John Rustad
John Rustad This article is more than 4 months old
ANALYSIS

BC Conservatives are Using 2SLGBTQ+ Student Supports as a Wedge Election Issue, Experts Say

Rustad kicked off the election campaign by stating the SOGI 123 initiative is “too divisive."

The Conservative Party of BC is looking to remove educational materials designed to protect queer and trans students if elected.

The BC Conservatives have signalled that they will remove Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) teaching materials from BC schools in a move advocates say will erase years of progress in making 2SLGBTQ+ students feel safe.

Hoping to take advantage of a wedge issue, BC Conservative leader John Rustad has signalled that his party, should they form government, will remove teaching materials available to teachers.

Rustad kicked off the election campaign by stating that the SOGI 123 initiative is “too divisive,” an apparent reversal from when his own government brought SOGI in under its anti-bullying initiative.

Currently, BC educators are left with a level of personal discretion on how to incorporate SOGI 123 teaching materials into their lessons. Rustad, however, has said recently that he is planning a comprehensive review of what materials teachers are allowed to draw from.

Speaking to right-wing commentator Jordan Peterson, Rustad said he’d initiate a “full review” of all the material teachers are able to access in the interest of “being neutral.”

In the first week of the election the BC Conservatives also removed multiple items from their platform, including language around “activism” and “indoctrination” in classrooms. 

As of now, the party has not solidified its policy on SOGI other than remarks from Rustad and other candidates who have talked about “ending SOGI.”

However, earlier this year, BC Conservative candidate for Abbotsford South Bruce Banman publicly thanked Rustad for joining him at an anti-SOGI rally in Abbotsford. 

“The BC Conservatives are the only party that will put this back to the drawing board where it belongs,” Banman said in a speech at the rally.

Last year, Rustad also received criticism for appearing to to compare teaching students about sexual orientation and gender identity to the genocide of Indigenous children in residential schools.

Dr. Travers, a Professor of Sociology at Simon Fraser University says the BC Conservatives are exploiting SOGI as a wedge issue.

“It will be interesting to see the language that they use, because right now it’s up to individual teachers to implement it or not, so if they remove it, are they going to start censoring what teachers can do in the classroom?” Travers told PressProgress. “It’s deeply concerning because adopting SOGI was a step taken in the right direction based on all the evidence.” 

BC does not have a mandatory SOGI curriculum, but instead endorses it as a tool for educators on a voluntary basis.

“This will harm queer and trans students, and it will also harm all students because all students do better when rigid gender roles are resisted with a more inclusive spectrum,” Travers said.

“SOGI resources or queer and trans supportive teachers and staff in schools aren’t turning kids queer or trans, the majority of queer and trans kids are invisible and they only show themselves if they’re in an environment where they feel welcome, and most of the time they never do.”

The BC Teachers Federation also  flagged SOGI as a major concern going into the election, according to president Clint Johnston. 

The province has seen numerous anti-SOGI protests in recent months, with protesters accusing the school system of indoctrination.

“Anyone who believes that schools are indoctrinating children hasn’t been to school in a long time. The idea that there’s bias is just ridiculous,” Johnston told PressProgress

SOGI 123, not to be confused with the broader concept of SOGI, is a teaching resource designed to educate students about sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. Sexual orientation, gender identity and expression are protected under the Canadian Charter.

SOGI materials largely focus on pushing back against gender stereotypes and bullying. Lesson resources are made available to parents online

“That’s one of the things that we’re most concerned about. I went to school a long time ago, and the schools I went to, I hate to say it, but they were not comfortable places for every student. Some students had to hide parts of their identity, and if they couldn’t hide parts of their identity, they faced a very different experience than we did,” Johnston added.

Johnston says that many of the opinions being shared in relation to SOGI are “uninformed and undereducated.”

“This idea that if politicians got involved in deciding what can and can’t be used in schools, the idea that that’s going to help somehow, that’s going down the road of bias and indoctrination in my opinion. There’s a lot of uninformed and undereducated opinions being shared,” Johnston said.

Véronique Sioufu, Researcher for Socio-Economic Justice with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in BC, points out that despite removing “indoctrination” from their online platform, it’s clear the BC Conservatives still have candidates who are against SOGI. 

“They definitely still have folks running that are anti-trans and anti-SOGI,” Sioufu told PressProgress.

Sioufu rejects Rustad’s notion of reviewing learning materials in the interest of being “more neutral.”

“There’s no such thing as policies that are not ideological, or policies that are not political. I know that they try to frame this as getting back to something that’s neutral, but there are ideals under everything we do. Doing nothing doesn’t mean doing no harm. They position SOGI as doing too much, but our starting place is not one of equality,” Sioufu said.

“SOGI is trying to correct existing harms. I think the other thing they play on is the idea that diversity and equity initiatives will disadvantage other people, and that’s obviously a really misleading characterization, if not an outright lie.”

 

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Stephen Magusiak
Reporter
Stephen Magusiak is a reporter with PressProgress based in Alberta. His reporting has a focus on public accountability, public services and privatization, and the right-wing war on environmentalists.

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