A Teacher Blogs

A year after appearing to pledge support for revised sexual health components of Ontario's Health and Physical Education curriculum, Progressive Conservative Party Leader Patrick Brown seems to have changed his mind. Mr Brown, who represents Simcoe North, recently distributed a letter promising to withdraw the curriculum if the Tories win a majority in a projected 2018 Provincial election. The release of the letter, which coincides with a byelection in Scarborough-Rouge River has been seen as a move to bolster the chances of Raymond Cho, the Tory candidate for the riding. Meanwhile, activists opposed to the curriculum had been hoping to make this a wedge issue in the election. Mr Brown's apparent change of heart is not really a surprise, but that's going to take some explaining. We begin with Mr Brown, speaking to Toronto Life magazine in an article published July 29, 2015. When asked about his views on children learning about gender identity, given that he had voted ag...

As I write this, Canada's federal election is five days away , with Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party enjoying a lead as Tory fortunes decline. And Thomas Mulcair's New Democratic Party settles into third place.  "Nothing to see here. Move along," you might say. Normally a Liberal win is welcome news among the party's traditional base of new immigrants. This demographic has fortified the Liberals since the days of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and forged inter-generational loyalty to the party. And, of course, the Tories know this. So this happened. CBC News: Conservative ads aimed at Chinese, Punjabi voters claim Trudeau backs brothels, pot sales to kids And there's this from Jason Kenney , our Minister of National Defence, formerly Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister f...

It was a soggy Sunday, June 28th, this past summer when I met the Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne. We were at the annual Toronto Pflag Pride Brunch, which takes place the morning of the Toronto Pride Parade, capping the nine-day festival. I was actually very excited to meet Ms Wynne; although I have never voted Liberal federally or provincially and harbour reservations about the Liberal Government. As well, in the last three years, relations between the federations that represent public educators, like me, and the Province have been quite strained . I was happy to meet her nonetheless. Yours truly and Premier Wynne. June 28, 2015. Having introduced myself, I began: "Premier, I'm an elementary teacher, and I know we've had our differences, but that's for another time. I want to tell you now as a teacher, a parent, and a member of the LGBT community how proud and grateful I am that you have stood firm on launching the 2015 Health and Physical Education curric...

Twenty years ago, while attending a conference on equity for post-secondary educators, I happened to meet an Anishnaabe woman who had been a survivor of Canada's residential school system. Along with her siblings and friends, she had been taken from family and community and placed in a government funded school operated by the Catholic Church. (The United and Anglican Churches of Canada also operated such schools.) The purpose of the system was to Canadianize her -- to remove all vestiges of her aboriginal heritage. During our conversation, she described beatings, verbal abuse and sexual assault.  What stands out vividly in my recollection of our conversation was a rule of the school's dining hall requiring students to retrieve and eat any scraps deemed edible by the staff from a slop bucket they scraped their plates into.  We were eating dinner later when she teasingly admonished me to clean my plate. Then she had to push her own plate away. The memory of the slop bucket ...

I know.  This was Rob Ford's last interview before going in for major surgery.  And I'm a terrible person for posting this.  Councillor Ford sat down for "an exclusive one-on-one" interview with TheRebel's Ezra Levant on May 7th. At the eight-minute mark , Ez asks Ford his thoughts on the 2015 Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum . What could go wrong? WARNING: Coarse language. Ezra Levant: I'm surprised at the story of the sex ed curriculum. I read in the paper the other day that 35,000 kids stayed home in some parents-students strike in the sex ed curriculum Kathleen Wynne is putting in. Rob Ford: It makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me absolutely sick. I have two kids -- one in grade two; one in grade four. My one in grade two and my other one in grade four should not be talking about what anal sex is or what a blowjob is. This is what they're teaching these kids. That makes me sick. I told my kids, "If they star...

