‘Very complex issues’: Sask. gov’t installs parental consent for sex ed, pronoun change

Just a couple of weeks before kids are set to head back to classrooms in Saskatchewan, the provincial government has unveiled a new set of policies around sex education and gender and pronoun changes.

On Tuesday morning, Education Minister Dustin Duncan unveiled the changes:

• Parents will have to be notified when sexual health education is happening and what will be included, and parents will have the ability to take their kids out of the class if they wish;
• No third parties will be allowed to be brought in for sexual health education presentations, excepting from the ministry or Saskatchewan Health Authority. School divisions also will have to pause working with third parties on sex education programming as well; and
• Parents will have to consent before a requested name and pronoun change from a student will be honoured in the school.

Duncan said family is the most important and central thread in any country and the changes are meant to include parents more in their children’s education.

“My view is the default position can’t be, ‘How do we keep this from the kids’ parents?’ The default position needs to be, ‘How do we provide that student with the support so that they are comfortable with their parents knowing a decision that they want to make?’ ” Duncan explained during a media conference.

Duncan said if a child wants a name or pronoun change but doesn’t want their parents to be involved, that child’s school and division will work with the kids to get them to a place where they’re comfortable. The ministry will work with divisions to put supports in place.

“Remember, we’re talking about a child. We’re not talking about small versions of adults. We’re talking about children,” Duncan said.

He also said the government isn’t talking about punishing teachers, but the policy will be to use the original name and gender for the child unless the parent consents.

In some school divisions, according to Duncan, there were already policies in place or being developed that went in the opposite direction, which he said would put teachers in a tricky position anyway.

“We want to ensure that there is consistency across the province when it comes to these policies,” the minister said.

Duncan said the province will be working with divisions to implement and fine-tune the policies. However, he couldn’t say what experts or groups the province had consulted with in creating these policies, whether any transgender people were consulted, and what research, specifically, went into these policies.

He also couldn’t say how many kids in Saskatchewan schools might be affected by the name and pronoun change policy, and said the province didn’t consult the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation about the change.

The minister said he had heard from parents, though he didn’t say whether any were parents of transgender youth. He said parents were concerned about things changing in schools without their knowledge.

“These are very complex issues, and the view of the government is that, in these very complex issues, parents should be involved more, not less,” said Duncan.

He also said some teachers had reached out to say they were uncomfortable with policies around name and pronoun change being implemented in their schools.

New Brunswick’s provincial government implemented similar policy changes earlier this year, including the same policy around names and pronouns. There was a swift backlash, including from New Brunswick’s Child and Youth Advocate, who said the policy violates children’s Charter rights and could lead to discrimination.

When asked about the reaction in the Maritimes, Duncan said he isn’t concerned about his government’s policy.

“As minister of education in Saskatchewan, I’m comfortable with moving forward with these directives,” said Duncan, explaining the government doesn’t want to be discriminatory.

“But we also want to ensure that parents, fundamentally, are at the core of their children’s education.”

Duncan said he personally supports trans rights and he’s also sensitive to this being a complex issue with no easy answers.

When asked whether his government is wading into “culture wars,” Duncan brought it back around to parents.

“What I’m wading into is having parents more involved in their kids’ lives, not less,” he said.

Sex education class

In one of the new policies, parents will have to be given information about sexual health education classes and could choose to take their children out of those classes. Duncan said divisions that already allow parents to opt out will include alternative materials so the kids can still learn what they need to meet the curriculum.

“One thing we’d be looking at is to say, ‘You still have to ensure the students achieve the curricular outcome,’ but maybe it will be done out of classroom. Maybe it will be alternative resources in the event that a parent objects to a resource,” explained Duncan.

Saskatchewan regularly has some of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country. In 2021, the last year data was available, Statistics Canada showed four per cent of live births in Saskatchewan were to a mother between the ages of 15 and 19, higher than any other province and second only to Nunavut when the territories are included.

Saskatchewan was also one of only two provinces with any numbers for births to mothers under 15 years of age.

However, Duncan doesn’t think sexual education is a main driver of teen pregnancy.

“I think it’s a larger issue than whether a kid has taken sex ed class or not – whether or not their parents have opted out. I think it’s a bigger discussion than that,” said Duncan.

Third-party presenters

The province has also decided that third parties will no longer be welcome presenting sexual health programming in classrooms or working with divisions on programming.

Duncan said this partly comes out of an incident in June, when a presenter from Planned Parenthood in Regina accidentally left a deck of sexually explicit alphabet cards with other resources in a classroom in Lumsden. But Duncan said teachers are also there to teach the course, and are trained to do so.

When asked specifically what else his ministry found in its review of third parties that led to the decision to keep them all out, Duncan didn’t give any specific examples and instead said there weren’t a lot of third-party organizations that did that kind of work.

In its news release, the province specifically pointed out the ARC Foundation and its SOGI 1 2 3 Program as an organization with which involvement needs to be paused. The group and program is centred around making schools inclusive for all sexual orientations.

Duncan said that program is inconsistent with the government’s policy changes.

“Rather than continuing to have school divisions go forward with an organization that is putting forward policies that are inconsistent with the government, we’re going to pause that work while we work with school divisions to make Saskatchewan policy without a B.C.-based organization,” said Duncan.

NDP reaction

Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck is calling the provincial government’s parental consent policy a “new low.”

Beck lambasted the policy during a media event, arguing that school divisions and local governances are in the best position to understand and connect with parents — not Duncan.

“What I see here is deeply cynical and divisive policy that very clearly is designed to address a political problem that the minister and the government (have),” Beck said.

“(The policy) will do not only nothing to improve the learning situation for kids, it actually puts kids who are already vulnerable at greater risk and I think that is inexcusable.”

When asked by reporters, Beck called the policy transphobic.

She also said the policy was implemented to address a political risk that the Saskatchewan Party might have seen in the Lumsden-Morse byelection in addition to also harkening back to the Planned Parenthood incident at Lumsden High School.

“It’s the most cynical and disappointing kind of politics,” Beck said.

Beck also noted the similarities of the decision to others made in places like New Brunswick and Florida.

“We’ve seen this type of politics (and) these types of policies play out very poorly for already-vulnerable kids south of the border (and) other places in Canada,” Beck said.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Daniel Reech