After years of strenuously avoiding anything that carried a whiff of opposition to LGBT rights, Canadian politicians are now stampeding away from a policy of public schools unquestionably affirming the self-described gender identity of children without informing their parents.
In Canadian school boards from rural Alberta to the Toronto suburbs, the standing policy is that staff must immediately affirm the self-described gender identity of students. If a child expresses a desire to be known by a different name and pronouns — and to begin using bathrooms and other facilities in line with the new identity — teachers and staff are required to accommodate the transition and also withhold this information from parents upon request.
“Do not talk to anyone about (a student’s) identity, including parents/ caregivers, to whom they have not already disclosed their gender identity,” reads the official guidelines on “gender identity in schools” published by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
In a surprise move last June, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs amended Policy 713 — a document governing gender expression in public schools — to require parental consent before a student could socially transition.
“Formal use of preferred first name for transgender or non-binary students under the age of 16 will require parental consent,” reads the amended policy.
Higgs faced a caucus revolt over the change but countered that he was prepared to call an election over the issue.
Last week, Saskatchewan also announced that parental consent would henceforth be required for a student under 16 to assume new pronouns or a new name (students over 16 can do it without parental consent).
“I’ve been asked what experts we consulted in creating the Parental Inclusion and Consent policy,” said Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe in a widely circulated Sunday social media post. He added, “I believe the leading experts in children’s upbringing are their parents.”
Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson announced plans earlier this month to amend the province’s Public Schools Act to broaden “parental rights” surrounding gender identity. “Parents want to know what’s going on in the day-to-day lives of their children,” Stefanson told reporters on Aug. 17.
And on Monday, Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce told a news conference that “parents must be fully involved” in circumstances when a child decides to go by different pronouns at school.
According to polls, Canadians are in favour of this new tack.
Even before Higgs went public with changes to Policy 713, a May Leger poll found that 57 per cent of Canadians favoured some form of parental notification in cases where a student was changing their gender identity. Only 18 per cent supported the status quo of concealing a student’s gender transition upon request.
The results of an Angus Reid Institute poll released Monday were even more decisive. Of the respondents, 78 percent said that schools should inform parents if students change their pronouns, and 43 percent said it shouldn’t be done without explicit parental consent. Only 14 percent agreed with the statement “Parents should neither be informed nor have a say — it’s up to the child.”
Progressive politicians and LGBT rights groups have been quick to call the proposed changes transphobic or even hateful. In a column for CTV, former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said Higgs and Moe were “promoting discrimination and intolerance” in a cynical bid for votes.
Former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne accused Lecce of using parental rights to “cover their trans and homophobia.”
In an op-ed for the National Post, Ontario trans woman Julia Malott struck a different tone: “This isn’t anti-trans, and isn’t necessarily anti-transition. It’s pro parent-child relationship.”
Although the pushback is coming exclusively from conservative governments, it’s a marked turnaround for a Canadian political establishment that has previously been intensely reluctant to oppose any issue framed as a new frontier in trans rights.
Just two years ago, the Conservative Party of Canada voted unanimously in support of a Liberal bill pitched as a ban on “conversion therapy.” This was despite concerns that the legislation was so broad that it effectively criminalized the mere act of a therapist questioning a patient’s decision to adopt a new name and gender identity.
In contrast to his recent statement on in-school gender transitions, Lecce has been much more guarded in his response to the saga of Kayla Lemieux, an Oakville, Ont., shop teacher who began showing up to class last September wearing oversized prosthetic breasts.
Lecce has repeatedly refused to intervene in the matter, beyond statements urging Lemieux’s school board to uphold higher “standards of professionalism.”
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