’t be treated like they’re some sort of second-class citizens.”
When pressed on why he signalled out “white boys” specifically as also needing to have a respectful and secure learning environment, he said he believes boys are being left behind academically, and ideologies such as critical race theory being pushed in schools make white Canadians feel like they are problematic for existing.
He shared an anecdote of a 15-year-old telling his grandfather that he had to sit through a 45-minute lesson about how he was “guilty by association” because of his “whiteness with colonialism.” The teacher allegedly told him that he was an oppressor due to the colour of his skin.
He said the coalition of parents and grandparents finds critical race theory to be “extremely destructive,” and instead of limiting or fighting racism, it is “teaching kids to be racist.”
“Canada has been one of the most successful countries in the world at overcoming racism, but now we’re undoing that by allowing this teaching of critical race theory,” he said. “So we don’t agree with that.”
Another core value is a belief in “biological integrity” that children are either born male or female, and in 99.9 per cent of cases, a child’s chromosomes dictate that gender.
“The chromosomes dictate that, not anyone’s opinion as to how they feel on any particular day. And we believe that that should be the basic understanding about sexuality,” he said.
He acknowledged that there are “anomalies”, such as individuals “suffering with gender dysphoria”, and they should be cared for, but that all children do not need to be taught that gender is “fluid” and that it is dictated by however one feels on a given day.
The other point Cornish said his group was looking for was a belief that only civic and national flags should be flown by schools in the Durham District School Board and the Durham Catholic District School Board.
He said any other flags sow disunity and are divisive.
“If we have to fly the Pride flag, why can’t we fly the flag of all the other ideas and ideologies that other people in the school value? We’re just saying leave them out,” Cornish said. “They don’t have any reference to learning. Let’s celebrate being proud Canadians together — unity rather than disunity.”
Cornish said that the list of candidates were all just candidates whom the group has gotten in contact with and confirmed their values align. The list includes Walton Armstrong, Sinthuja Kanageswaran, Sandra Lazarus, Sri Mylavarapu, Lynda Yardley and James Bountrogiannis for the public school system and Kylie McAllister, Morgan Ste Marie, Richard Damianopoulos, Trevor Aitcheson, Ayeza Perez and Mary Louise LaBarre in the Catholic system.
He said the list is by no means exhaustive and he’s even heard from another candidate whom Back2Basics has yet to name, which he says aligns with those values as well.
“Our original goal was to find 19 trustee candidates, 11 in the public board and eight in the Catholic board, but we just haven’t managed to find enough. But we found a good number,” he said. “There are others out there. We just hadn’t managed to find them.”
Cornish said his group is not “looking to be confrontational” and has been labelled by critics as “far-right extremists,” but he “doesn’t know where they get that.”
“We just believe our approach is kind of common sense.”
Wonderful. Can your parent groups do the same for Ottawa? We'd appreciate it.