New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs says he wouldn’t change how he and his government handled controversial changes to school gender identity policy.
“I’m not sure what else that I would have done differently,” he said in a year-end interview with Media
“Really, we had a policy that hides information from parents? That’s problematic.”
News broke that the government was quietly reviewing Policy 713 in the spring with changes to the policy announced in June. The new policy now requires parental consent for a child under 16 to use a different name or pronoun for reasons related to their gender identity.
The changes have drawn criticism from LGBTQ2 advocates and educational experts who say more children will likely remain in the closet or be forced to be outed to their parents, who may not be supportive. A legal challenge from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association arguing the policy violates children’s Charter rights has just been granted public interest.
But Higgs says he feels that he is on the right side of the issue as he looks to stand up for “parental rights.”
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