Advocates urge Conestoga to remove Tibbits' name after province appoints administrator
- Ontario’s takeover of Conestoga College has reopened a local fight over legacy, with union leaders and community advocates pushing to strip John Tibbits’ name from Waterloo. - The pressure comes after an audit triggered the province’s May 7 appointment of administrator Linda Franklin and highlighted Tibbits’ $636,000 pay and payout. - It matters because the province has already removed Conestoga’s board, so symbolic cleanup is becoming a test of deeper institutional change.
Conestoga College is now in the kind of crisis where even the name on a building has become political. After Ontario removed the college’s board and installed administrator Linda Franklin on May 7, local pressure shifted fast from finances to symbolism. The new argument is simple — if the province says the old regime was badly mismanaged, why is John Tibbits’ name still on a Waterloo campus building? ### What changed this week? The big change is provincial control. Ontario said it found serious financial and governance mismanagement at Conestoga, relieved the Board of Governors of its duties, and appointed Franklin to run the institution immediately. That is not a routine intervention — it is the province stepping in because it no longer trusts the college’s own governance to fix the problem. (news.ontario.ca) ### Why is Tibbits’ name suddenly part of the story? Because the audit did not just criticize vague “past practices.” It pointed to decisions tied to the former president’s compensation and exit. The province said the board approved a 55% salary increase that took a former president’s pay above $636,000 in 2024, plus a termination payment worth 83 times the president’s monthly salary — far beyond the 24-month limit set in provincial rules. Local union leaders then argued that leaving Tibbits’ name on campus makes the college look like it still honors that era. (news.ontario.ca) ### Who is calling for the name to come down? At least one of the clearest public calls came from Vikki Poirier, president of OPSEU Local 238, which represents support staff at Conestoga. In CityNews coverage reacting to the audit, she said the Waterloo campus building should no longer carry Tibbits’ name. That matters because it shows the push is not just coming from random critics online — it is coming from organized staff voices inside the college community. (news.ontario.ca) ### Why does a building name matter? Because names are basically endorsements carved into the institution. A college can say it is turning the page, but a named building says who it still treats as a builder of the place. When a former leader leaves under a cloud this dark, the sign starts to look less like history and more like a refusal to break with it. That is why renaming fights often flare up right after governance scandals — they are really arguments about whether the cleanup is cosmetic or real. (kitchener.citynews.ca) ### Was Tibbits already gone before this? Yes. Tibbits retired effective January 14, 2026, in an abrupt move after earlier plans had him staying much longer. At the time, Conestoga’s board praised his legacy. That older framing now looks badly out of sync with what the province described in May. The gap between those two stories — celebrated exit in January, provincial takeover in May — is a big reason the naming issue has become so charged. (news.ontario.ca) ### Is this only about one person? Not really. Even union leaders calling for the name change have said Tibbits is not the whole story. The province’s intervention targeted the board as well, and the audit described broader failures — expensive travel, questionable hospitality spending, and governance breakdowns that landed on students and staff, including more than 500 layoffs. So the fight over the building name is also a fight over whether accountability will stop with one departed president or reach the whole system that enabled him. (cbc.ca) ### What happens next? Franklin now has the authority the board used to hold, so any serious reset — financial, managerial, or symbolic — runs through her office and the province. Regular operations are supposed to continue, but the real pressure is on whether Conestoga treats this as a narrow scandal-management exercise or a full institutional reset. A building name is a small decision next to budgets and layoffs — but turns out it is also an easy one to read. (news.ontario.ca) ### Bottom line The call to remove Tibbits’ name is not just about a sign in Waterloo. It is a stress test for whether Conestoga’s post-Tibbits era is actually different from the one the province just shut down. (news.ontario.ca)
