News & Analysis

Dear supporter,

Our children are under attack. We need your help to tell the Alberta Government that our kids are not to be exploited. Bill-8 and the Alberta Education Act need to be amended!

In February of 2016, then Minister of Education, David Eggen endorsed and implemented the “Guidelines to Best Practices” (GBP) and ordered that all School Boards in Alberta come up with a “Safe and Caring” policy that followed those guidelines. Minister Eggen told school districts to do it, “or else.”
 
The GBP is a radical document that when originally released, included requiring all students call each other ‘comrade’.

Other extremist recommendations included co-ed overnight field trips with students who identified as another sex, allowing female students' adult male relatives who identify as "transgender" to enter the girls' locker rooms, allowing self-identified transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice, and affirming the preferred gender identity of a child regardless of the age, and without parental notification.

The GBP in its development, relied heavily upon the Kathleen Wynne and Benjamin Levin Ontario Sex Education curriculum. Benjamin Levin was convicted for being a child rape apologist in 2015.
 
The GBP outraged parents across Alberta. Because of wide-spread resistance to the GBP, in 2018 Minister Eggen tabled Bill-24 to make the most extreme parts of the GBP legally binding. This included criminalizing teachers informing parents of their child’s attendance at a gay pride club, also known as a GSA.
 
It made affirming a child’s gender identity the only legally accepted option regardless of age, and required that all schools, private, public or religious, open a GSA in their school immediately upon request. These gay pride clubs could be run by anyone, and principals had no say in the matter, nor could they vet who was directing them.
 
In a court challenge of Bill-24 in 2018, compelling evidence was presented on the dangers Bill-24 posed to children.

Testimonials were heard of a GSA that exploited an autistic female child, convinced her she was a boy, and only informed the parents when the child became suicidal.

Another testimony told of a boy being taken off school grounds by an unknown male GSA ‘director’, who took the child to sex conferences, where he was instructed on how to have anal sex with adult males.
 
During the 2019 provincial election Jason Kenney promised to repeal Bill-24. Upon election it was revealed that the UCP would be replacing the NDP's Alberta School Act with the Alberta Education Act. Bill-24 would be nullified and replaced by Bill-8, but... it would not repeal or rescind the NDP’s Guidelines to Best Practices. The GBP would remain in force under Kenney’s UCP government. That is not acceptable.
 
Bill-8 is currently in second reading in the Alberta Legislation. It urgently needs two significant amendments, as follow:
 
AMENDMENT #1
BILL-8 DOES NOT ADDRESS THE GBP, WHICH WAS THE CATALYST FOR THE MOST EGREGIOUS CONCERNS THAT PARENTS HAVE

Bill-8 still requires that all schools establish GSAs if requested (private, religious, or public), and it leaves it up to teachers to decide for themselves if they will inform parents of a child’s attendance.
          
As we saw in the Bill-24 court challenge, this is not a choice that teachers should be allowed to make. The GBP can be rescinded with a simple order from the Minister of Education. That order MUST be made.
 
The removal of special rights and privileges that GSAs have, that no other group of people in Alberta have, requires an amendment. This favoritism and privilege for certain citizens needs to be repealed. The time for that amendment to happen is now, before Bill-8 is passed.
 
AMENDMENT #2
DEMOCRACY ITSELF, AND THE RIGHT OF CITIZENS TO BE REPRESENTED BY PERSONS THEY ELECT, ARE THREATENED BY SECTIONS 33, 34 AND 87 OF THE EDUCATION ACT

Essentially, somebody in the government snuck into Bill-8 some dangerous wording which grants school board trustees as a whole, a new power to undo the results of the municipal election. This power allows them to “un-elect” a duly-elected trustee, without consulting the voters.
 
If Bill 8 is passed without amendment, the Board as a whole will be able un-elect a fellow trustee by deeming them to have violated the board’s “code of conduct”. This is outlined in the following sections: 

"(34) Trustee responsibilities:   A trustee of a board, as a partner in education, has the responsibility to (a)  fulfill the responsibilities of the board as set out in section 33, (b)  be present and participate in meetings of the board and committees of the board, (c)  comply with the board’s code of conduct, and (d)  engage parents, students and the community in matters related to education.
.....
 (87.1) Disqualification of trustees:  A person is disqualified from remaining as a trustee of a board if that person (a)  other than a person appointed under section 84(1), ceases to be qualified for nomination as a trustee under the Local Authorities Election Act; (b)  is an auditor or employee of the board for which the person is a trustee; (c)  has breached the code of conduct of the board established under section 33, where the sanction for the breach under the code of conduct may be determined by the board to be disqualification; "

An elected Board writes its own ‘code of conduct.’ That code of conduct is not determined by the electorate, and can and has been written in some school divisions to make challenging the board, or having dissenting political or ethical beliefs an offense under the code.
 
If the Education Act were in effect in British Columbia, then Trustee Barry Neufeld of Chilliwack would have been fired for stating that transgender affirmation of children was child abuse.
 
A group of trustees should never be allowed to fire an elected official on their own authority. If the trustee violated a law, it should be up to the courts to make that determination, and if trustees feel that a fellow trustee is behaving inappropriately, they should put it out to the people who elected the trustee in some sort of third party recall petition, if such recall legislation exists.
 
Allowing a trustee to fire a trustee for a code of conduct violation would be like allowing an NDP MLA to fire a UCP MLA for an NDP code of conduct violation. Sections 33, 34, and 87 would do incredible harm to democracy and freedom thought, conscience and belief if not amended.
 
We guarantee that if this new power to undo democratic elections is bestowed upon Boards of Education, it will be weaponized by leftists to remove from office every single trustee who dares to speak out on behalf of parental rights.

For instance, any trustee who dares represent the concerns expressed by parents in his or her district by opposing the teaching of gender fluidity, radical sex ed, and LGBTTIQ2S+ indoctrination in early grades, will be ousted by their fellow trustees.

In fact, expressing opposition to a woman’s so-called “right” to abortion might even be deemed a trustee violation of the code of conduct one day.

We cannot let this come to pass.

Please take a minute to contact your local MLA using our Action Alert Email tool which lets you send a pre-written message. Make your MLA aware of these concerns, and demand that they ask the Education Minister to make these two urgent amendments before Bill-8 gets passed. We've provided numerous pre-written messages from which to choose the one you prefer best. Our software delivers the message on your behalf, with a click or a tap. 

Please send your Action Alert message now, by clicking here.

(Note: You should only target UCP MLAs. Contacting NDP members is a waste of time since they’re so deeply opposed to parental rights. If our software indicates that you have an NDP MLA, copy and paste the pre-written message and email Education Minister Adriana LaGrange instead, at [email protected].)

For life & family,

Jeff Gunarson
President, Campaign Life Coalition