When it comes to the very idea of “parental rights” and “parental notification” and “gender identity” and the “preferred pronouns” of children in schools, this has been a busy few months!

New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs got the ball rolling with his recent change of heart in the direction of parental rights. The ensuing drama in New Brunswick on this issue is getting more interesting by the week.

Next were the startling developments in Saskatchewan where Planned Parenthood got caught red-handed distributing sexually explicit materials in a high school in Lumsden, and, in response, Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government has released a new parental rights policy.

Now, on the cusp of a provincial election in Manitoba, that province’s embattled PC Party government, after years in power, and in an obvious ploy to win votes, is trying pull a “Doug Ford” and is promising more action on “parental rights” IF they are re-elected this fall.

In all three of these provinces, one common objection from the anti-parental rights, woke mob is that provincial governments should have no role in stopping the local efforts of trans ideologists. “Leave it to the local school districts,” school boards, etc., they say.

Hmmmmm. What happens when a provincial government leaves it up to the local school boards and teachers to deal with “gender ideology” issues?

If you aren’t already subscribing to WOKE WATCH CANADA on Substack, perhaps you should take a look at this recent post from August 23, where the author recently provided more evidence of the complete capitulation of Doug Ford’s Education Minister, Stephen Lecce, to the gender ideologists. I don’t endorse everything that the author says in this blogpost, but he does an efficient job at outlining several aspects of the issue of notice to parents regarding “pronouns”:

• The author discloses an email he received from the Ford / Lecce Ministry of Education wherein the official confirms that: “The Ministry does not have a policy regarding the procedure for elementary school staff when children express feelings of gender dysphoria. Ontario requires school boards to provide conditions that enable all students, including 2SLGBTQI+ students, to be safe and to promote a positive school climate.”
• The author then points out the obvious: that the Ford PC government, through the Lecce-led Ministry of Education (MoE), “ …has tossed this hot potato to the school boards…” where “thousands of kids are being placed on the pathway to transitioning, a pathway which becomes more and more irreversible the further the child goes”.
• The author reminds us that this “transitioning” typically starts with a new name and pronouns, perhaps as young as age 4….at age 10 or so, the child is encouraged to take puberty blocking drugs…” eventually leading to “sex reassignment surgeries”;
• Perhaps most vividly, the author makes this observation: “So what the MoE is supporting, although they won’t admit it, is drastically increasing the odds that gender confused kids (tomboys, girlyboys, or kids with homosexual feelings) will end up on the road to transitioning. This is of course what the activists want.”

I have provided the above excerpts in order to highlight some obvious facts that are presented by its author, and I am grateful for his work on this issue.

Earlier this year, the Ontario PCs introduced Bill 98, Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act, 2023, and Ford’s PC majority in the legislature passed it into law. Bill 98 requires school boards to follow Ontario policy in a number of specific areas, Ford is not afraid to use his almost unlimited power over the education system to force the school boards to comply with his wishes. Sad to say, despite his promises made in 2018, Doug Ford has zero interest in using this power to direct our school boards and our teachers to respect parental rights and protect the children.

The implication we must draw is that Ford (and Lecce) are complicit in the “transitioning” of our children. How? Ford’s government is permitting teachers and school officials to indoctrinate, from a very early age, our schoolchildren into the unscientific and irreversibly harmful world of “gender identity theory” and “trans ideology.” In other words, Ford and Lecce want the school boards to do all of their “gender” dirty work, but they don’t want the “blame” for encouraging “transitioning.”

Keep this in mind next time you hear an Ontario PC Party spokesman blaming “the school boards” or “woke teachers” for what is going on. Yes, we know “who is doing what,” but we also know that it is being done with Ford and Lecce’s implicit blessing.

What is happening in other provinces, especially New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Manitoba?

Stay tuned!