Candidate for Ottawa-Carleton District School Board trustee in Zone 12, a parent and special education advocate who organized the shared statement of principles signed by eight candidates.
Cathy Varrette is on the City of Ottawa’s list of certified candidates for Ottawa-Carleton District School Board trustee in Zone 12, which covers City Wards 2 and 11, with a nomination dated August 5, 2026. CBC News and the Ottawa Citizen reported in October 2025 that, as a parent who follows the board’s special education committee, she filmed and live-streamed a committee meeting after the province ended the board’s own live stream. CBC News of August 24, 2026 reports that she is running to press for more educational assistant support for students with autism. CBC News and the Ottawa Citizen of August 27, 2026 report that she organized the shared statement of principles signed by eight candidates. Her VoteMate profile, written by her or her team, describes her work with the Ontario Autism Coalition. The board has been under provincial supervision since June 27, 2025.
Researched by voche.me · Not a campaign-authored page
Ottawa municipal electionThe City of Ottawa’s list of certified candidates shows Cathy Varrette’s nomination for trustee of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board in Zone 12 dated August 5, 2026. The City’s open data file shows no withdrawal. The other candidate in the zone is Rick Whitley. The City list gives her a website at cathyvarrette.ca, and CTV News Ottawa links the same address. When voche.me opened that address, it showed a page that loads its content from cathyvarrette.com, and that second address did not answer, so no text from a campaign website was read.
CBC News reported on October 9, 2025 that she is a regular viewer of the live streams of the board’s committee meetings and holds watch parties with a group of parents who follow the special education advisory committee. After the province told boards under supervision to stop streaming committee meetings, she went to the meeting on Wednesday, October 8, 2025 and filmed it herself. The board told her she was not allowed, and later said she was first blocked under a separate rule that requires consent for recording. After a break and with everyone’s consent she resumed. The Ottawa Citizen reported on October 11, 2025 that staff stopped the meeting for a time after they found she was live-streaming with her phone, that she was not prevented from recording, and that she live-streamed the whole meeting and later posted the recording to YouTube. She told CBC that without access to the streams the public loses transparency.
Her VoteMate profile, which says it was submitted by the candidate or her team, describes her as an artist, a mother, a child advocate and a community organizer. It says her advocacy began in January 2019, that she joined the Ontario Autism Coalition as a Regional Organizer and later served on its Political Action Committee and Education Working Group, that she took part in the coalition’s third-party campaign in May 2022, that she began watching board and special education advisory committee meetings online in 2022 or 2023 and from 2024 attended parents’ meetings at schools as a child advocate, and that she received the coalition’s “unsung hero” award in August 2025. The profile says the live stream ended in November 2025, while CBC News reported the end on October 9, 2025. It says she now live-streams the meetings of boards under supervision on the coalition’s YouTube page. voche.me did not check these statements.
Her profile lists goals that include: pressing the Ministry of Education for school funding; more speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and psychologists; clearing the backlog of psychoeducational assessments; staffing for identification, placement and review decisions and for individual education plan goals; opening more special program classes; bringing back alternative education; equal access to French programs; smaller classes; more educational assistants and early childhood educators in classrooms; addressing systemic racism, homophobia, transphobia and ableism; funding breakfast programs; and more transparency from the board and the Ministry.
CBC News of August 24, 2026 reports that she is a Zone 12 candidate and a parent of a child with high needs, and that she is running to push for more educational assistant support for students with autism. It quotes her: “We may not have decision making, we may not have a position per se to go to, but that doesn’t mean the work stops.” CBC News of August 27, 2026 reports that she organized the shared statement of principles, which calls for an immediate end to the board’s provincial supervision, and quotes her: “I can’t afford to lose any more special education.” The eight signers named are John MacRae (Zone 1), Daniel Pershick (Zone 3), Emily Quaile (Zone 4), Natasha Lynn Mott (Zone 5), Chris Durrant (Zone 6), Keelin Pringnitz (Zone 10), Brendan Ray (Zone 11) and Cathy Varrette (Zone 12). She told the Ottawa Citizen that she had been in touch with more than 30 people about joining.
