Sexual Education in Ontario: Canadian Civil Liberties Association Lawsuit

Some accomplishments in life deserve applause, approval, and accolades. However, accomplishment can seem ambiguous in the evaluation of the relative success of a purported achievement.

Indeed, the updates – or, maybe, ‘down-dates’ or ‘back-dates’ – for the sexual education curriculum for Ontario students are underway. It brings the notion of a good education and a bad education into the forefront of the public discourse, where it can show in the words and the actions of the general population and, most importantly, the educators.

International and national documents speak to the right of children to have their best interests in mind, where the parents, the educational system, the community, and the governments bear the responsibility to enact the best interests of the children by implication. Rights exist for everyone, not some – or in part for some and all for others.[1]

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association decided to sue the Government of Ontario based on discriminatory changes to the sexual education curriculum – or ‘sex ed’ curriculum – in Ontario (Gollom, 2018).

This suggests human rights, the best interests of the child, and the right to education for children. One core document in international children’s rights remains the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (OHCHR, 1989).

Article 3(1) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states the best interests of the child should be – so a moral stipulation – the primary consideration in all actions (OHCHR, 1989).[2]

Article 28 of the Convention remarks, in part, on the fundamental recognition of the right to education for children (Ibid.). Furthermore, Article 29 of the Convention speaks to the goals of education with the inclusion of respect for others, human rights, and their own and others’ culture (Ibid.).[3]

One may reflect on the human rights of, and intrinsic respect for, the sexual orientation and gender identity minorities within the province of Ontario educational curriculum through potential non-inclusion or minimization of existence.

If an advanced industrial economy, constitutional monarchy, and democracy retains the ability to provide a fuller education or give better educational provisions via the sexual education curriculum, and if the same nation does not, does this, in part, deny the full implementation of the right to education for children as per Article 28 of the Convention? Also, does this violate the best interests of the child as per Article 3(1)?

Elected in 2018, Premier Doug Ford (Progressive Conservative government for Ontario) announced the retraction of the newer sexual education curriculum constructed and implemented by the previous government in Ontario led by Kathleen Wynne.

Teachers may risk punishment through non-compliance with the implementation of the old sexual education curriculum from almost two decades ago, in Ontario. This old curriculum will be an “interim curriculum” (Gollom, 2018).

Now, the Ontario government is creating a website for parents to complain or express concerns over what kids may hear in class. Does the reportage of parents, possibly en masse, in Ontario public schools work to build the needed bonds of trust and solidarity between teachers, parents, and government for the best interests of the child or not?

Does the potential public humiliation and intimidation of conscientious objector status teachers improve the morale of educators in Ontario or not? What might be the long-term impact on teacher-government relations into the future because of it?

Michael Bryant, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association Executive Director, opined, “[The government’s actions are a] ham-fisted dog-whistle of bigotry, of homophobia, dressed up as a consultation fix… We are calling it out and taking it to court” (Ibid.).

Some judge the decisions of Premier Doug Ford as discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community and a “lesson in homophobia” (Bigham, 2018). Others see this as the placement of parents’ rights first (Salutin, 2018).

Others, with proper authority, including Education Minister Lisa Thompson has or, have been unavailable for comment for prominent news organizations such as the CBC (CBC, 2018a). Still others, they opine on the level of knowledge children have about sex, i.e., a lot (Thomas, 2018).

Some may direct attention to the recent furor over the right to free speech – with international movements, dialogues, debates and lecture circuit attendees riding the wind of it, and making good money off it – in some of the culture, which, of course, remains a misnomer – ‘free speech’ – when they mean the right to freedom of expression (Government of Canada, 1982; UN, 1948).[4] As an aside, in actuality, a minor phenomenon worth little attention.

However, the argument from Vice News is the hypocrisy in the argument for free speech while also the prevention of educators to teach kids about consent by the government (Csanady, 2018). Take, for example, the inclusion of the term “transgender” only with a single appearance now, too (Ibid.). These limit the ability of educators to properly and fully teach the young.

Does this transgender or trans example relate to the minimization of the marginal – often suicidal due to more bullying, misunderstanding, and prejudice – in this country through the educational system regression mentioned earlier and in-progress now (PREVnet, 2018)?[5] Bullying remains a human rights violation as well (Ibid.; PREVnet, n.d.).[6]

The updated sex education curriculum emerged in 2015, as a revision and expansion of the 1998 sexual education curriculum in Ontario schools for children. In the electronic era, this included the information about gender identity, online bullying, and sexting. Something not foreseeable by most in the 1990s.

Social conservatives remain the main opponents to the 2015 educational curriculum coverage on gender identity, masturbation, and same-sex relationships.

With the call to appeal to the social conservative base of Premier Ford, several teachers’ unions and “thousands of parents and the Official Opposition have criticized the government’s decision to scrap the modernized sex ed curriculum” (Gollom, 2018).

One daughter could be marginalized in the light of the sexual education curriculum reversion to 1998 from 2015. Bryant uses the lawsuit from the family of the daughter who may face marginalization from within the school if the complete regression to the 1990s happens in the sexual education of Ontario youth.

The daughter is 10-years-old with a protected identity. The mother, Becky McFarlane, is queer. Bryant argues the interim curriculum leaves important information out of the sexual education information needed by students now.

Bryant stated, “They’ve taken out content in a way that discriminates against this family on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity” (Gollom, 2018). A Chernos Flaherty Svonkin LLP lawyer, Stuart Svonkin, is working with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association from three main targeted arguments: