Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators and courts telling them to uphold parental rights.
REGINA, Saskatchewan (LifeSiteNews) — Saskatchewan says that their new policy protecting parental rights was prompted by a Regina school district’s decision to prohibit staff and teachers from disclosing gender-related information about students to parents.
On October 16, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe told the province’s legislature that one of the reasons for his government’s new law requiring parents to be informed if their child “changes” genders at school is because of a Regina Public School Division policy which forbade schools from informing parents about their own children’s behavior.
“It wasn’t until one school division actually changed their policy explicitly to not inform the parents when it comes to a pronoun change, a name change, or a gender-identity classification change,” Moe exaplained. “That’s when the government moved forward with respect to this policy.”
The Regina Public School Division policy, Administrative Procedure #353, was released in June 2022. It mandates that staff not tell parents if their child wants to go by different pronouns at school.
“Division staff will respect confidentiality and privacy and not disclose sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression of students unless the student has given permission or there is an impending safety concern,” the policy says, according to a copy obtained by the Epoch Times.
Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill seconded Moe’s statement, saying, “When you have one school division that comes forward and is explicitly excluding parents in reporting discussions involving their children, when we talk about the impetus for Bill 137, that really was the impetus.”
Both Moe’s and Cockrill’s statements came during a meeting at the Saskatchewan legislature that was convened to discuss the implementation of the province’s new legislation that will mandate school staff inform parents about their children’s gender-related behavior.
The pronoun policy is just one part of Saskatchewan’s new “Parental Inclusion and Consent Policies,” which also include provisions that ensure parents are allowed to opt their kids out of sex-ed, and that third-party presentations from groups such as Planned Parenthood will be prohibited from taking place.
After the policies were put forth, LGBT activist group UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity at the University of Regina, represented by Egale Canada, filed a lawsuit to reverse the pro-family laws.
While a judge has ruled in favor of the LGBT group, Moe announced in response that he will invoke his government’s notwithstanding clause to protect the legislation from the courts.
The notwithstanding clause, embedded in section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, allows provinces to temporarily override sections of the Charter to protect new laws from being scrapped while higher courts make a determination on the constitutionality of the law.
Recent surveys have shown that Moe is acting in the interest of Saskatchewan parents by introducing legislation protecting school children from LGBT propaganda.
According to an August survey, 86 percent of Saskatchewan participants advocated for parental rights, supporting the province’s new approach to the LGBT agenda in schools.
Furthermore, over 40,000 Canadians have pledged their support for Saskatchewan’s fight for parental rights in the classroom, also calling on all other provinces to follow suit.
Additionally, a Saskatchewan teacher wishing to remain anonymous previously told LifeSiteNews that she feels guilty about keeping secrets from parents and supports the decision to keep parents informed.
“I fear that we are not supporting students or parents when we keep secrets,” she explained. “We have many students using alternate names, which sometimes changes frequently during the year, and then are asked by parents if we were aware of the changes after the fact. I feel responsible for keeping the secret and I don’t think it’s fair. I think schools are already taking on too many ‘parent roles’ and it’s important that parents play the ‘parent role’ not teachers!”
Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators and courts telling them to uphold parental rights.