The board’s page says that since June 27, 2025 the board has been under supervision by the Minister of Education, and that decisions normally made by trustees are made by the appointed Supervisor, Robert Plamondon. The sources read hold no complaint or allegation about her.
Summarized from the campaign’s published profile. These are stated positions, not an assessment of results or a complete platform.
She told CBC News she is running to press for more educational assistant support for students with autism, and said she cannot afford to lose any more special education or educational assistants.
CBC News · Candidates contest all OCDSB trustee zones despite provincial supervision, August 24, 2026She filmed and live-streamed a board committee meeting in October 2025 after the province ended the board’s live stream, and told CBC News that without this the public loses transparency.
CBC News · Ottawa parent fights back after school board stops livestreaming committee meetings, October 9, 2025She organized a shared statement of eight candidates that calls for an immediate end to the board’s provincial supervision.
CBC News · Trustee candidates band together against provincial supervision of OCDSB, August 27, 2026Her profile lists clearing the backlog of psychoeducational assessments, opening more special program classes, more speech-language, occupational therapy and psychology staff, and more educational assistants and early childhood educators.
VoteMate · Cathy Varrette, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board Zone 12 (profile text submitted by the candidate or her team)Her profile lists bringing back alternative education, equal access to French programs, smaller classes and funded breakfast programs.
VoteMate · Cathy Varrette, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board Zone 12 (profile text submitted by the candidate or her team)Evidence reviewed on October 7, 2026: the City’s list of certified candidates for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (an Internet Archive copy) and its open data file of nominations, her VoteMate profile, CBC News of October 9, 2025, August 24, 2026 and August 27, 2026, the Ottawa Citizen of October 11, 2025 and August 27, 2026, the CTV News Ottawa list of September 9, 2026, and the board’s page on supervision.
Gaps. The campaign website the City lists could not be read, because the address it loads did not answer. An Instagram account named cathy.varrette.trustee exists, but no page voche.me read links it to her, so it was not used. Her work with the Ontario Autism Coalition, the award she names and her dates are her own statements and were not checked with that organization. Her profile gives November 2025 for the end of the live stream, and CBC News gives October 2025. The Ottawa Citizen articles are behind a subscriber wall in part, and only the readable text was used. The board’s meeting records were not opened. She holds no public office on the record voche.me read. The voche.me questionnaire has not been sent.
CBC News and the Ottawa Citizen report that on October 8, 2025 she filmed and live-streamed a meeting of the board’s special education advisory committee, after the province ended the board’s own live stream.
CBC News · Ottawa parent fights back after school board stops livestreaming committee meetings, October 9, 2025Her VoteMate profile says she became a Regional Organizer of the coalition and later served on its Political Action Committee and Education Working Group. voche.me did not check this.
VoteMate · Cathy Varrette, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board Zone 12 (profile text submitted by the candidate or her team)Her VoteMate profile says she attends meetings with other parents at schools as a child advocate and teaches parents how to make presentations to the board. voche.me did not check this.
VoteMate · Cathy Varrette, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board Zone 12 (profile text submitted by the candidate or her team)Proposed questions for a future interview. They have not been sent to the candidate, and no answers have been supplied.
No questions and answers have been supplied.
Ask Cathy Varrette directly. We send it to the campaign, and publish the reply here if we get one.
Facts voche.me can state about Cathy Varrette's page itself, answered directly rather than left blank.
No. This page is researched by voche.me from public sources, listed below, and is separate from Cathy Varrette's own campaign.
Not according to this profile. voche.me has not listed a current public office for Cathy Varrette.
This profile lists 11 sourced references, each with the date voche.me checked it, in the Sources section below.
The "Questions & answers" section on this page lists questions voche.me would put to Cathy Varrette in a future interview. They have not been sent yet, so the page says plainly that no answer has been supplied instead of leaving the section blank.
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