The painful debate over children's human rights and LGBTQ policies in schools continues, as a group of Albertans launched a social media campaign aimed at stopping any new measures. This time, the campaign organizers brought their message (and inevitable hurtful language) to Twitter, where vulnerable kids can see it for themselves. In view of this, like many, I ask myself why is it so difficult to translate Bill 10 (now proclaimed law) into school board policies and why is it so cumbersome for government to protect a little girl who needs to go to the bathroom?
Perhaps here are some answers ...
The minister of education was correct in requesting that all school boards develop their own policies to comply with Bill 10 and to guarantee LGBTQ children full protection of the law and access to appropriate bathrooms. That's the law and that's the right thing to do. School boards are elected to uphold the law and protect our kids. This is where the minister should have stepped back, allow school boards to do their homework, and develop such policies. That's their job. They have the capacity to comply with this request. It wouldn't have been hard, as Edmonton Public Schools developed an outstanding set of policies that could have served as a cheat sheet. However, the minister had a different plan.
While school boards' administrators and lawyers were crafting their policies, the minister meanwhile engaged a group of experts and expediently developed a set of policies of his own. Presenting his policies as “guidelines” for school boards, he gave boards a firm deadline of March 31, 2016 to come up with something similar to his creation – a rookie mistake.
More to the point, the guidelines that the minister developed are not just the embodiment of Bill 10 or a set of practical solutions to a little girl's dilemma in being prevented from using a girl’s bathroom, but instead aspects of the minister's guidelines are a dream come true for social engineers and by far exceed the intended scope of what was expected of the minister by Bill 10 and by the mother of the girl. At no point during the infamous debate of Bill 10 was there any contemplation of eliminating gender specific pronouns such as “he” or “she.” Nor did the mother of the little girl at the centre of this controversy ask for schools to refrain from using words like “mother” or “father.” This exercise was about protecting vulnerable children and not about reintroducing Esperanto, the language of political correctness. So why did the minister go on such a tangent? I suppose, in part, because he neglected to consult with the real experts – the mother of the transgender girl in question or any other parents or children who have personally experienced the difficulties associated with transitioning while in school. They would have told him what the real issues are and how they can be fixed.
In setting his firm deadline of March 31 and by giving the boards a prototype of what their policies should look like, the minister neglected to specify what will happen if boards choose to ignore him. What consequences will there be if some boards choose not to develop any new policies or if their new policies are a far cry from the minister's expectations or the legal requirements of Bill 10? Did the minister anticipate full compliance? Unfortunately, the minister has drawn a line in the sand that some school boards were long waiting for in their determination to assert their local control and right to govern their religious and moral affairs. The bigger question is whether the minister will have the political fortitude to impose his policies on all boards on April 1, or will he retreat. This is a matter of human rights and “good enough” or granting of extensions isn't good enough. This is also a test case on who is in charge of publicly funded education. The answers to these questions will have long lasting impact on Alberta's education system.
Thomas Lukaszuk, former minister of education and deputy premier, St. Albert
