‘No agendas, no secrets’

Manitoba teachers have voted in a new union executive led by a francophone educator who has pledged to renew the embattled organization with a “no secrets” philosophy.

The 2025 annual general meeting of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society wrapped up over the weekend with the election of president Lillian Klausen.

Klausen has taught French-language courses in rural, northern and, most recently, Winnipeg, throughout her 30-year career.

She was president of Éducatrices et éducateurs francophones du Manitoba – the francophone counterpart to her latest role – from 2020 to 2024. Since then, Klausen been working for the River East Transcona School Division and in a part-time union role.

“I’m very hopeful for a renewed Manitoba Teachers’ Society and great things moving forward. In practise, (that will involve) honest communication,” she said in an interview Wednesday.

“It’s about being open and honest and everybody knowing what we’re working on and what we’re doing moving forward — no agendas, no secrets. We’re just looking to make the best decisions for the society.”

Within hours of the union’s latest elections, Klausen and her colleagues on the MTS provincial executive, better known as PX, selected an executive director.

The union’s operational wing had been without a permanent chief of staff since November 2023.

The last 18 months have been marked by significant turnover, rampant infighting and low morale, and multiple investigations into workplace culture at MTS headquarters on Portage Avenue.

Two people served in interim roles after the last executive director initially went on a leave. Danielle Fullan Kolton submitted her resignation, one of a handful of recent high-profile exits, at the end of December.

Her successor, Arlyn Filewich, has worked in various roles at MTS since leaving the front lines of the teaching profession in 2014.

More than 330 delegates, representing 16,600 public school teachers, were registered for the 2025 AGM between May 21 to 24.

They chose Joel Swaan, a teacher from Winkler-based Garden Valley School Division, to be the new MTS vice-president.

Klausen said she’s confident in the overhauled leadership team and the new and old faces that are on it. Her first major project is to meet with the 38 local chapter presidents of MTS, she said.

The new president drove to Saskatoon on Sunday to meet with her counterparts from other Canadian jurisdictions to discuss challenges faced by teachers across the country.

Recruitment and retention, as well as aggressive student behaviours in classrooms, were the hot topics, she said.

MTS is finalizing internal working groups to brainstorm solutions to local workplace concerns — a project that began under former president Nathan Martindale.

Amid the chaos at MTS headquarters, Martindale oversaw the ratification of the union’s first provincial collective agreement and lobbied the government to establish its new universal school meal program.

He decided not to run for re-election and plans to return to a classroom in the Winnipeg School Division in the fall.

As his two-year term came to a close, Martindale told the Free Press he was hopeful his successors would carry on a campaign to counter anti-Indigenous racism, transphobia and other “hateful rhetoric” at school board meetings.

“We have a responsibility, as teachers, to push back,” he said last week.

Martindale indicated the union was gearing up to mobilize its locals to do more public education on trusteeship ahead of the 2026 municipal races.

Klausen echoed those comments on Wednesday, saying MTS will search for community members who share the union’s values and encourage them to run for office next year.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca