Deadnaming children would be allowed under school policy

For nearly two years now, the province of New Brunswick has had a policy requiring teachers to use schoolchildren’s preferred names and genders. But under a new policy introduced by the provincial leader, Prime Minister Blaine Higgs, teachers must obtain parental consent if the child is under 16.

The new policy, which does not require regulatory approval, has sparked a political storm that has the potential to topple his government.

Backlash against him mounted during a week in which Canada was outraged by a mother’s accusation that a man questioned the gender of her 9-year-old daughter during a shot put competition in Kelowna, British Columbia. As my colleague Dan Bilefsky reported, the man denied addressing the girl or her mother Castanet, a local online news website, that he only asked an official if the event was coed.

[Read: Man Who Questioned 9-Year-Old Athlete’s Gender Spurs Outrage]

Criticism and condemnation of Mr Higgs’ policies quickly came from LGBTQ activists, political opponents, teachers, former public servants and the official who serves as the county child and youth attorney. Mr. Higgs’ move also sparked open revolt within his Progressive Conservative caucus.

Before I arrived in New Brunswick earlier this week to report an unrelated article, six members of the Progressive Conservative caucus, including two members of Mr. Higgs’ cabinet, publicly challenged the prime minister.

Then on Thursday, the internal party insurrection spread. A third member of Mr Higgs’ cabinet resigned from her post largely over the issue.

With the support of members of Mr Higgs’ Conservative caucus, the legislature also succeeded in passing a motion calling on the government to have Kelly Lamrock, the advocate for children and young people, review the Prime Minister’s plan, in fact to rebuke it.

Mr Lamrock called the policy “sloppy and unintentionally discriminatory”. Students who do not want their parents consulted will be sent to mental health professionals, a move that some say could become a form of conversion therapy, which is illegal in Canada.

The province’s education minister said the government had received hundreds of complaints about the policy. But when Mr. Lamrock asked for copies, he said he got them three emails sent over two and a half years. None, he said, addressed the specific policy and some contained homophobic remarks.

Bill Hogan, the provincial education minister, said the government was guided in part by a briefing submitted last month by five national organizations dealing with gender issues. They include the Ontario-based Canadian Gender Report, who describes himself in contrast to the “medical transition of children, the introduction of gender identity education in our schools, and the changing legal landscape that replaces biological sex with the subjective notion of gender self-identity.”

Amid the political storm he created, Mr. Higgs remains defiant.

After telling the legislature that gender dysphoria is something that has become “popular and trendy”, Mr Higgs said the current policy, which will replace his government at the end of the month, “is eroding the role of the family in the education of children”. .”

It is not entirely clear why the policy has become a concern for Mr Higgs over the past two years. During the debate over the motion he lost, Mr Higgs said it “slid into the system a bit” in 2020 and only gained wider attention when people in libraries started hearing stories about drag queens. But a leader of the group that helped develop the 2020 policy reversing Mr Higgs said the group had been working with the government on the policy for about a decade.

Mr Higgs said he would heed the legislature’s motion and allow Mr Lamrock to review his policy. The review is expected at the end of August. But he did not commit to adopting any of his recommendations. He also indicated that he was willing to fight an election over the policy despite the caucus’ disagreement.

I spoke with Gail Costello, a recently retired teacher who co-chairs Pride in Education, a teacher group instrumental in introducing the soon-to-be-repealed 713 Policy, and several other gender identity-related schools. policy. She said she believed Mr. Higgs had a much broader agenda.

“If you follow Policy 713, you can follow the curriculum,” Ms. Costello said. “If you can go after the curriculum, can you go after the books in the schools that discuss those parts of the curriculum? You can more or less see the writing on the wall. That is why it is important to close this now.”

Ms Costello said she believed the Prime Minister’s plan would eventually be rejected by a court and allow her to move on to her new passion for retirement: pickleball.

“This is another bump in the road,” she said. “I’m 100 percent sure this won’t last, changes will be made and the kids will be fine in September.”

• My colleagues Norimitsu Onishi and Renaud Philippe, a photographer from Montreal, spent three days with 109 French firefighters battling wildfires in northern Quebec. Their commander told them that if people in the south wondered “why there is smoke there, it’s because the fires are unstoppable here”.

• In their account of the road tragedy that claimed at least 15 lives in Manitoba, Kim Wheeler and Dan Bilefsky report that the victims, most of whom were from Dauphin, were only 10 minutes from their destination, a casino, when their bus and a semi-trailer truck collided. Another 10 people were injured.

• The company behind the Instant Pot, an electronically controlled device that pressure-cooks and slow-cooks food — and was invented in Ottawa by a former Nortel engineer — has filed for bankruptcy protection.

• In their sixth season, the Vegas Golden Knights have won the Stanley Cup.

Born in Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported on Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.

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