Note: To sign a petition to stop Ontario's graphic sex-ed curriculum, click here.
MISSISSAUGA, March 27, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) — After attempting to explain her controversial sex-ed curriculum to an estimated 250 angry parents protesting outside Mississauga’s Verdi Hospitality Centre last night, Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne then justified the curriculum to representatives of the ethnic media.
While the crowd outside Mississauga’s Verdi Hospitality Centre chanted, “We say no!” and “Resign! Resign! Resign!” Wynne told attendees at a media meet and greet that “We consulted with parents, teachers, students, medical professionals and curriculum experts about how to update this curriculum,” according to Mississauga News reporter Graeme Frisque. Wynne stated this had been “the biggest curriculum consultation in Ontario’s history.”
“That’s completely false,” says Progressive Conservative MPP Monte McNaughton, who told LifeSiteNews in a telephone interview that “parents have been completely left out of this process.”
Wynne told the ethnic media that the “updated curriculum gives children age-appropriate information about online safety, consent and healthy relationships.” She added, “The protest outside and the protests that are happening right now, I believe to some extent are happening in the absence of information.”
But McNaughton, who is running for leadership of Ontario’s PC party, and is the father of a toddler daughter, said parents know what’s best for their kids.
“Parents should be first educators, and it’s not the government’s job to tell parents in Ontario what’s age appropriate,” he said. “Parents are quite rightly upset and angry at what Kathleen Wynne is trying to force upon families in Ontario.”
Wynne told parents that their kids can “opt out” of sex-ed classes, but McNaughton says this is no solution. “This sex-ed agenda needs to be stopped, it cannot be implemented in September of this year,” said the MPP for Lambton-Kent-Middlesex. “There are just too many concerns from tens of thousands of parents across Ontario.”
And more and more parents are protesting, McNaughton said. “I’ve stood with thousands of them over the last two weeks right across the GTA. They’re upset.”
For example, Liberal MPP and Minister of Finance Charles Sousa faced 1,000 anxious parents at a Mississauga town hall meeting four days before the sex-ed curriculum was released, telling them then that “this is not a law that cannot be changed, it’s not a bill. And there is no law that can prevent amendments to the curriculum.”
McNaughton also recalled the March 12 Scarborough information session, shut down by Liberal MPPs Bas Balkissoon and Soo Wong, leaving 200 parents with unanswered questions. On March 14, more than 2,000 people protested the sex-ed curriculum in Thorncliffe Park, part of Kathleen Wynne’s own Don Valley West riding. Two days before Wynne’s encounter with angry parents at the Verdi centre, about 300 parents showed up to protest at a Peel District School Board meeting.
While he has up to now been the lone voice speaking out against the sex-ed curriculum at Queen’s Park, the Liberals are showing signs of waking up, McNaughton told LifeSiteNews. “I’ve noticed comments from a number of Liberal MPPs, including cabinet ministers,” he said, who are “now essentially saying that there needs to be a consultation, and parents will be heard.”
“That’s why I’m encouraging parents to contact MPPs and keep putting pressure” on the government, McNaughton said. “Kathleen Wynne cannot ignore tens of thousands of parents in Ontario who disagree with her sex-ed agenda.”
Find a full listing of LifeSiteNews' coverage of the Ontario government's explicit sex-ed program here.