My old neighbourhood growing up, Thorncliffe Park, in the former East York, has become ground-zero in the controversy over Ontario's 2015 Health and Physical Education curriculum. The first day of a one-week strike saw 90% of some 1300 children in North America's largest K-5 school absent at the behest of their parents. Instead of being in the school, many were out front holding signs decrying "irresponsible" sex education and chanting "We Say No!" -- all of this in an effort to preserve their childhood innocence. Some children then accompanied the adults to Premier Kathleen Wynne's constituency office a few kilometres away for more of the same; while others were paraded in front of Queen's Park. But it is the behaviour of the adults I would like to discuss today. We'll start with the organizer of the Thorncliffe Park spectacle Khalid Mahmood, head of the Thorncliffe Parents' Association . Mr Mahmood is a past chair of the school council...

The Toronto Star editorial of Friday, May 1st, 2015, Ontario must stay the course on sex education , marks the second time recently that a major media outlet has called out Charles McVety on his fear mongering over the 2015 Ontario Health & Physical Education curriculum. The first was when author and broadcaster Michael Coren made a hearty meal of the evangelist on CBC's Power and Politics .  Here's what The Star had to say: Meanwhile, anti-sex education monger Charles McVety, leader of the Institute of Canadian Values, is twisting the curriculum’s new focus on “consent” by saying that “teachers will be forced to teach little children how to give permission for that child to engage in sex.” The curriculum actually teaches kids how to say “no” and to understand the concept of consent before engaging in sex. McVety is no newcomer to the anti-sex ed camp. He so successfully whipped up opposition to the curriculum when it was first proposed in 2010 that Wynne’s ...

Saw this today. More than 100 000 parents from across Ontario have signed petitions opposing @Kathleen_Wynne 's sex-ed agenda. Parents will be heard. #PCPO — Monte McNaughton (@MonteMcNaughton) April 21, 2015 and this. I'll be presenting the first of thousands of petitions at Queen's Park from Ontario parents opposing @Kathleen_Wynne 's sex-ed agenda. #PCPO — Monte McNaughton (@MonteMcNaughton) April 21, 2015 And then I looked at this press conference from January 27th, 2013, the day after Premier Wynne won the Liberal leadership convention. Just before the fourteen-minute mark, the Premier said that the Health and Physical Education curriculum was coming back. Then she got elected to a majority and brought the curriculum back. Then I looked at some of the petitions. There's a few of them out there. I found four of note: Stop Ontario's graphic new sex-ed program from LifeSiteNews: 69,139 Parents As First Educators : 56384 Protect Our Kids fr...

Critics have scoffed at claims by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne that they are literally taking their anger over the 2015 Health & Physical Education Curriculum to the next level -- the federal level, that is -- to bolster the fortunes of the Conservative Party of Canada. More distractions and obfuscation from the Premier, they say. In this case, Ms Wynne is absolutely right. Exhibit 1. Let's call this The Money Shot . It had everything: WorldPride 2014 in Toronto, a lesbian Premier, the Liberal Party of Canada's best hope, and a now-convicted child sex offender. It's been used to attack Pride, the Premier's Office and the new curriculum. It will get a second life when the federal election campaign begins. As a bonus, the Tories won't have to use it. The Sun and TheRebelMedia will do it for them. Exhibit 2. Cheryl Gallant She's a federal Tory with the FordNation touch, demanding that the House make federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau orde...

The big talk today is the  Sex Ed protest at Queen's Park , organized by  Campaign Life Coalition , but I wanted to take a look back at last Saturday's protest at Valley Park MS,  organized by Thorncliffe Parents Association, which had already staged a protest in  Thorncliffe Park on March 14th . Reports  LifeSiteNews , "the Premier managed to slip away through a fire emergency exit rather than face her constituents." Valley Park Protest -- LifeSiteNews To be fair, the Premier tried talking to protestors days before. It looked like this. From the  Toronto Star : "...Wynne said she believed the  Mississauga event  was organized behind the scenes by federal Tory activists trying to use sex education as a wedge issue to fan parental fears. And she is braced for more of the same in the months leading up to a federal election this fall." Mississauga Protest -- Toronto Star It's not a stretch to make that conclusion, with several f...