Sex education group ‘incensed’ by N.B. premier’s targeting of school presentation

HALIFAX — The head of a non-profit group working to promote reproductive health says New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs is undermining efforts to give students access to honest, evidence-based sex education that answers their questions.

Teresa Norris, president of the Montreal-based organization behind a high school presentation that Higgs recently blasted on social media, said Monday the premier is taking one slide from the presentation out of context. She said her group has been teaching in New Brunswick schools for years and she is “incensed” that it’s now being targeted.

“It’s unacceptable that he’s giving this impression that it’s not appropriate, when all the topics we’re covering fall within the learning areas New Brunswick has chosen for its curriculum,” Norris said in an interview Monday.

Her organization HPV Global Action operates the Thirsty for the Talk sexual education group, and she said she has delivered the presentation to about 12 New Brunswick high schools this year. She said the material has been vetted by the provincial Department of Education.

“We need to be refuting (the idea) that there’s a problem with offering evidence-based, age-appropriate, sexual health education,” she said, because without the chance to learn about sex and ask potentially difficult questions youth are “going to look more and more online, where what they find may be anything but accurate.”

On Friday Higgs posted a slide from the presentation on social media and announced the group would be banned from future presentations. “To say I am furious would be a gross understatement,” he wrote. His office and the Department of Education did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

The slide Higgs shared featured four questions: “Do girls masturbate?” — “Does it hurt when you do it for the first time?” — “Is it good or bad to do anal?” — “Is it normal to watch porn like people watch TV series?”

Higgs said he had heard from concerned parents who shared photos and screenshots of material Norris delivered that is “clearly inappropriate,” adding: “Children should be protected, and parents should be respected.” He said the Department of Education told him the presentation was supposed to be about human papillomavirus (HPV) and the group shared materials beyond that scope.

Norris said this is not true, and the group’s presentation covers safe sex, healthy relationships, abstinence and consent, which coincides with the high school curriculum. She said she has so far not received any communication from the province since Higgs’s post banning her group.

Another slide from the same presentation asks: “Do you have an unhealthy relationship with someone?” and tells students they have the right to feel safe, they shouldn’t do something that makes them feel uncomfortable, and if they are concerned about a potentially unhealthy relationship, they should talk to someone about it. Another slide says four out of five people have had HPV at some point, citing 2022 data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We are not promoting any sexual behaviour … our ultimate goal is to destigmatize conversations about sexual health so young people can get accurate information,” Norris said.

She said this is of particular importance in New Brunswick, where the teen pregnancy rate was seven births per 1,000 teenage girls in 2022, compared to the national average of about four births per 1,000 teenage girls.

A 2019 report on sexual health education in the province published by University of New Brunswick researchers says youth in the province have a high incidence of sexually transmitted infections, unplanned pregnancy, sexual violations and dating violence that is “suggestive of high-risk sexual behaviours and a lack of knowledge regarding sexual consent, personal safety, and understanding of healthy relationship characteristics.”

Norris said when students don’t have access to quality sexual education, they turn to the internet where they may find dangerous misinformation and easy access to pornography.

“If we’re not providing students with sound, evidence-based resources, they are going to go out on (the internet) on the platforms and they’re going to think: ‘Well if I see it on Pornhub or in a porn clip that’s easily accessible, I guess that’s the way it works.'”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 27, 2024.

Lyndsay Armstrong, The Canadian Press