‘Immediately delete’: Montreal-area school board circulates parents’ sensitive information ‘by mistake’
Posted July 2, 2026 5:13 pm.
Last Updated July 3, 2026 5:54 pm.
A Montreal-area school board sent parents of children attending a North Shore high school a document containing parents’ sensitive information, CityNews has learned.
An email was sent by the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board to parents of Rosemere High School on Thursday at 3:27 p.m.
The email, with the subject line “ROSEMERE HIGH SCHOOL- Back to School 2026-27,” had an attached Excel spreadsheet containing parents’ names, birth dates, social insurance numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, country of birth, emergency telephone numbers and contacts.
“The fact that it’s very sensitive information that’s aggregated in one Excel file that’s not, you know, password protected or anything like that in itself kind of shows that the school wasn’t properly diligent and that’s where some of the responsibility will come into play,” said cybersecurity lawyer Elodie Meyer.
The school board sent a text message warning parents not to open the email at 4:08 p.m., followed by an attempt to recall the email three minutes after that.
“Do not open and immediately DELETE the email received today,” the school board wrote. Parents will be asked to sign a document confirming they deleted and did not share the spreadsheet.
Meyer says those mitigating actions taken by the school board were good but ultimately legally mandated, “they just followed the rules of their obligations following a breach that will remain their responsibility,” she said.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board says the email was sent “by mistake” and only parents of Rosemere High School students received it. The school board says it is “investigating the circumstances” that led to the email being sent.
“On behalf of the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board, we wish to offer our sincerest apologies to families of Rosemere High School affected by today’s information security breach,” Chairperson James Di Sano wrote in a letter. “We understand that many parents are feeling upset and concerned. This incident is being treated with the utmost seriousness.”
Di Sano says the breach will be reported to the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, “in accordance with our legal obligations.”
“We are committed to being transparent, and to keeping our community informed as additional information becomes available,” Di Sano wrote. “Our focus remains on addressing this matter with the care, accountability, and seriousness it deserves.”
Following such a breach Meyer says any parent or person affected could be at risk.
“The main recommendation is related to credit monitoring, that would be where the biggest risk is if someone’s trying to steal their identity. Oftentimes it’s to take out loans using their names and credit cards or things like that. That’s where you really want to be really be cautious,” explained Meyer.
The school board is vowing to “implement any additional measures necessary to strengthen our processes and prevent this from happening again.”
