Justin Trudeau's Woke Canada Setting the Agenda

 

"Far-right political actors are trying to outdo themselves with the types of cruelty and isolation they can inflict on these already vulnerable people."

"Right now, trans kids in New Brunswick are being told they don't have the right to be their true selves, that they need to ask permission."

"Well, trans kids need to feel safe, not targeted by politicians."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

 

"[Trudeau was] playing to the audience that he was with [speaking at the Rainbow Railroad Freedom Party]."

To take a hard line approach on either side without really focusing on the balance will only continue to create a divide, and it's unfortunate the prime minister wouldn't look at the big picture and understand that parents play a role in children's upbringing."

New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs 

 

"We listened to and consulted with hundreds of New Brunswickers and made amendments based on those exact conversations."

"We hold teachers in a position of public trust. Parents are our chief partners when it comes to supporting students and it is not appropriate to be using a different name than the parents."

"If a teacher does not have the permission of a student's parents to use the chosen pronoun or name in a classroom, they won't be able to use that name or pronoun."

"Asking teachers to hide this from parents puts them in an extremely challenging position which I don't feel is fair to parents."

"Parents are in the best position to support their child through the majority of life changes, like a change in gender identity."

"If it is not possible to obtain this consent to talk to the parent then the student will be encouraged to work with the appropriate professionals that we have in our school system, such as school social workers, school psychologists [and] guidance counsellors."

"We believe that is fundamentally wrong to not share this information with the parents if we are using [a student's preferred name] on a daily basis. If we are using it on a daily basis, it puts teachers in a really challenging position."

"There's a lot of bullying that occurs in our washrooms, any place where students are out of the sight of our professionals. Then there's things that happen that we'd prefer not to happen." 

New Brunswick Minister of Education Bill Hogan

 

Hundreds of people demonstrated against the review of Policy 713 before the changes were announced by the government. (Radio-Canada)

This is precisely typical Justin Trudeau; delighting in driving a wedge of controversy/separation between Canadians, whether it's damning Canada's natural resources in energy through the extraction of fossil fuels, in the process alienating the Western provinces and Newfoundland by imposing roadblocks to investment and the funding of critical infrastructure to achieve his government's goal of reducing the country's carbon footprint which represents about 1 percent of the world's total, or by forcing his progressive 'woke' agenda on every sphere of Canadian life.

He has pledged to "stand against" changes to gender-identity policy in New Brunswick schools, casting the government of Blaine Higgs as "far-right political actors" intent on inflicting "cruelty and isolation" on vulnerable children. As it happens, education and all the details of how education is delivered from curricula to school policy is a provincial responsibility for which this kind of federal intervention is totally unnecessary and blatantly divisive.

The New Brunswick Policy 713 represents provincial guidelines on gender identity in schools, meant to establish minimum standards in an effort to ensure a safe and inclusive environment for LGBTQ students and federal interference has made it a divisive an issue between the federal and provincial governments. The policy redraft has a requirement for parental consent should transgender or nonbinary students under age 16 wish to change to a preferred pronoun or name.

The changes proposed by the redrafting of Policy 713 now requires parental consent for issues that seriously impact on their children's lives, and this is a reasonable alteration of the original, that parents, primary caretakers of their children's welfare, be kept aware of their children's decision-making at school. Premier Higgs states that the prime minister's attack on his government and its decision-making will not deter him from formally placing the matter into provincial law viewing the changes as promoting a balance that includes parents.

Typically, Trudeau grandstands whenever he has the opportunity, and if none present themselves, he makes his own opportunities, and his remarks made at the Rainbow Railroad Freedom Party in Toronto -- an organization designed to give aid to LGBTQI+ individuals to help them escape the persecution they face in their countries of origin -- were received with predictably great acclaim.