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Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) was among the parties satisfied with the result of last week’s election in New Brunswick, which sent Blaine Higgs’ Progressive Conservative government to Susan Holt’s Liberals. CCLA launched a legal challenge against the former government’s amendments to Policy 713which says what schools should do when a child wants to be referred to by a different name or different pronouns.

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Holt promises to overturn Higgs’ amendments to Policy 713, which made it more complicated for children to choose their own names and pronouns at school without parental involvement. But Holt’s majority win doesn’t mean a total victory for those who believe children should be able to do this.

“Liberal government’s proposed revisions to Policy 713 prioritize cisgender comfort over transgender rights.” a headline on “social justice” website NB Media Co-op heard this week.

The CCLA and the opposition Green Party, which won two seats and 14% of the vote provincially in the election, want to return to the original Policy 713, which the Higgs government passed in 2020. “(A student) preferred first names and pronouns will be used consistently in ways the student has requested,” it stated. That is, without necessarily informing the parents.

Holt’s Liberals instead plan to adopt recommendations issued by Kelly Lamrockthe New Brunswick Child and Youth Advocate in August of last year.

The major difference in Lamrock’s recommendations for Policy 713 concerns children under 16.

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The current version, implemented by the Higgs government at last, requires parental consent for the “official use” of a new name or pronoun. But “if it is not possible to obtain consent (from the student) to talk to the parent” — and especially if it is determined that it might “hurt them (physically or mentally) to talk to the parents” — the policy says “the student will be encouraged to communicate with… appropriate professionals to develop a plan.”

“The use of the preferred first name for transgender or non-binary students under the age of 16 may be used without parental consent if the student communicates with appropriate professionals in developing a plan to speak with their parents,” the existing policy states. .

In other words, there is a specific circumstance in which schools May use the child’s preferred names and pronouns without parental consent – and it’s a very reasonable one, in my view. “Don’t tell the parents” or “keep calling the kids names they don’t like” are very short-term solutions to very long-term problems. What are the chances the parents won’t find out through the grapevine at some point anyway?

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Lamrock, by contrast, proposes sixth grade as the threshold at which students are “assumed to have the ability to determine their own terms of … address,” unless “the principal has concerns about the child’s ability”—” ability’ being defined as ‘the ability…to understand the nature and impact of a decision.’

If there are concerns about ability or if the child is younger than sixth grade, Lamrock suggests “the principal (should) develop a plan for the child in consultation with school personnel … school counselors, social workers, doctors and psychologists.” .

If Lamrock’s proposed policy doesn’t sound completely different from the existing one, that’s because it really isn’t. Neither is perfect, but both are pretty reasonable. Certainly, neither distinction justifies the overheated culture war rhetoric that has dominated this largely pointless debate. If we can’t trust teachers, principals, and counselors to handle situations like these using their best judgment without having a bloodless multi-page policy to follow, then we probably can’t trust them to follow either politics.

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Frankly, it’s good for Higgs that he clearly saw a populist gain to be had here on the backs of struggling kids and school officials trying to help them, and blew up in his face even within his own caucus, with a lot of pushback from the public and several MPs.

Hopefully Holt can make a more articulate case for her preferred policy than Higgs did. I like that hers puts more discretion in the hands of school officials – not because I implicitly trust school officials, but because I trust them a lot more than I actually trust politicians. But I also like that it at least implicitly acknowledges the parents should be involved unless there is an extremely compelling reason not to be.

A small number of Canadians believe children should be able to “socially transition” to school under a policy of unconditional acceptance and no parental notification — just 14% nationally, according to an Angus Reid Institute survey published last August. Governments shouldn’t write policy according to opinion polls, of course, but sometimes when 86 percent of the population is against you, you’re the one who’s wrong and the majority is right.

National Post
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